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Fourteen bills and two resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 2690-2703, S. Res. 372, and S. Con. Res. 21.
Page S6008
Measures Reported
S. 723, to require the Bureau of Indian Affairs to process and complete all mortgage packages associated with residential and business mortgages on Indian land by certain deadlines. (S. Rept. No. 119-60)
Page S6008
Measures Considered
National Defense Authorization Act--Agreement: Senate continued consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of S. 2296, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2026 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year.
Pages S5989-S6000
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that at approximately 10 a.m., on Thursday, September 4, 2025, notwithstanding rule XXII, Senate resume consideration of the nomination of Maria A. Lanahan, of Missouri, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, and that at 11:30 a.m., Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination, and following that cloture vote, Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Edward L. Artau, of Florida, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, and if cloture is invoked on 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 Monday, September 8, 2025; and that notwithstanding rule XXII, following the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Edward L. Artau, Senate continue consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill, and all post-cloture time be expired at 1:45 p.m.
Page S6038
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Erwin Antoni, of Pennsylvania, to be Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, for a term of four years. Laura DiBella, of Florida, to be a Federal Maritime Commissioner for a term expiring June 30, 2028. Steven Haines, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce. Robert Harvey, of Florida, to be a Federal Maritime Commissioner for a term expiring June 30, 2029. George Holding, of North Carolina, to be United States Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Sriprakash Kothari, of Massachusetts, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Ryan McCormack, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy. Peter Metzger, of the District of Columbia, to be Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Department of the Treasury. Brian David Miller, of Pennsylvania, to be United States Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania for the term of four years. Trent Morse, of Florida, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority for a term expiring May 30, 2030. Joshua Simmons, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. Christopher Yeaw, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Stability). Routine lists in the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.
Pages S6039-42
Nominations Withdrawn
Senate received notification of withdrawal of the following nominations: Terrence Gorman, of Florida, to be Chairman of the Board of Veterans' Appeals for a term of six years, which was sent to the Senate on August 01, 2025. Penny Schwinn, of Tennessee, to be Deputy Secretary of Education, which was sent to the Senate on January 22, 2025. Christopher Gilbert, of Virginia, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia for the term of four years, which was sent to the Senate on June 30, 2025.
Page S6042
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S6010-12
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 6:37 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 4, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on page S6038.)
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: 22 of 64 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2296, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The great Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University now estimates that over 35,000 abducted Ukrainian kids are being held by Russia. The few who have been rescued tell horrific stories of Russian indoctrination, illegal militarization, and brutal punishment for refusing to give up their Ukrainian identity.
Here are some stories from kids who were rescued, courtesy of an organization called Bring Kids Back Ukraine:
``The Russians said that my mother did not need me and that I would be given to a foster family in Russia,'' said 12-year-old Olekander from Mariupol.
``I wanted to escape through the backyard but was afraid they might shoot me. So I had to get in a truck with them. It was so scary,'' said 13-year-old Artem from Kharkiv.
Another story is from these six children: Vitaliy, Zhenia, Taya and Dayana and then, of course, two other girls who asked not to be named. They said, in September and October 2022, they came to the occupied Crimean Peninsula for what was called a rehabilitation program. They say they were mocked in the camp, humiliated based on their nationality. The Russians lock children like these folks who expressed pro-Ukrainian positions in a basement or an isolation cell. They forbade children to speak Ukrainian and, instead, forced them to listen to the Russian national anthem, learn Russian patriotic songs, and to do hard work.
For at least 6 months, the Russians lied to children that their parents had allegedly abandoned them and, in general, that Ukraine no longer needed these children.
Now, as the Trump administration moves forward to secure a peace, we must not forget the plight of these children. I appreciated very much First Lady Melania Trump's heartfelt letter urging Putin to release these kids, and I also heard that President Zelenskyy mentioned those letters and the children at a recent White House meeting.
So children should not become bargaining chips in the geopolitical negotiations. Their safe return must be prioritized before any final peace agreement is reached.
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, this week, the Senate is beginning consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026. This annual Defense bill is one of the most important things we do each year, and I appreciate the hard work that Chairman Wicker and our colleagues on the
Mr. President, the last few years demonstrated that the world remains a dangerous place. And as new challenges have arisen, we also had troubling reports on the state of our military's readiness to meet those challenges. We have aging equipment, insufficient munitions, lagging recruitment, excessive bureaucracy that delays the delivery of new weapons. Our readiness and capabilities have not been heading in the right direction.
We have begun to turn that situation around, most recently with a significant investment in our national security in the One Big Beautiful Bill. This year's NDAA, along with sustained investments in the years to come, will help us continue to reverse that trend so that we have a military capable of deterring and defeating today's threats and tomorrow's.
This year's National Defense Authorization Act boosts America's shipbuilding, and that includes additional combat ships and submarines that are essential to delivering American power anywhere in the world. It strengthens the Air Force fleet, including authorizing funding for new fighter jets and delivery of the B-21, the next-generation long- range strategic bomber that will soon make its home at South Dakota's own Ellsworth Air Force Base. And it supports the construction of the Golden Dome missile defense system to keep America's homeland safe from attack.
We are also continuing efforts to bolster our munitions supply. It became clear in recent years our supply of munitions was not where it needed to be for a prolonged conflict. It puts robust requirements in place to ensure we are adequately stocked.
This NDAA will also help us build up the capabilities that our military needs to fight the wars of the future. It supports improved drone capabilities along with defenses against the same, integrating artificial intelligence, and restoring a credible deterrent in cyber space.
While capabilities are important, they are of little use without the people using and directing them, so this bill also supports the men and women serving our country. It provides them with the 3.8-percent pay raise and includes provisions to support military families who are also making sacrifices for our country's defense.
Then there is recruitment, which this bill strongly emphasizes. In the last few years, our military was having a tough time recruiting individuals to serve. While some of those challenges have subsided since January, thanks to President Trump's leadership, this bill focuses on getting more Americans to consider serving our country in the military.
This year's NDAA also takes some important steps to change the way business is done at the Pentagon. The NDAA clears away more than 100 outdated bureaucratic hurdles in order to streamline the Department's acquisition processes, the most significant reform, literally, in generations. It encourages a wider array of companies to do business with the Pentagon, ensuring that our warfighters have the best equipment that American innovation can produce. And it helps eliminate bureaucratic redtape by empowering executives at the Department of Defense to make decisions at the speed of innovation. I appreciate Chairman Wicker's leadership on these overdue reforms which will help ensure America's military reaps all the benefits of American innovation.
Mr. President, there is a lot more I could say about the content of this bill and what it does for our military. Before I close, I want to say a few words about the process this bill has had thus far and what will play out in the coming days. I have talked more than once this year about my commitment to regular order. I am proud that this year's NDAA is on the regular order track. The Armed Services Committee held a markup where Members had the opportunity to amend the bill. The bill passed out of the committee in a bipartisan vote of 26 to 1. Now it is here on the floor where Senators will once again have the opportunity for debate and amendment. At the end of this process, I am looking forward to the Senate passing this bill to strengthen America's military and safeguard our national security in the 21st century.
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, let me begin by reading a few headlines showing what Donald Trump's so-called golden age really looks like. These are headlines from the past few weeks from the Wall Street Journal:
Hello.
Or how about this headline also from the Wall Street Journal:
Or how about from Bloomberg:
Finally, from CBS News:
So I guess this is Donald Trump's idea of a golden age: Parents pay more for school supplies, a job market on the brink, more and more and more inflation that hurts people's pocketbooks every week, factories slowing to crawl month after month. That is certainly not what the American people have signed up for.
This morning, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and other senior White House officials will hold ``briefing sessions'' with GOP members about how to rebrand the ``Big Ugly Bill'' in hopes they can make it play better with the American people. They are squirming. They know this bill is unpopular. So now what do they want to do? Change the name. Changing the name isn't going to open rural hospitals that are closing. Changing the name is not going to give healthcare to the millions who will lose it. Changing the name is not going to prevent healthcare premiums from going up and up and up.
Donald Trump says he wants to change the name of this Big Beautiful Bill because, as it turns out, it is terrible. It is a terrible name for the biggest healthcare and nutrition cuts in history.
Americans know damn well that these Medicaid and ACA cuts are not big and beautiful. They are hideous. They are cruel. They are destructive.
The fact that Donald Trump says Medicaid cuts are big and beautiful shows just who he is and just what his values are. The American people are learning who he really is.
The fact that Donald Trump thinks that Medicaid cuts are beautiful reveals to America who he cares about and who he doesn't give a damn about. And the average American he doesn't care a bit about. He cares about giving tax breaks to his billionaires, and he cuts healthcare to do it, and then he calls that beautiful. Well, maybe it is beautiful for a few billionaires. It sure ain't beautiful for tens of millions of Americans who are hurt by it.
Let's be very clear, folks. The Republicans don't have a branding problem; they have a substance problem. What they did is horrible. They can call their bill whatever the hell they want; it is not going to change the fact that millions are going to lose healthcare, tens of millions are going to have their premiums go up, rural hospitals will close, and research funding that saves kids from cancer will be slashed.
