A bill to designate the area between the intersections of 16th Street, Northwest and Fuller Street, Northwest and 16th Street, Northwest and Euclid Street, Northwest in Washington, District of Columbia, as "Oswaldo Paya Way".

Mr. President, millions of Americans are starting to get notices that their monthly health insurance premiums will be going up by $100 or much more because President Trump and congressional Republicans are letting critical health insurance tax credits expire.

Donald Trump likes to put his signature on things, and to be fair, he should be putting his name on each of these premium increases because-- there is no other way to describe it--this is a

Trump health tax on working families. It is part of the Trump plan.

Think about it. Trump demanded $4.5 trillion--and just to be clear, that is trillion with a ``t''--in tax giveaways in his deeply unpopular budget, but in all those tax cuts for billionaires, for gun manufacturers, for wealthy oil and gas companies, Trump and congressional Republicans couldn't find any room to extend the tax credits that help 22 million Americans keep their health insurance.

In fact, to add insult to injury, they also cut $990 billion from Medicaid for the 70 million Americans who rely on it. Let's take a second to put Trump and Republican priorities in perspective.

They passed a massive tax giveaway for approximately 902 billionaires. They slashed $990 billion from Medicaid, which covers 70 million Americans. And they decided to let health insurance help for 22 million working Americans just go away.

Trump and GOP leaders are so committed to blocking anything good for Americans' healthcare that they are shutting down the government to prevent us from fixing the problem. That is where we are today.

We all know that shutdowns are costly, wasteful, and needlessly disruptive. But not having health coverage because Republicans ended it, that is devastating.

I want to be very clear: This is about the healthcare of 22 million Americans, not undocumented immigrants, as some Republicans have misleadingly claimed. Those in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for these tax credits or for Medicaid or Medicare, for that matter.

This is about the healthcare of American families. There is a simple path forward: fund the government and help Americans keep their healthcare. While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that we can wait to address this issue, the American people can't wait.

Open enrollment for people who purchase health insurance for themselves or their families through the State marketplaces starts on November 1. That is less than a month away, and notices are already going out the door.

In Rhode Island, these notices start to go out on October 17. If the Republicans keep us from acting now, premiums will more than double--a 114-percent increase. The new premiums will be so high that many people will forgo coverage.

Indeed, it is likely that younger and healthier people will forgo coverage, leaving those under coverage with more complicated and more expensive healthcare needs, also driving up the costs of healthcare.

In Rhode Island alone, roughly 13,000 people will likely lose their healthcare coverage for next year because of these price increases. We need to act.

Last Friday, I met with small business owners in Warren, RI. They stressed the need for this tax credit. Even with this credit, it is difficult for them to afford health coverage and keep their businesses open.

One of these businesspeople made a profound point. I call it the Uriah Principle after the first name of its proponent. What is the Uriah Principle? Simply, the most serious side effect or one of the most serious side effects of the lack of healthcare insurance is poverty.

Yes. When you have no healthcare coverage and you get ill, you can't work. When you have no healthcare insurance you are in a very difficult position, and you are scrambling just to get by.

That is not conducive to the initiative it takes for small businesses to thrive in this country. And my colleagues are always proclaiming their devotion and dedication to small businesses everywhere. This is a blow to small businesses everywhere.

Now, it is unfortunate but Donald Trump and his handlers don't want to solve this problem, and congressional Republicans seem only to be interested in what Trump wants.

Since August, right after congressional Republicans rammed through their $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other healthcare programs, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have been asking to sit down and negotiate to resolve this problem. But at President Trump's direction, Republican leaders ignored the request.

Trump said:

Don't even bother dealing with [Democrats].

And Republican leaders have listened.

At one point, the President agreed to meet but reversed course, apparently, at the direction of Speaker Johnson, who has kept the House in recess for the last month.

Finally, the day before the shutdown--the day before the shutdown-- the President finally agreed to meet, not negotiate, just meet. Since then, nothing. Apparently, he has plenty of time to host the President of Argentina and has no problem sending him home with 20 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars, but he has no time to talk about helping the American people with their skyrocketing healthcare costs.