When hospitals close, when people get sick and die, they don't give a damn what Donald Trump's bill is called; they want the Republicans to stand up to Trump--Republicans here in the Senate--and reverse these cuts even though just about every one of them voted for them.
If Republicans think that a bunch of branding briefing sessions can change the American people's views of what this bill is all about, they are colossally out of touch.
I spent a month in August traveling from Niagara Falls to Glens Falls. I met with parents. I met with doctors. I met with nurses. I met with hospital
If you don't believe me, look at the data. Republicans, Donald Trump, look at the data. Look at what the American people think of this so- called Big Beautiful Bill. Americans hate the Republican ``Big Ugly Bill.''
Navigator: 52 percent unfavorable, 33 percent favorable about the ``Big Ugly Bill.''
CNN: 61 percent oppose, 39 percent approve.
These are not just marginal differences. Overwhelmingly, just about every Democrat, two-thirds to three-quarters of Independents, and a large chunk of Republicans hate this bill. That is what the data shows. That is what the data shows.
The Republican problem is not difficult to understand. Why Leader Thune, Speaker Johnson, the White House, and the Republican Senators are squirming and on their back foot is not difficult to understand. These numbers say it all. What they did is despised. The No. 1 achievement that they are going home and they think they can brag about, people hate. That is why they are not having townhall meetings. That is why when Republican Senators and Congressmen go to their townhall meetings, they get booed--not because people are mean but because people are struggling to deal with the consequences of the Big Beautiful Bill.
The American people know Donald Trump is dead wrong. That is why his numbers, his popularity, have declined significantly.
Republicans can't magic-talk their way out of this ``Big Ugly Bill'' because the real-life impacts back home are inescapable and are devastating.
Mr. President, now on avoiding a Republican shutdown, in less than a month, Republicans will face their greatest test under the Trump administration: whether or not they will work in a commonsense, bipartisan way to keep the government open and funded.
The only way--the only way--to avoid a shutdown is to work in a bipartisan way with a bill that can get both Democratic and Republican votes in the Senate.
As I have said for months, Democrats want to keep the government open in a bipartisan, commonsense way. That is why we supported bipartisan appropriations bills in July. But the ball now is in the Republicans' court--in Leader Thune's court, in Speaker Johnson's court.
Republicans cannot expect Democrats to go along with a partisan bill that they concoct without any input, without any changes that America wants and the Democrats are fighting for. Republicans cannot expect Democrats to go along with a partisan bill. We are not going to bail Republicans out of their own chaos, out of their own failed policies.
If Republicans choose a go-it-alone approach, if Republicans continue to pass legislation that raises costs and devastates the American people, if Republican Senators keep bowing down to Donald Trump even though they know what he is doing is unpopular and they know he is in a bubble, talking to rich people and nobody else, thinking he can bamboozle everybody else, they will be responsible if a shutdown happens.
As everyone knows, the clock is ticking. We have fewer than 13 legislative days to go. But so far, Republican leaders have been MIA. They just don't know what to do.
At the start of the August recess, Leader Jeffries and I wrote to the Republican leaders, saying: Let's have a sitdown. Let's talk about how to keep the government open.
We heard nothing--nothing.
Leader Jeffries and I last week reached out again--again--to sit down to talk, to plan a strategy for keeping the government open. Again, crickets--nothing. We heard nothing from them, and time is short.
So what are the Republicans going to do? I know they are struggling. I know they are divided in their caucuses, both in the House and the Senate. The House and Senate Republicans are divided, while we Democrats are unified. Leader Jeffries and I and our two caucuses are in lockstep that we want bipartisan negotiations and a bipartisan bill--a truly bipartisan bill.
So what are the Republicans going to do? Do they want to continue their ``our way or the highway'' approach? Are they going to continue to go at it alone? Are we going to continue to hear nothing from them? Are the Republicans going to keep giving the finger to everyone in Washington who wants to seek a commonsense, bipartisan governance and solution? I hope not because that is the path that leads to a shutdown--a Republican shutdown, a Trump shutdown.
Republicans can't just say they want to avoid a shutdown; they have to prove it. They need to sit down with us and work with us on something Democrats can support. And actions speak a lot louder than words. We need to see some action from Republican leaders showing they are serious about preventing a shutdown at the end of the month.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, for 9 long months, the Senate Democrats have waged an unprecedented effort to slow down the Senate and to delay the President from getting his team on the field. It has been an unprecedented blockade.
President Trump was elected to get America back on track, and that means getting the team on the job. So what did Chuck Schumer, who just spoke here on the Senate floor, have to say? Well, he put out a press release in August, and he said that ``historically bad nominees''--his words--``deserve a historic level of scrutiny.'' You see, he has treated every nominee from President Trump as controversial, and he has treated every nominee as an existential threat to our Nation.
If Senator Schumer and Senate Democrats have specific concerns with specific nominees, they should come down to the Senate floor and discuss them and share their concerns with the American people. That is not what is happening.
Here are the facts: Senate Republicans have confirmed now 109 sub- Cabinet nominees. Now, that is in addition to the Cabinet that we have confirmed and the judges that we have confirmed. Every single one of those 109 sub-Cabinet nominees has been filibustered by the Democrats. Yet only seven of them received more than 10 minutes of debate on the Senate floor.
Now, you know, Mr. President, when they filibuster, that consumes 2 hours on the Senate floor to debate the nominees. They have chosen to waste the time but not to discuss the credibility of any of these nominees or their qualities for service, what we will get. In fact, of the Democrats who filibustered all 109 sub-Cabinet nominees, the average Democrat debate was 2 minutes. Eighty-seven had zero Democrat debate, and only 7 went on for more than 10 minutes. In other words, Senate Democrats declined to come to the floor to discuss 75 percent of these sub-Cabinet nominees that ultimately were all confirmed by the U.S. Senate. This is in spite of the fact that each one of them required the 2 full hours of debate.
On average--we have done all the math; we watched all the speeches--2 minutes 12 seconds, by the Democrats, were consumed discussing each nominee, on average; 218 hours of debate time spent on the Senate floor, ignored by the Democrats, wasted time. We couldn't do legislation. We couldn't do other things because of this historic obstruction by the Democrats of what the American people voted for.
For all the bluster and all the so-called historic scrutiny, the Democrats and Chuck Schumer, when it came to nominees, have been missing in action. These guys actually spent more time on the Senate floor debating and discussing wasteful Washington spending--such as using taxpayer dollars for electric vehicles in Africa--than they did on all 109 sub-Cabinet nominees combined. The Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer froze the Senate floor
It is time for the Senate to return to normalcy, to regular order, and that is because there are still 145 nominees on the Executive Calendar that we have right here on our desk waiting to be confirmed. These are people who have gone through the hearing process, have been voted out of committees, and are stuck here in the Senate limbo of waiting to see what is going to happen with their confirmation. They are waiting to help in the fight to get America back on track and to do the people's business, and the Democrats are obstructing every step along the way.
It seems like the Democrats just want to sabotage our effort to get America back on track. Otherwise, why are they standing in the way of the progress of our Nation? We know these nominees are all qualified-- the 145 I have just referred to--because committees have actually reported them out to the Senate. They have had background checks from the FBI; their ethics reports have all been confirmed; and they have actually been approved by the Senate committees, the committees whose job it is to scrutinize. That is why half of the 145 that we are still waiting to come to the Senate floor, they have earned bipartisan support coming out of committees. They are ready to go, ready to get put to work.
So the minority leader needs to stop pretending that he is leading some kind of grand investigation because he is not. It is time for him to admit that this has nothing to do with the qualifications of the nominees. His objections have everything to do with his obsession with President Trump. That is what we are dealing with here.
Many of these bipartisan nominees have been waiting for months to get put to work. They have been nominated. They have put their lives on hold. They are ready to go. Yet the Democrats, through their sabotaging, have slowed the process to a crawl, and there is absolutely no reason for this.
Look, this latest Schumer shutdown of this confirmation process, it really does leave critical jobs unfilled; it does weaken our economy; it does undermine our international diplomacy; and it jeopardizes our safety.
The Senate, in the past, didn't operate this way, and we need to change things to get America back on track and get the Senate back on track. You know, 98 percent of George W. Bush's--President Bush's-- nominees and Bill Clinton's nominees, they were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent. They had gone through the committee process; they were sent to the Senate and then worked through the process pretty quickly.
During President Trump's second term, the number that went by voice vote or unanimous consent--here we are, 9 months in--zero. Absolutely zero. Why? Because of what the Democrats are doing in an unprecedented way. They seem to be obstructing for obstruction's sake.
Today, 45 of the 145 nominees stuck on the calendar are, interestingly, for positions that never before in the history of the Senate have actually had to come up for a rollcall vote. They always went by voice vote or unanimous consent. So I would ask the Senate minority leader, if he were on the floor, to tell me why the Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the Small Business Administration--I mean, that is the position--why that needed to be filibustered. Why did he and the Democrats filibuster the Chief Counsel for Advocacy for the Small Business Administration? What was so critical about that position or so wrong with the nominee that the Democrats would decide it was worthy of spending 2 hours of Senate floor business to filibuster this nominee who got confirmed anyway and in the past has never had a vote on that? It has always gone by unanimous consent or by voice vote. Confirming positions like this used to only take seconds. Now it can take days, and it is because of the obstruction by the Democrats.
The Senate has a role of advice and consent. That is why we have the committee process. That is why we go through it. But what we are dealing with is stalling and delaying. There are still more than 800 positions that still need to come through the Senate. Some have not been named yet; the President has not made nominations because the President has over 1,100 nominations to make to fill out the government and the people that do the job of the people. But without a change to try to get through that next 800, that would take years, over 1,000 hours on the Senate floor. And that is if the Senate did nothing else because every time they filibuster one, those are 2 wasted hours, and they end up spending 2 minutes of debate in total. And 81 percent of them nominated who got approved, the Democrats spent zero time on the floor even talking about.
Look, under this Schumer confirmation shutdown, it is impossible for the U.S. Senate to pass legislation--we can't do it; the floor is iced--legislation such as the National Defense Authorization Act that we are getting to today, we are considering it this week; funding bills that we need to do the appropriations bills that Schumer never even brought to the floor when he was the leader. We want to get those passed, doing the people's business.
The Senate and our Nation cannot continue to be run this way and controlled this way and function this way. If Democrats won't stop abusing the rules of the Senate, Republicans are prepared to change the rules. Later today, Senate Republicans are going to discuss how to update these rules to restore the Senate's longtime practice, a practice of confirming nominees in a reasonable fashion. Now, we are not talking about Cabinet Secretaries or Supreme Court Justices. We are talking about restoring the norms of the Senate for the hundreds of routine, qualified nominees who come through the committee process, go through the scrutiny, and then come to the Senate floor to be put to work.
I would say, enough with the Democrat obstruction, enough with this phony scrutiny, and enough with another Schumer shutdown. The American people elected President Trump and they elected Republicans to get America back on track, and that is what we continue and will continue to do.
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, people voted for Donald Trump for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason was that they thought he would bring down the price of goods, groceries, food, housing, gas. Whatever his other faults, he was good for your money, people thought.
But it has been almost 8 months now, and the persistent economic uncertainty and pessimism are no longer a temporary blip. It is now abundantly clear: Trump is not making anything cheaper; in fact, he is purposefully making everything more expensive--healthcare, groceries, toys, cars, housing, electricity, computers, clothes, booze, video games.
Whether you are shopping at your local grocery store or Walmart, prices are continuing to go up, and that reality is catching up with the President. He is underwater with the public on his handling of the economy with a 57-percent disapproval rating, according to the latest polling.
Now, Democrats learned this lesson over the last few years. Saying the economy is great or not as bad as it could have been while people struggle to afford basic necessities is not a winning strategy. So Trump is ruining the economy on purpose, but are people better off in other ways? Is the country better off in other ways?
The answer is no.
A month ago, Trump federalized the local police department in Washington, DC, and deployed thousands of National Guardsmen and Federal agents because of a so-called ``crime emergency.''
What does that look like? It looks like masked men with no identification walking up to people on the street, arresting them, and disappearing them into unmarked vehicles. Up until a few months ago, that would have sounded like a chilling scene possible only in a
Now, whether you supported or hated the previous administration's immigration policies is not the point anymore. What possible justification is there for masked men showing up and abducting people without a trace?
Anyone who has encountered law enforcement in DC or Arkansas or Honolulu knows that officers are typically trained to identify themselves by face and badge as a standard practice.
So why should Federal agents be any different? Worse, the fact that you now only need a black T-shirt and a face mask to look like an ICE agent means that there are a bunch of vigilantes running around impersonating law enforcement and terrorizing communities.
This is exactly the kind of tyranny and government overreach that the people on the right worried about for many, many years, except they thought it would happen under a Democratic administration. They worried about socialism. They worried about the government impeding free markets. They worried about power concentrating in the executive branch.
All of that is happening now under Donald Trump.
We have the U.S. Government taking a 10-percent stake in a private company, picking winners and losers in one of the most important industries for America's future. We have the leader of the free world forming a secret police of sorts to kidnap people and send them to foreign gulags. We have the President of the United States making $5 billion in one day by launching a new crypto product on the side. We have an entire administration more focused on tormenting private institutions into submission--universities, law firms, media companies--than delivering public services and making people's lives better.
Here is the thing. All of this is part of the same project. There is this tendency, particularly among liberal pundits, to wave off parts of Trump's agenda as distractions. He may be decimating American foreign assistance and starving kids around the world, but that is a distraction. He may be sending armed troops and masked men into American cities without justification, but we are supposed to treat that as another distraction, but we don't need to outsmart ourselves here.
We can acknowledge that two things are true at once: Donald Trump is trashing the economy and creating shortages of everything--shortages of everything--electricity, food, workers, healthcare.
He is singlehandedly ruining people's personal finances and the American economy on purpose because he believes in shortages. He wants there to be not enough workers, not enough healthcare, not enough electrons, not enough food. He believes in shortages. This is his economic philosophy. And his illegal actions and brazen takeovers of the media and the private sector institutions and American cities are the stuff of authoritarians throughout history and across the planet.
These things are not intention. They work together. They are the same thing. They are the same project.
So the question for us, and especially my Republican colleagues, is: When is it going to be too much?
We have blown past redline after redline these past 8 months. And it begs the question: Is there any line that we won't cross? Because if not, we all know how this ends.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Ms. Collins pertaining to the introduction of S. 2699 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, today, I want to address a serious matter of public safety facing our country. Although our government has many responsibilities, the foremost responsibility of any government is the protection and safety of its citizens. By many measures, as elected leaders, we are falling short.
Recent polling indicates that crime in large cities is a major concern of 81 percent of Americans. We can debate crime trends and statistics until we are blue in the face. But at the end of the day, if 81 percent of Americans don't feel safe, we are not doing our job.
For hundreds of years, we have known that swift and certain punishment for criminal acts is a basis of deterrence and order. And in a country such as ours based on the rule of law, this kind of deterrence requires officials to prosecute criminals.
Communities around our country are in desperate need of U.S. attorneys to protect the public and uphold the rule of law. We have 10 highly qualified nominees on the Senate floor right now waiting for confirmation. There is no reason that we shouldn't get them to work for the American people today.
Unfortunately, my Democratic colleagues have engaged in blanket obstruction of all nominees in their misguided attempt to derail the Trump administration. This sweeping obstruction shockingly includes even highly qualified U.S. attorneys that are supported by Democratic Senators.
The actions of Senate Democrats are putting the public in harm's way. There is simply no other way to say it.
On May 22, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee announced a hold on nominations for U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of Florida. Since then, the Senate minority leader and Senate Democrats have expanded the hold to apply to all 93 U.S. attorneys. This blockade of public officials is unprecedented and untenable.
As the ranking member explained just last Congress, obstructing the confirmation of U.S. attorneys is ``dangerous'' and ``undermines public safety across the entire Nation.'' He correctly noted:
I completely agree with these points made by my friend Senator Durbin.
My Democratic colleagues claim that their obstruction is justified because at the end of the Biden administration, a freshman Senator at that time placed a hold on a handful of U.S. attorneys.
Although only five U.S. attorneys were ultimately blocked by that hold, I even opposed the decision by my freshman colleague. That limited hold was wrong then, and this blanket hold is even more wrong at this point. Five U.S. attorneys held by a freshman Senator at the end of an administration is a far cry from the current widespread obstruction. The strategy today is orchestrated by Senate Democrat leadership and is occurring at the beginning of an administration and impacts all 93 U.S. attorneys.
Last Congress, the Democratic whip said that requiring a rollcall vote for all U.S. Senators is ``unsustainable'' because ``without Senate-confirmed leadership of U.S. Attorneys, public safety will suffer across the United States.'' He was entirely correct. Confirming each U.S. attorney by a rollcall would consume more than 230 hours of valuable floor time in the Senate.
So what has changed now? Why are the same Democrats who decried the obstruction--pardon me. So what has changed? Why are the same Democrats who decried the obstruction of U.S. attorneys last year engaging in that very same conduct today? The answer is that they don't like the President of the United States. I understand disagreement with the President. People know that I have had my disagreements with President Trump. I certainly had no shortage of objections also to the conduct of President Biden. But elections have consequences and the President's ability to select these U.S. attorneys is a direct reflection of the electoral mandate of November 2024, a mandate that no Republican
For months, I repeatedly tried to engage my Democratic colleagues to end this obstruction. If some kind of equal measure is necessary, I even offered a compromise where we hold five rollcall votes to compensate for the five nominees returned to the President at the end of the Biden administration. To my disappointment, my Democratic colleagues haven't taken me up on that offer; although, I have had some very satisfying discussions with them in the late hours. I hope that we get a relenting of that. And whatever it takes, I am going to participate in that process. I think that I am finding the same sort of participation on the other side.
But in the meantime, I remind my Democratic colleagues of the ranking member's own warning last Congress when he admonished the Senate needs to ``put public safety and the needs of law enforcement ahead of politics.''
Currently, there are 10 U.S. attorney nominees that have been reported favorably out of the committee by a voice vote. These are not controversial nominees. Three of them carry blue slips returned by Democratic Senators. Several of them are in districts where recent tragic crimes have taken place.