While President Trump is ignoring this issue, he is demanding a blank check so he can run the government exactly how he wants to. Unfortunately, GOP leaders are willing to hand it to him and not for the first time.

Late last year, shortly before President Trump took office, Democrats and Republicans reached a bipartisan agreement on a full-year funding bill for fiscal year 2025. It would have funded the government for the entire year, and it would have provided critical disaster relief, funding for national defense, childcare, the healthcare system, transportation infrastructure, and much more.

But Donald Trump insisted that Republicans walk away from the agreement until he came into office so he could call all the shots. They delivered, and he took advantage.

I didn't vote for the year-long CR that Trump eventually backed last March because even then, his excesses were already on full display. His wanton claims of Executive powers, his firing of thousands, cancellation of grants, misuse of law enforcement, politicalization of the military, and general lawlessness were apparent.

And true to his nature, under the fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution he signed into law in March, Trump has illegally-- illegally--delayed or withheld Federal funds for medical research, including for childhood cancer; for Head Start; for Job Corps; for disaster recovery and mitigation; for foreign assistance, including lifesaving therapeutic nutrition for starving children in the world; for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which provides food and shelter throughout the country under the auspices of Catholic Charities, the Jewish Federation, and the United Way.

He has used the so-called pocket rescission to illegally cancel $4.9 billion foreign aid, and he has even tried to close entire Departments and Agencies without congressional approval.

To have the President sign a bill into law and simply flout its requirements like this is irksome, to say the least, particularly for members of the Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle.

Indeed, as a member of the committee, I know how hard we work to prepare bipartisan bills every year. Some of my Republican colleagues have been privately outraged by the President's actions. A few of them have had the courage to speak up publicly. But President Trump's campaign of petty vindictiveness and hard partisan ideology continues.

Trump and his Budget Director Russ Vought say the shutdown will force them to fire Federal workers.

That is nonsense.

From day one, President Trump, Mr. Vought, along with Elon Musk and his minions, have tried to fire Federal workers by the thousands without cause and without thought. They have terminated experts in national security and intelligence, and in some cases, they have had to beg them to return to their jobs because they were, in fact, irreplaceable.

Just this past Friday, the administration fired hundreds of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But before the weekend was over, they were scrambling to reinstate an estimated 700 employees who work on critical issues like measles response and containing the spread of Ebola.

The administration has also fired many other Federal workers precisely because they have done their jobs with professionalism, honesty, and integrity, replacing them with loyalists with little background or expertise to

do the jobs they have been appointed to do.

Trump has allowed his political appointees to rifle through the personal data of nearly every American. I asked the FBI Director, after DOGE had gone through all this data, can he assure us that that data is not in the hands of anyone unauthorized to have it. He mumbled a response that was really nonresponsive.

If you stop and step back, DOGE has pilfered the data in every major Federal Agency, and no one can tell you where it is; who has it. That could be the greatest crime committed against the American people in the history of this country.

Trump's tariff taxes are driving up costs for food, electricity, clothing, and nearly every basic necessity for American families. Small businesses are facing these same cost increases too. As I said, when talking to small businesspeople in Warren, RI, they are looking at a very difficult challenge, and it is not being helped by Trump.

This list goes on and on as does the list of lawsuits against the administration. And for 9 months, congressional Republicans have had the chance to show some true independence--to say no to Trump on his price-rising tariffs, to say no to Trump's misuse of Federal funds, to stand up to the administration's abuse of the personal data of Americans, to reject some of the least qualified and most dangerous Cabinet members in history, to conduct even the most basic taxpayer oversight of the numerous conflicts of interest and money-making ventures of the President, his family, and his allies.

But when their votes have mattered, they have gone along with every bad decision this President has made.

If this capitulation to the executive branch continues, the Senate will be rendered a hollow, powerless body, with Senators powerless to represent their constituents and States.