Instead of languishing on the Senate floor as pawns of partisan obstruction, these nominees should be in their districts investigating crimes, prosecuting criminals, and keeping the American people safe.
Take the nomination of Daniel Rosen to the District of Minnesota as one example. Mr. Rosen was reported out of committee by voice vote. He has the support of his home State Senators Klobuchar and Smith, both Democrats. He is a qualified nominee.
Just last week in Minnesota, a shooter entered a service at Annunciation Catholic Church, murdering 2 little children and injuring 18 others. This horrific crime shocked our Nation, and the full force of our government should be mobilized in response. But what are Democrats doing instead? They are blocking the confirmation of Mr. Rosen to be the chief Federal law enforcement officer in Minnesota--not because of any objection to his qualifications but as an act of partisanship.
Enough is enough. My priority is the safety of the American people, and that priority should be shared by all Members of this body. I know that even Democrats--I shouldn't say ``even Democrats.'' I know Democrats also want that same public safety. But this business of not having U.S. attorneys is standing in the way.
I will now ask unanimous consent to confirm the 10 U.S. attorneys who have been reported out of committee. I hope that my Democrat colleagues will relent from their partisan obstruction and allow these nominees to get to work. Debate and disagreement about policies are to be expected, but it should never come at the expense of public safety.
So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: David Waterman of Iowa, No. 176; No. 183, Ron Parsons, South Dakota; No. 257, David Metcalf, Pennsylvania; No. 258, Bart Davis, Idaho; No. 316, Kurt Alme, Montana; No. 317, Nicholas Chase, North Dakota; No. 318, Lesley Murphy, Nebraska; No. 319, Daniel Rosen, Minnesota; No. 320, Erik Siebert, Virginia; and No. 321, Kurt Wall of Louisiana; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate, that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate resume legislative session.
Mr. President, I rise today to explain where we are but with a positive note in my message.
Let me start by saying my friendship and respect for the Senator from Iowa should be a matter of record, and I think we share the same feelings for one another. We have had the distinction and honor of serving together for many years, and there are reform packages that have passed with our joint effort that I am very proud of as part of my legislative career.
This particular issue sounds like a boring housekeeping issue, but it is much more than that.
Every President has the right to nominate people to serve as U.S. attorneys across the United States. These U.S. attorneys represent that President's Department of Justice and make critical prosecutorial decisions to keep their people safe and to execute the laws of the land.
There are some 90 different U.S. attorneys. To say that it has become routine in the past is an understatement.
Under President Trump's first term in office, those 4 years, the Senate confirmed U.S. attorneys for President Trump in his first term-- all 85 by voice vote, unanimous consent--all 85 U.S. attorneys.
Then things changed. President Trump stepped aside and was defeated in the election and replaced by President Joseph Biden. Early in the Biden administration, several Republican Senators began an unprecedented campaign of obstruction.
In April 2021, the junior Senator from Arkansas announced that he would block nominees from any State represented by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. I was chairman of the committee at the time, and it meant that some dozen Democrats could not have U.S. attorneys approved on the floor of the Senate because one Republican junior Senator said: I will block them all. I will block them all, he said.
That Senator finally lifted his hold in December of 2021, but in February of 2022, he again blocked all U.S. attorney nominees for months. Talk about obstruction--we were living with it.
In June of 2023, the junior Senator from the State of Ohio, a Republican, announced that he would place a blanket hold on ``all Department of Justice nominees,'' including U.S. attorneys, to ``grind [the Justice Department] to a halt''--he said that, ``grind the [Justice Department] to a halt''--under President Biden.
On eight separate occasions, I came to the floor in 2023 and 2024 asking for consent to confirm the pending nominees for U.S. attorney. Each time, my efforts were blocked by that junior Senator from Ohio and several Senators who are on the floor today. They stopped me. It was obstruction in the classic sense.
Due to this Republican obstruction, President Biden was only able to fill 68 of the 93 U.S. attorney positions with Senate-confirmed nominees. So that junior Senator from Ohio stopped the process--stopped the process.
I appreciate that Senator Grassley said today and said at the time that he did not agree with the strategy and that he would not try to defend it today, and he didn't, but we can't have one set of rules when we have a Republican President and another set of rules when there is a Democrat President.
We also now face the Trump administration making an end run around the Senate's advice and consent duty. In several blue States, the Trump administration has taken on an illegal and unprecedented approach to filling U.S. attorney vacancies with extreme and unqualified nominees while making no attempt to consult with Democratic Senators.
I said earlier in a Judiciary Committee meeting that although I disagreed with President Trump in his first term and second term, I was able to work with the White House and filled every vacancy in Illinois. We compromised. I accepted some nominees that would not have been my choice; they accepted some nominees from me that wouldn't have been their choice. It was the nature of political compromise, and it worked.
Any path forward cannot result in Republican Senators having their U.S. attorneys nominated and confirmed and Democratic Senators having outrageous picks installed in their States in legally dubious ways.
I look forward to working with the Senator from Iowa, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a fair and bipartisan solution to a problem that was created by both parties but most recently by the Senate Republicans and has been made worse by the Trump administration.
I want to close in saying, before I object, I am not giving up the conversation--meaningful conversation--that is underway. I am hopeful we can find a bipartisan approach that serves the
I would agree with continuing to work to see if we can find a solution on this. Public safety is such an important issue. U.S. attorneys are central to such public safety, and we should get them approved. I hope we can get something worked out.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 4 p.m. today.
There being no objection, the Senate, at 12:16 p.m., recessed until 4 p.m. and reassembled when called to order by the Presiding Officer (Mr. Schmitt).
Mr. President, over the August recess, I traveled across Illinois and found out what folks were thinking. There was one answer I heard more than any other; it was a concern about the healthcare cuts contained in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. You remember that was the Trump budget that passed the Senate here with a party-line vote.
Their concerns, I think, are justified. This bill will cut Medicaid by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. It will cause up to 17 million people to lose their healthcare.
I just learned this afternoon that premiums paid for dental insurance are likely to go up as much as 90 percent because of the big beautiful Trump budget bill--90 percent. It is likely that 4 million Americans will lose dental insurance on top of the health insurance losses I just mentioned.
This means millions of Americans will no longer be able to afford prescriptions, hospital visits, surgeries. It is going to take its toll on America's population, and it won't just be the uninsured who are affected. I have heard from hospitals across my State that these healthcare cuts will force them to close.
Republicans tried to use the August recess to convince Americans that these cuts are worth it because they will see big tax breaks and economic growth, but they are wrong. Working families making less than $35,000 a year will see a tax break of $150 a year--$3 a week. Most of the tax breaks will go to billionaires making much more money, like Elon Musk who could see tax breaks of more than $300,000--$6,000 in tax cuts a week. And $3 a week for working families at the low end; $6,000 a week for the richest people in Illinois and the Nation.
Republicans claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. And over the next decade, this big beautiful Trump budget law will add a whopping $3.4 trillion to the national debt. This President is going to take the prize again. In his first term in office, in 4 years, he added more debt to the U.S. Treasury than any President in history. Now he is going to break his own record.
That means that while corporations and the ultrawealthy receive giveaways, working families will see higher inflation and prices due to this foolish trade war the President has initiated. Combined with healthcare cuts, working-class families are going to be the losers.
You know what I think? Instead of playing golf one day, the President should spend a day with real families in America. Most families now are preparing for the school year to start. Last month, students across Illinois returned to the classroom for the start of the school year. New school year comes with a new list of school supplies--backpacks, binders, notebooks, pens, pencils, tech, and more. For working families, especially those with several children, and for the teachers who go above and beyond by dipping into their own pockets to help the kids, that tab can add up quickly.
But thanks to Donald Trump's numerous trade wars, families and teachers are actually feeling the squeeze in households across America. That is because prices on school supplies have risen under Donald Trump by more than 12 percent, $73 million compared to last year.
Donald Trump campaigned on lowering costs on day one. Remember when he said that over and over again? And he promised his tariffs would somehow liberate American taxpayers. In reality, his misguided tariff wars left fear, uncertainty, and higher prices for American consumers.
You wonder how he comes up with these numbers for tariffs. It sounds like it is a free association every morning: Should it be 25? Maybe 50. Let's try 40. No, let's do 35.
This uncertainty is leading to chaos across the world. It is not just school supplies; costs are up across the board on nearly all everyday products. I will show you. I go to my local supermarket in Springfield to make sure that I am in touch with what real prices are for at least a number of food items. Fresh vegetables are up more than 16 percent since June. Coffee is up nearly 30 percent. A carton of eggs is more expensive than it was last year. That is not all. The cost to repair your car, heat or cool your home, pay for formula, diapers, clothes for your kids--all up thanks to this President's policies.
American businesses Trump claims to be helping cannot plan because of the chaotic tariffs and their jarring impact on supply chains.
President Trump's reckless tariffs--the highest rates in nearly a century--are projected to cost American families thousands of dollars. These tariffs are sales taxes that consumers across America have to pay. That is not liberation; that is a tax increase on every American family, and that is the President's plan.
But the impact of these tariffs stretches beyond prices. It is also hitting American manufacturing. The uncertainty of Trump's tariffs has frozen the job market, driving investment away from U.S. factories and workers. Under this administration, the United States is set to lose another $500 billion by 2029 in manufacturing investment. Remember, these tariffs were supposed to create new manufacturing. We are still waiting. That hurts longtime manufacturing powerhouses like the cities of Peoria, Decatur, and Rockford that I represent. They rely on good- paying manufacturing jobs to foster local business groups, support families, and drive innovation.
Now, some targeted tariffs in areas where there is unfair foreign competition can be warranted, but that is not what is happening. What we have is chaos. Everyone knows the sloppy approach by this administration is bad for the American people and yet another example of Executive overreach by the President, which is why the courts have ruled these tariffs are illegal. But instead of respecting the courts, President Trump has doubled down.
On a Truth Social post, he said:
That quote is from the President. The problem is, these tariffs, as we have shown, are already destroying the economy.
On the issue of military readiness and foreign policy, imagine what happened this week. The leaders of China, Russia, India, and North Korea all decided to have a summit meeting in China to announce some new arrangement where they were going to work together. Donald Trump has brought our adversaries together in a way I never dreamed was possible.
Trump's tariffs are reshaping the global order in a dangerous and unprecedented way. Just last week, Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi of China--our biggest adversaries--were seen smiling with Prime Minister Modi during this trilateral meeting. President Trump's tariff policies pushed India away from us and toward our rivals. Tariffs were ``supposed'' to strengthen our hand; instead, they are weakening our position around the globe. These tariffs mean higher prices, less opportunity, and a weaker standing abroad.
It is time to put American families and workers first and reverse course on this failed policy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, over the last few weeks, I have spoken with countless Tennesseans who are really appreciating the One Big Beautiful Bill because they are learning of the impact that it is going to have on their families, on their businesses, and on their pocketbooks. Tennesseans are telling me--once we talk about this bill, they are telling me how this law will help them make their business more successful, their community better, and will indeed end up leaving more cash in their pocketbook.
Thanks to the law, Tennessee families will save an average of $2,600 next year on taxes and see a take-home pay increase of as much as $10,000. This is going to give some much needed relief after 4 years of Bidenflation.
Over the August work period, it was absolutely wonderful. I met with restaurant businesses and servers, and they talked about the law's reduction on taxes on tips and overtime and how that is going to help them keep more money in their pocket.
Going from one side of the State to the other, I heard from seniors who are talking about how they are going to be able to lower their tax burden. That is because we have the $6,000 bonus deduction per senior, per year. When you are a couple, married filing jointly, that $12,000 bonus deduction for our Nation's seniors is basically going to remove the income tax from most of the Social Security payments for about 88 percent of our Nation's seniors.
Millions of hard-working families are planning for the future thanks to the law's enhanced child tax credit and expanded childcare access, and we have done this through the employer-provided childcare tax credit.
I appreciate my colleagues in Senate Finance working with me as we sought to get that into the legislation, as we sought to put in place the bonus deduction for seniors. These are things that are really going to serve so many Tennesseans so very well.
We had meetings with chambers and met with many in the business community. Hearing from so many of these small business owners, what they wanted to talk about was how, after the 2017 law was passed, they started hiring staff and growing that business. Now they are able to continue to keep this staff, to purchase new equipment, and to invest in their communities.
By making these tax cuts, the 2017 tax cuts, permanent, the estimate is that we will be protecting about 100,000 jobs in Tennessee. Much of this is because of the bonus depreciation, that 100 percent bonus depreciation deduction, immediate expensing of research and development, interest deduction, and 199A for passthroughs. These companies are looking at how they grow. They are looking forward to this growth.
I also had the opportunity, whether I was at the State fair or meeting with some members of the ag community or the Farm Bureau--we talked about the provision that we have in the law that raises the estate tax exemption to $15 million or $30 million for a couple. What this does is to allow these family farms, generational operations, to be passed on to the next generation so that that legacy of farming and hard work can continue.
We know that for small businesses and so many of our Nation's small business entrepreneurs, they have worked hard. They have built a business. They have built a manufacturing firm. And to know that they can pass it on to the next generation without fear of that generation having to sell the business in order to pay the tax.
This provision--raising that death tax or estate tax exemption--is going to prohibit double taxation. There are about 2 million family farms that this is going to affect, and we know they are appreciative of this.
For our military communities in Tennessee--and we have some wonderful military communities. We have Fort Campbell, which is primarily in Tennessee. We have Millington Air Naval Station. We have Arnold Engineering. We have the National Guard. We have such a strong presence in our State. This legislation, the Big Beautiful Bill, has $150 billion in a boost to our national defense funding. This is a way we can push forward with modernization and make certain that we remain the strongest lethal fighting force on the face of the Earth.
There is also funding for the Golden Dome missile defense system. This we are beginning to see a good bit of work in when you talk about the low Earth orbit satellites and beginning to build out this Golden Dome defense system to protect our country.
In addition to this, we have provisions in there for our military families to strengthen healthcare and childcare and improve housing and education for our servicemember families.
For 4 years under President Biden, Tennesseans suffered because of his anti-America energy policies. This sent the cost of electricity and gas soaring. So the Big Beautiful Bill ends these far-left mandates and regulations and provides made-in-America tax breaks to support energy production right here at home.
You know, Mr. President, when I talk to Tennesseans, they want us to be energy independent. They don't want us having to depend on other countries to be able to get oil and gas. They don't want us to have to import that. They want energy independence.
President Trump's pro-energy policy and this agenda is the reason why over this Labor Day weekend, our gas prices at the pump were at the lowest level that they have been in 5 years--the lowest level. This is something that people were noticing. They could feel that impact in their pocketbook.
The border and border security is vitally important to Tennesseans, and this legislation in the Big Beautiful Bill that is now a law has $75 billion in funding to hire additional ICE agents. And we have seen the results that have taken place--the Homeland Security being out there, working with law enforcement, conducting raids, apprehending these criminal illegal aliens.
People have wanted to see this done. You know, Mr. President, I have not talked to one single person who has said: I want MS-13, I want Tren de Aragua living in my neighborhood. We want them buying a house here. We want them setting up shop here. But what they do say is this: Thank goodness MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and these other violent gangs are being apprehended and they are being deported. That is what the Trump administration is doing, and it is exactly what the American people want to see done.
We also have provisions in the big beautiful law that will go back to building the wall and securing the southern border so we never have an open border like we had during the Biden years, where people are running across that border--as many as 160,000 a month. That is a population size larger than most cities in Tennessee.
There is also some money in this that is going to deal with transportation. Everybody knows that infrastructure is vitally important, and I want to touch on what is happening with aviation there. This is important to Tennessee.
The Nashville International Airport, in June, welcomed more than 2.4 million travelers. That was an alltime-high number. And that number, we know, is going to continue to grow. So the bill provides $12.5 billion to modernize our Nation's air traffic control system. That is going to help improve safety, speed, and efficiency. And we are appreciative that Secretary Duffy is putting his attention on how you modernize this system so it is more safe, secure, and efficient.
One of the provisions that I had the opportunity to work on was the Rural Health Transformation Program. In Tennessee, we have 95 counties; 78 of those 95 counties are deemed rural. And this Rural Health Transformation fund is a $50 billion fund. It is there to strengthen access to healthcare in rural areas.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Dr. Oz, who is our leader at CMS, has launched a web page for this program. It is going to reward innovation. Part of the money is going to be a payment to these hospitals, the other part--that $25 billion--is going to be, How do you innovate? Here is the money to innovate. How do you increase access?
And our rural hospitals and health clinics who are working on this issue can go to CMS.gov, and they can pull down the information for how to apply
We are looking forward to good results coming from that because smart, good people who are focused on delivering healthcare are going to have the opportunity to apply for these grants and to focus on how they make healthcare more accessible in these rural areas.
As you can see, there is so much in here that is a positive that will improve the lives of so many Tennesseans. And as I said, they are beginning to see it in their pocketbooks. They are seeing it at the gas pump. They know that their taxes--we have made those tax breaks permanent. And they know this is going to benefit their communities because you will see businesses grow, and you will see businesses hiring new workers.
I think that as people have celebrated Labor Day, they know that this is the time where they have a President in the White House who is putting them first. He is putting them and their future and the future for their kids--he is putting that first, and he is pushing forward with making certain that America and all of our States, our communities are going to be safe, secure, and prosperous.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, this is a photograph of the alien from the movie ``Alien.''
This is what you could end up looking like if you eat some of the raw frozen shrimp being sent to the United States by other countries. Now, let me tell you what I am talking about.
In late August, the FDA found that raw frozen shrimp from Indonesia was being sold in Walmart--specifically, in Walmart stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia--was being sold under the Walmart label called the Great Value label. If you eat it, how could you end up looking like the alien in ``Alien''? Because the shrimp was radioactive. I kid you not. It had a radioactive isotope in it called cesium-137. It will kill you. Even if it doesn't turn you into the alien if you eat this stuff, I guarantee you will grow an extra ear.
That was bad enough. Obviously, the FDA issued a recall. A few days later, it happened again. The FDA and NOAA, which I will talk about in a second, found that there were 26,460 packages of shrimp cocktail and 18,000 bags of frozen cooked shrimp being sold, once again, at Walmart and at Krogers throughout the United States containing the same radioactive isotope.