And I would remind everyone that the iron law of the Senate is: What goes around, comes around. And my colleagues should ask themselves: Do they want their States and constituents treated this way, the way that Trump is treating his perceived political enemies, cutting off valuable public assistance to blue cities, putting U.S. forces into blue cities, the military, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act?

I think the answer would be no. And what is good for one side has to be good for the other side.

The President is not popular. What he is doing on every issue now is not popular. Costs matter to Americans in every State of this country, and this healthcare debate is all about costs.

One of the ironies is that some of the biggest impacts of these healthcare changes will be on the red States. Everyone suffers across the country, but there is significant suffering in places that are prominently Republican. So why are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying, ``Oh, we don't care''?

They should think long and hard about that and remember why they wanted to be Senators in the first place: to improve the lives of their constituents, to help, to serve. And that requires compromise here.

We saw that last week when we passed the National Defense Authorization bill with overwhelming bipartisan support in very efficient and rapid procedures.

When you get compromise--bipartisan compromise--you get results. When you get a body that seeks only to carry out the will of one person, you get what we have now: stalemate, suffering by poor people who can't get healthcare, but great benefits to the wealthy.

For the last several months, appropriators have been working on bills to protect and invest in the American people. Together, we passed eight appropriations bills out of the committee, most on overwhelmingly bipartisan votes. Three of those bills have been passed by the full Senate. Throughout this process, Democrats have shown our commitment to doing the hard work of government.

We have been flexible and willing to compromise. And, frankly, if it was in the Senate's power, both Republicans and Democrats, we would have legislation--appropriations legislation--before the President today, but we have been unable to because of the roadblocks he has established using his leverage over my Republican colleagues.

In fact, I think it is fair to say that President Trump and Speaker Johnson don't really want compromise and don't really want Congress to pass appropriations bills. They want Democrats to go away and give them another blank check, another CR.

But forget whether it is a CR or an appropriations bill. If the President doesn't like the program, he just takes the money away, which is contrary to the Constitution, but that is just a detail.

It takes 60 votes to pass a law here in the Senate. So Democrats are here, ready to reach a principled agreement on spending and protect the healthcare of 22 million Americans.

We are ready. We just need the President and the Speaker and the majority leader to sit down and talk, not about their partisan interests but the welfare of their constituents.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the subject this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor the CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished colleague, the legend, James Clyburn.

For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on voting rights, specifically fighting voter suppression, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, the constituents we represent, and all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Constitution created a government by, of, and for We the People. As a child, I often reflected on exactly what that meant. What that means is that it is a government that reflects the perspective of and, therefore, meets the needs of the people who participate. However, for most of our country's history in the beginning, only White, landowning men could vote.

That was changed in 1870 when the 15th Amendment opened the door for Black men to vote by prohibiting the Federal Government and States from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote on the account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved and free Black men voted and got elected to office. When Reconstruction ended, though, the former Confederate States passed new constitutions, including such things as literacy tests, poll taxes, and felony disenfranchisement. In the words of E. Carter Glass in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1902, he said these were intended to ``eliminate the darky'' as a factor in politics.

They made no bones about what they were doing.

Glass told his fellow convention delegates: ``This plan of popular suffrage will eliminate the darky as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county in the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the White race in the affairs government.

Next to this achievement in vital consequence will be the inability of unworthy men of our own race to cheat their way into prominence.''

This was the first great backlash in American history to making progress toward making the ideals of upon which our country was founded true for everyone.

Enter my own family history. My great-grandfather in Alabama around the same time had to take a literacy test in order to be able to register to vote. In this literacy test he was asked questions like: How many bubbles are in a bar of soap? And many other nonsensical questions that the person giving the literacy test could change the answer to based on who was answering the questions.

However, my great-grandfather was a community leader and teacher. He got all the questions right, and the registrar turned to his assistant and said a word I will never say other than in a direct quote: ``I need more questions because this nigger got them all right.''

My great-grandfather got the next set of questions right. Then he was told: You must find three White men to vouch for your character to be able to register to vote. After much effort, he did it, and he voted in every election since.