How could this happen in America? This is unconscionable. I will tell you how, because that shrimp, that shrimp from other countries, which don't abide by the same rules that we abide by in America, which, if you eat it, may turn you into an alien or, at a minimum, will cause you to grow an extra ear, is not being inspected. It is supposed to be. It is supposed to be inspected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association--we call it NOAA--as part of the Department of Commerce.
And, yes, they are inspecting some of it, about 1 percent; on a good day, 2 percent. The United Kingdom inspects 50 percent of the farmed seafood coming into its nation. Even China does a better job than the United States of America. This is unconscionable. There is no excuse for it. There is no excuse for it.
This shrimp--and I am not just picking on Indonesia; it is other countries. This shrimp is grown in conditions that you can't possibly imagine: dirty water. They shoot the shrimp full of antibiotics.
I confess, I didn't know they were shooting them full of this radioactive isotope. But the normal antibiotics that they put in these foreign shrimp are bad enough that if you eat enough of the foreign shrimp, you become resistant to certain bacteria here in America because the antibiotics don't work on it anymore because you have eaten so many shrimp that contains the antibiotics. This is unconscionable, and it should not be happening in the United States of America.
Now, I am biased. I believe in homegrown Louisiana shrimp, fresh out of the gulf, not radioactive. But I understand that some stores prefer to buy foreign shrimp because it is cheaper. Now we know why: The damn stuff is radioactive.
NOAA needs to do a better job of inspecting the shrimp that is sold from other countries that don't abide by the same standards we do to the consumers of the United States of America.
This second topic, Mr. President, I want to touch on real briefly.
We haven't heard much about Iran lately. Iran has been busy, though. Just recently, Australia expelled Iran's Ambassador, and they designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is part of Iran, as a terrorist organization. Why is that? Because people connected with Iran firebombed a Melbourne synagogue, and then, a few months later, they struck a kosher deli in Sydney, Australia. Iran is still there, and it is still spreading terrorism.
Iran has also been in the news just recently. The United Kingdom and France and Germany have announced that they are going to trigger snapback sanctions on Iran. What do I mean by that? You will recall that, in 2015, President Obama made a deal with Iran. We called it the JCPOA. And the JCPOA just said to Iran: If you will stop moving toward a nuclear weapon, we--meaning the United States of America and the other countries that are part of the United Nations--will remove the sanctions that we had placed on Iran for trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
So Iran said: Pinky promise, we will stop building a nuclear weapon. You remove the sanctions.
President Obama agreed. He was naive. We removed the sanctions. The United Nations removed the sanctions. The United Kingdom, Germany, and France removed the sanctions. And, of course, the Ayatollah and Iran continued to develop a weapon.
Just because we have destroyed--``we'' meaning the United States of America--many of Iran's facilities to make that weapon does not mean that the issue has been resolved. Iran has refused to come to the table, even still, to negotiate a settlement, a new JCPOA. And as a result--and I am very proud of them--the United Kingdom and Germany and France have said: OK. We are going to reimplement those sanctions that we agreed to take off of Iran when they signed the first nuclear deal, which Iran welched on almost immediately. And, again, I want to thank our friends in Europe. They supposedly are going to reimplement those sanctions at the end of this month, and I hope they do.
Of course, my preference would be to have Iran come to the table again before then and sit down with the United States and other members of the United Nations and resolve this issue of them having a nuclear weapon, but I don't expect that to happen.
So I know I have said it, but I want to say it again. Thank you, United Kingdom and Germany and France, for doing this, but we need to talk about the rest of the story. The sanctions, which will be on Iranian banking, on Iranian shipping, oil, and arms are only part of the story. These are U.N. sanctions. But just because the sanctions have been brought back on Iran, that doesn't mean that they will be enforced.
Now, these are United Nations sanctions on shipping and banking and oil and arms, so normally there would be a United Nations committee to enforce the sanctions. I hope there is, but I doubt it because I think that Russia and China are going to block a United Nations committee to enforce the sanctions.
What is my point? My point is that just because Europe and, of course, the United States of America have agreed to reimpose those sanctions, we have still got to enforce them. We have still got to enforce them. And the United States needs to take the lead on doing
This is important. I don't want to see this get lost in our discussion about the importance of the Ukraine situation and other issues of national security. I don't want this to get lost. What you allow is what will continue. What you allow is what will continue. And unless you have an opium habit, you know that is just a principle we all have to learn the hard way.
So I am hoping that the President and our friends in Europe will take the lead and not only snap back these sanctions but then enforce them. And unfortunately--I wish we didn't have to do it because I feel for the Iranian people. I don't feel any sympathy for the Ayatollah. We are just going to have to choke him to death.
I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, all of us are back from being at home for the past 30 days. In my visit in Vermont, my time in Vermont visiting with Vermonters, one issue that came up over and over again is incredible concern about healthcare.
The cost of healthcare is beyond affordability, and this is really an existential moment for our healthcare system.
Let me just talk about that in general but also with respect to the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Under that legislation, 45,000 Vermonters are going to lose healthcare, literally lose it altogether. More than 26,000 Vermonters will lose access to premium subsidies which make the Affordable Care Act plans more affordable.
Just let me give an example that I found shocking. A family of four in Vermont who makes $82,000 a year--right now, their premium is about $7,000 under the Affordable Care Act. That premium will increase by $23,600.
So the premium will then be $30,648. They have done nothing. They have done nothing, and they have no control over what the healthcare expense will be. But their premium, when they wake up on January 1, is going to go up $23,600, and that is on income of $82,000. And, by the way, Vermont does not have high income.
And in that respect, I know you are concerned about your folks in West Virginia.
That is not affordable. It just isn't affordable, and the citizens have no control over what those costs are. They just have to pay the bill.
The other thing that is happening is that our rural hospitals, they are going to lose $1.7 billion because of lost revenue. All those folks that lose Medicaid coverage are going to show up and get care. And our community hospitals, they will provide care for folks who are sick. But if they don't get paid, they can only do that so long before they go out of business.
And our rural hospitals are like the rural hospitals in West Virginia. They are like the rural hospitals all around the country. They are operating on a very thin financial margin. They are in great jeopardy. So we are going to have rural hospitals that close.
The other issue, we are all concerned about substance use disorder. Because of the cuts in Medicaid, about 8,000 Vermonters are at risk of losing access to the treatment that has been very effective. For the first time in years, the numbers of deaths has been going down, not up. And much of that is attributable to the fact that services were available to people who wanted them, needed them, and took advantage of them.
You know, this is not me talking. This is Vermonters talking. I had a healthcare listening session. And the thing that folks, just as I mentioned, were really concerned about, worried about, is healthcare. And it was everyday care, care for their kids, care and access to healthcare, including care for new mothers and women who are giving birth. And we are in the process of having one of our hospitals, for financial reasons, have to shut down, a much utilized and much revered birthing center.
So my view is we should repeal the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. It is not a working-families tax plan. I mean, unless you mean taxes are what we do when we increase the premiums that our families have to pay.
My view, we should absolutely be passing policies that help working families, and I have got bipartisan bills to do that. But we can't move forward without addressing these real threats to our healthcare system. And the repeal of healthcare provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill-- that is what we have to do.
My longtime preference is that we have a healthcare system that covers everybody--regardless of age, regardless of income. It is what every other nation does. What we have is a system that is kind of a single-payer system in a variety of ways you can have it. But what we have is a system where we try to control costs by literally taking healthcare insurance away from people, as if taking away their healthcare insurance means they won't get sick. They are going to get sick.
We have got to support Medicare and Medicaid. We need to extend the Affordable Care Act's premium tax credits so those Vermont families and families in every State across the country--red State, blue State-- don't get hammered with these multithousand-dollar premium increases.
I serve on the Finance Committee, and tomorrow I am grateful to Chairman Crapo for inviting Secretary Kennedy in to report on ``progress in the healthcare system.''
I don't have that view of his tenure. My view, Secretary Kennedy has undermined, severely, vaccine research and vaccine delivery. My view, his policies have undermined rural health. My view, Secretary Kennedy should resign.
We need a healthcare Secretary and a White House that is actually committed to practical ways to lower cost of healthcare, and we need leadership that cares about the very real and very painful structural issues that are making our healthcare system unaffordable and inefficient and out of reach for so many people. And that is true whether you are a lower income person who gets Medicaid benefits, you are a senior who gets your well-earned Medicare benefits, you are a private family trying to buy your own healthcare, or you are an employer where you really care about your workers--you want to provide employer-sponsored healthcare but you are getting hammered with these 10-, 15-, 25-percent premium increases.
Healthcare is an essential concern of every single American family, and the concern is that it costs too much, access is too difficult, and the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill have set us back. They have not moved us ahead.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, President Donald Trump's so-called Golden Dome for America is the latest reincarnation of President Ronald Reagan's ``Star Wars'' fantasy: thousands of space-based missile interceptors supposedly capable of stopping a missile strike from any adversary anywhere in the world.
President Trump suggests it could protect the United States from a nuclear attack. But in reality, the Golden Dome is fool's gold. It will make us poor, less secure, and more isolated. It is a gold-plated boondoggle that will enrich defense contractors and ignite a new nuclear arms race.
The Golden Dome is a trillion-dollar mistake in the making. It will be much more effective at wasting taxpayer dollars than wasting any missiles. It is a defense contractor's dream and a taxpayer's nightmare.
The potential costs are astronomical. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that even a limited system against just two-- two--incoming missiles, let's just say from the Soviet Union--would require 2,000 space-based interceptors and can cost as much as $542 billion. The American
As Senator Tim Sheehy from Montana said, the system ``will likely cost in the trillions, if and when, Golden Dome is completed.''
President Trump has pitched this Golden Dome as a $175 billion project and, so far, Congress has approved $25 billion as part of the reconciliation bill, plus billions more in the Defense authorization bill. And that is just a drop in the bucket. But by the way, the bucket has a hole in the bottom. So this money is just going in and going to waste.
They want to add trillions more to something that won't work; it will make us more vulnerable; the Soviets and the Chinese will be responding; and it is just going to cost more money with less protection for the security of the American people.
Even worse, experts say that Trump's Golden Dome would be ineffective and alarmingly easy to defeat. And these are three main reasons why it would be easy to defeat: First, space-based interceptors, like all satellites, would be sitting ducks for anti-satellite weapons. Russia and China already have anti-satellite weapons they could use to attack our space-based interceptors. And Russia is reportedly developing a nuclear weapon that could be deployed in orbit around the planet and detonated in space to destroy satellites.
We cannot count on space-based interceptors to protect us because in a crisis, one of the first things Moscow and Beijing would do is to destroy them. And we just saw Putin and President Xi shaking hands this past week--just shaking hands.
Second, Moscow and Beijing have already started to develop new systems to get around U.S. defenses, including Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile and China's fractional orbit bombardment system. Whatever new space-based defense system we deploy, there is a cheaper way for our adversaries to get around it.
Third, Golden Dome would be no match for our adversaries who could overwhelm the system by simply building more and cheaper missiles.
If we build a system to stop 500 missiles, they will field 600 missiles. In fact, the Golden Dome would push Russia and China to do exactly that--expand their arsenals, reject arms control treaties, and plunge the world into a terrifying new nuclear arms race.
Instead of making America safer, we would be inviting a catastrophe, not just for the United States but for the entire world. That is particularly true given that the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control treaty, New START, will expire in just 6 months, leaving us with no limits on Washington and Moscow's nuclear arsenals for the first time in 50 years--no limits on either country. And China wants to move to catch up fast.
Who benefits? Not the American people, not our troops, not our allies. The real winners are defense contractors. SpaceX, for example, led by Elon Musk, is a frontrunner for Golden Dome contracts.
Meanwhile, even if the system could work in theory, we can't trust the Trump administration to build it. The Pentagon is gutting its independent testing office, the very entity that tells us whether these high-priced systems actually work. The office was targeted specifically to limit scrutiny over Golden Dome because, according to one official, the program has ``to be successful for Mr. Trump.'' So it is going to be in darkness. We won't actually know what is going on because they have to get it done for Mr. Trump.
But that just leads to problems because, ultimately, overconfidence breeds hubris and hubris breeds disaster. That is what they are setting up. That is not national security; that is corruption, pure and simple.
History should have taught us this lesson. We have seen this movie before. The original Reagan-era ``Star Wars'' program burned through $400 billion without producing an effective defense for our country. Forty years later, despite decades of research, technology still can't deliver on the fantasy of a perfect missile shield. Golden Dome is just ``Star Wars'' with a brandnew name but a much higher pricetag for the American taxpayer with the same limited security for our people.
What is worse, it violates decades of bipartisan policy. Since 1999, Congress has agreed that U.S. missile defenses should only be designed to stop limited threats, like those from North Korea, not the much larger nuclear arsenals of major powers like Russia and China.
Golden Dome blows up that carefully drawn line with no plan, no strategy, no regard for the consequences because we shouldn't be kidding ourselves, Russia and China will move. It is only going to make the world more dangerous because the system Donald Trump wants to build will not work.
Golden Dome is science fiction, not effective missile defense system. Systems like Israel's Iron Dome have proven useful against short-range conventional rockets. But deploying weapons in space to counter hundreds of strategic nuclear missiles is not only impractical, it is dangerous.
Republicans already increased defense spending by $150 billion in Trump's Big Beautiful Bill. It is not beautiful, though, to trigger a nuclear arms race. It is not beautiful to have paranoia be built into the Russians and Chinese that have been building even more and more nuclear weapons themselves. That is not beautiful for the American people; that is bad for the American people.
GOP really stands for ``Grotesquely Overfunded Pentagon,'' without any effective weapons in their defenses ultimately emanating.
Instead of chasing an impossible dream that risks bankrupting us and destabilizing the world, we should be investing in what actually works: diplomacy, arms control, smart defense. Think of what we could do with $1 trillion instead of wasting it on Golden Dome: fund up to 2,500 new hospitals in the United States--at $60 million apiece, we could have 2,500 new hospitals; forgive the loans of nearly 4 million students-- average student debt is $37,850; cancel medical debt for 68 million Americans--$2,200 a person or at least 230 billion across 100 million Americans. We could get that done. We could help people pay their medical bills. We could build 650,000 affordable housing units in our Nation with that trillion dollars that we are going to waste in outer space. We could build 60,000 new wind turbines to have our electricity come from offshore wind, onshore wind to power our vehicles and the homes which we have in our country. We could provide 37.5 billion meals to school kids across our country. We could fund universal pre-K for the next decade. Congressional Research Service reports from 2021 said it would cost $109 billion over a decade to feed all the kids in America that need food.
We need to fund education, not annihilation; Medicaid not missiles.
It is time Republicans understand the reality that national security also means health, housing, and financial security. But no, the Republicans and Donald Trump want to spend more on a ``Star Wars'' missile defense and the nuclear arsenal, among many other things.
We have seen this Republican playbook before. They claim we must cut spending on education, on healthcare--like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act--on housing, on foreign aid, on climate solutions, but when it comes to defense contractors, they open the purse strings, pouring billions of dollars into the pockets of their well-connected friends.
It is just shameful that they want to cut Medicaid, Medicare, wind, solar, Pell grants for kids to go to school and then say unlimited funding for the Defense Department for a Golden Dome in outer space that is not going to work.
President Trump says his Golden Dome will ``complete the job'' Reagan started. Well, it is not going to complete the job; it is just going to start the same job all over again because it never worked for Ronald Reagan. What it will really do is bury arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia and the Soviet Union. It will balloon the deficit. It will boost the bottom line to billionaires and make our country less safe.
That is why I am offering my ``Golden Dome is Fool's Gold'' amendment to the Defense authorization bill to be considered out here on the Senate floor. No taxpayer dollars should be spent on space-based interceptors until
Before we waste a trillion dollars on an outdated idea that history tells us is a fool's errand, we owe it to the American taxpayers to have a plan, to know how much it will cost, and to ensure that it will work. How can anyone oppose this? Anyone who does is not serious about protecting our country. They are selling you fool's gold.
Sadly, we listened to another fool before. We paid $400 billion for Reagan's Star Wars fantasy and got nothing. Are we really going to buy into that same program again?
This is dangerous spending: nuclear weapons we don't need and missile defenses that don't defend but will provoke others into building more nukes and aiming them directly at us. Real security means investing in our hospitals, our pharmacies, our community health centers, our schools, our communities, our climate change response, to a real threat to America and a real threat to the planet--climate change. That is what we should be doing.
Real security means funding public schools, hot meals for students so they can learn and grow.
Real security means tackling the climate crisis head-on--building a clean energy future here at home and breaking the grip of the fossil fuel companies that they have over the Trump administration.
The doomsday that Americans fear in the 21st century isn't being vaporized by a nuclear bomb. It is the doomsday diagnosis of cancer, that is what people are afraid of at home as the Trump administration slashes NIH funding for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for diabetes. That is what people are afraid of. That is where the real security is that people want in their homes, where the cures for these diseases are being found--not an evisceration of mRNA research to find a cure for cancer and other diseases.
This medical debt that people are running up, the rent payment that people have to make, the loan payments, the grocery bills, electricity bills--that is what we should be focused on here. That is the real security that people are calling upon the Senate to provide for them.
So let's finally put people before the Pentagon, nurseries before nukes, buses before bombs. Let's not trade real security for a tarnished gold illusion. We must put a stop to this reckless plan before it launches America into the next unwinnable nuclear arms race.
When those Russian missiles are coming across the North Pole aimed at the United States, the least that we should be able to say is that we tried, we really tried to end the nuclear arms race.
That is not what the Golden Dome is going to accomplish. It is going to accomplish just the opposite. It is going to make that nuclear war more likely. It is going to make the Soviet Union and China more paranoid and bring us closer to that day when we see that catastrophic set of mushroom clouds exploding, not just in the United States but all across the planet.
This is the time, this is the place, we are the people here on the Senate floor who have to make the decision to kill this idea before it winds up killing millions of Americans and others around the world.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 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, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 497, the confirmation of Sean Cairncross to be National Cyber Director. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 498, the confirmation of Adam Telle to be Assistant Secretary of the Army. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 499, the confirmation of Marcus Molinaro to be Federal Transit Administrator. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
Mr. President, I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 450, Confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 182 Thomas Gaiser, of Ohio, to be an Assistant Attorney General.
I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 489, Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 151 Jason Reding Quinones, of Florida, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the term of four years.
I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 490, Confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 151 Jason Reding Quinones, of Florida, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the term of four years.
I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 491, Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 322 Jeanine Pirro, of New York, to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for the term of four years.
I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 492, Confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 322 Jeanine Pirro, of New York, to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for the term of four years.
I missed the following vote, but had I been present, I would have voted yes on rollcall vote No. 497, Confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 266 Sean Cairncross, of Minnesota, to be National Cyber Director.
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation with my colleague from Virginia Senator Kaine that would reauthorize the only federally funded programs specifically designed to develop a healthcare workforce focused on the care of older Americans. The Geriatrics Workforce Improvement Act would reauthorize two programs important to training specialists who care for our older adults: the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program and the Geriatrics Academic Career Awards Program.
The number of Americans age 65 and older is growing. In 2020, there were just three States in which senior citizens outnumbered children: Maine, Vermont, and Florida. Today, there are 11 States that have more seniors than children, and Maine has the oldest population in the Nation. The percentage of the U.S. population over age 65 rose by 3 percent, to 18 percent, in just 1 year.
The fact is, the United States is facing a shortage of geriatric health professionals and direct service workers to support our aging population. The American Geriatrics Society projects that we will be short some 1,700 geriatricians by the year 2036. Fewer than 7,000 of our Nation's nearly 1 million physicians are board-certified geriatricians. We need to train 1,600 geriatricians per year over the next 9 years to fill that gap.
Complicating this shortfall is the fact that as many as 90 percent of our older adults either have or will develop one or more chronic health conditions. So you put together many chronic conditions, an aging population, multiple medications, and changes that naturally occur in aging, and you have a situation making caring for older adults ever more complex and challenging. In any given year, it is expected that 30 percent of older adults will require specialized geriatric care.
Today, there are 42 Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Programs in 37 States. I am pleased that since the last
For Maine, with an aging population of more than a quarter of a million Mainers over the age of 65 and only 36 geriatricians, there is an acute need to train more geriatric health professionals and direct service providers quickly to meet this growing demand. Maine's program, known as AgingME, has brought much needed support to communities and families throughout the State. For example, AgingME has worked with other training and geriatrics-serving partners to develop a postgraduate credentialing program in geriatrics. Students who participate in the program complete more than 2,000 hours of training in medically underserved communities and rural areas of Maine.
AgingME has also worked to increase the number of community-based learning programs, such as falls prevention education programs in rural areas. It has also helped to connect family caregivers with resources for Alzheimer's and related dementias through its website and through partnerships with Maine's Area Agencies on Aging.
Nationally, the geriatric workforce program has produced significant outcomes. In 2022, the most recent reported year, Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Programs trained nearly 72,000 students, professionals, patients, caregivers, and faculty. These programs were also able to offer faculty development training programs and activities, provide outreach and education to families and caregivers on care delivery for older adults, and train patients in self-management of their conditions. More than 2.2 million individuals have been trained through these programs, of whom 57 percent were patients and their caregivers.
And all of us know the vitally important role that family caregivers play in taking care of their older relatives, often their parents. But we also know that they need help in doing so, including training. Approximately a third of the courses offered focused on Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Patients and caregivers also took courses on other topics related to the health needs of older adults, such as geriatric health, emergency response training, and community health.
Our legislation would also reauthorize the geriatrics career advancement award program. Established in 1998, this program was created to increase the number of faculty engaged in geriatric education.
Transitioning from clinical training and practice into an academic faculty role can be challenging. It requires gaining new skills as an educator, skills not typically taught in clinical training programs. Geriatrics Academic Career Awards support early career development for emerging leaders by providing funding that supports their efforts to develop skills as an educator in geriatrics.
The Geriatrics Workforce Improvement Act would reauthorize these two vitally important programs at a combined amount of $48.2 million per year over the next 5 years. It really is a modest investment that will help ensure that our older Americans have the expert care that they need, that their caregivers are provided with training, that other support employees and healthcare providers receive the skills that they need as well. Together, these programs will continue to train the current workforce and family caregivers while developing a cadre of emerging leaders in geriatric education in a variety of disciplines.
In doing both, we can help to ensure that our aging Americans will be cared for by a healthcare workforce specifically trained to meet their unique and often complex health needs for decades to come.
This will lead to improved care for older Americans while saving valuable resources and reducing unnecessary costs.
I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation to strengthen and extend these two important programs.
Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation with my colleague from Virginia Senator Kaine that would reauthorize the only federally funded programs specifically designed to develop a healthcare workforce focused on the care of older Americans. The Geriatrics Workforce Improvement Act would reauthorize two programs important to training specialists who care for our older adults: the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program and the Geriatrics Academic Career Awards Program.
The number of Americans age 65 and older is growing. In 2020, there were just three States in which senior citizens outnumbered children: Maine, Vermont, and Florida. Today, there are 11 States that have more seniors than children, and Maine has the oldest population in the Nation. The percentage of the U.S. population over age 65 rose by 3 percent, to 18 percent, in just 1 year.
The fact is, the United States is facing a shortage of geriatric health professionals and direct service workers to support our aging population. The American Geriatrics Society projects that we will be short some 1,700 geriatricians by the year 2036. Fewer than 7,000 of our Nation's nearly 1 million physicians are board-certified geriatricians. We need to train 1,600 geriatricians per year over the next 9 years to fill that gap.
Complicating this shortfall is the fact that as many as 90 percent of our older adults either have or will develop one or more chronic health conditions. So you put together many chronic conditions, an aging population, multiple medications, and changes that naturally occur in aging, and you have a situation making caring for older adults ever more complex and challenging. In any given year, it is expected that 30 percent of older adults will require specialized geriatric care.
Today, there are 42 Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Programs in 37 States. I am pleased that since the last
For Maine, with an aging population of more than a quarter of a million Mainers over the age of 65 and only 36 geriatricians, there is an acute need to train more geriatric health professionals and direct service providers quickly to meet this growing demand. Maine's program, known as AgingME, has brought much needed support to communities and families throughout the State. For example, AgingME has worked with other training and geriatrics-serving partners to develop a postgraduate credentialing program in geriatrics. Students who participate in the program complete more than 2,000 hours of training in medically underserved communities and rural areas of Maine.
AgingME has also worked to increase the number of community-based learning programs, such as falls prevention education programs in rural areas. It has also helped to connect family caregivers with resources for Alzheimer's and related dementias through its website and through partnerships with Maine's Area Agencies on Aging.
Nationally, the geriatric workforce program has produced significant outcomes. In 2022, the most recent reported year, Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Programs trained nearly 72,000 students, professionals, patients, caregivers, and faculty. These programs were also able to offer faculty development training programs and activities, provide outreach and education to families and caregivers on care delivery for older adults, and train patients in self-management of their conditions. More than 2.2 million individuals have been trained through these programs, of whom 57 percent were patients and their caregivers.
And all of us know the vitally important role that family caregivers play in taking care of their older relatives, often their parents. But we also know that they need help in doing so, including training. Approximately a third of the courses offered focused on Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Patients and caregivers also took courses on other topics related to the health needs of older adults, such as geriatric health, emergency response training, and community health.
Our legislation would also reauthorize the geriatrics career advancement award program. Established in 1998, this program was created to increase the number of faculty engaged in geriatric education.
Transitioning from clinical training and practice into an academic faculty role can be challenging. It requires gaining new skills as an educator, skills not typically taught in clinical training programs. Geriatrics Academic Career Awards support early career development for emerging leaders by providing funding that supports their efforts to develop skills as an educator in geriatrics.
The Geriatrics Workforce Improvement Act would reauthorize these two vitally important programs at a combined amount of $48.2 million per year over the next 5 years. It really is a modest investment that will help ensure that our older Americans have the expert care that they need, that their caregivers are provided with training, that other support employees and healthcare providers receive the skills that they need as well. Together, these programs will continue to train the current workforce and family caregivers while developing a cadre of emerging leaders in geriatric education in a variety of disciplines.
In doing both, we can help to ensure that our aging Americans will be cared for by a healthcare workforce specifically trained to meet their unique and often complex health needs for decades to come.
This will lead to improved care for older Americans while saving valuable resources and reducing unnecessary costs.
I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation to strengthen and extend these two important programs.
Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 3, 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, September 3, 2025, at 10 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, September 3, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 4; that following the prayer and the 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 notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 262, Maria Lanahan, and that at 11:30 a.m., the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Lanahan nomination, and following that cloture vote, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 292, Edward Artau, and if cloture is invoked on the nominations individually, all postcloture time be expired, and the 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 Monday, September 8, and if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; further, notwithstanding rule XXII, following the cloture vote on the Artau nomination, the Senate resume legislative session and resume consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 115, S. 2296, the National Defense Authorization Act, and all postcloture time be expired at 1:45 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