Now, the second great backlash occurred after the efforts of men like Dr. King; our former colleague, John Lewis; and members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Mr. Clyburn. Because of the Voting Rights Act, many of the things that my family suffered went away, like the poll tax.

Mr. Speaker, when I took my oath of office on this floor 2 years ago, I took my oath of office on my father's Bible. It was an old, tattered Bible from the 1940s. I didn't understand why he wouldn't get a new one. Often as we got to the anniversary of my father's passing I would look through his Bible. On January 5, 2021, he was on my mind as Georgia elected the first Black Senator. I opened the Bible, and an envelope fell out I had never noticed, and inside was his poll tax receipt from when he first registered to vote. Then I understood: He kept it in his Bible to remind him of the sacred right of the right to vote. He kept this Bible even when we tried to give him new ones. This was the one he used to write his sermons every Sunday.

Now, the 24th Amendment banned poll taxes like my father and my grandfather had to pay, but my mother was not able to vote until after the voting rights of 1965 passed. Now, Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because I daresay every member of the Congressional Black Caucus has a story or two or several in their family. In fact, some members of the CBC themselves have these stories, as you will probably hear.

All of this effort culminated in the Voting Rights Act that had an immediate impact on expanding the ability and the participation of Black Americans to vote until the Supreme Court gutted it in Shelby v. Holder because it said that Congress had not created enough of a record to show that voter suppression still existed on the basis of race.

However, just like those delegates in the 1902 Virginia convention, who, when asked: Well, when we give these literacy tests, how will we know if we don't explicitly say that it is on the basis of race?

Those delegates had an answer. They knew it would be up to the person implementing the literacy test, just like with my great-grandfather, to determine whether the questions were right or wrong and if they answered enough.

Now, Congress has failed to restore the provisions that were gutted in the Voting Rights Act, and as a result, we have seen a wave of laws across the country, particularly in the South, throwing up barriers in the way of voting. This is the latest voter suppression in the backlash to progress.

Moreover, now our President issued an executive order I believe last week, and on the floor of this body this week, we will have Jim Crow 2.0, the poll tax of 2025, the SAVE Act, the requirement

that every American citizen prove their citizenship.

Mr. Speaker, why is that a poll tax you might ask?

It is because the only documents allowed to prove your citizenship, other than a military ID, costs money. I will give you some examples. The Real ID costs about $42. These are all numbers that I have gotten based on research in either my State or federally.

A passport costs $130. A birth certificate from a State agency is $12 in Virginia. A consular report of birth abroad is $100. A certificate of citizenship is $1,385.

Whether it was $2.12 that my father paid in 1947 or $1,385 that someone has to pay for a certificate of citizenship, it is a poll tax. It is illegal under our Constitution, and it is an effort at voter suppression.

Mr. Speaker, for women, we just heard as we celebrate the final day of Women's History Month, if your name is not the same today as on your birth certificate, then you need a document to show the chain of custody of your name. That is more money, that is more obstacles, that is more hoops to jump through, and that is more voter suppression. The Congressional Black Caucus will not stand silently by and watch it happen.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Mr. Clyburn for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell) for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the honorable gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Cleo Fields.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here as I started, the great-granddaughter of Henry David Davidson, who had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for him to be able to register to vote in 1902.

I stand here the daughter and granddaughter of two men named James Fennimore McClellan, who had to pay poll taxes to be able to register to vote.

I stand here the daughter of Lois McClellan, the first woman in her family who was able to vote when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed in her thirties.

I took my oath of office on the Bible in which my father kept this poll tax receipt to remind me that I owe it to them to fight for the sacred right to vote.

I stand here as the first Black woman elected to Congress from Virginia. Virginia is the birthplace of American democracy, but her labor was long and her birthing pains deep; the home of the first representative democracy in the Western Hemisphere where only White land-owning men could vote; the home, the birthplace, of American slavery; and the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He excluded nearly half a million enslaved men and women, indeed, all the women who resided in the Thirteen Colonies, including in his beloved Monticello.

The Delegates to the Continental Congress ignored Abigail Adams' plea to ``remember the ladies and be [kinder] to them than your ancestors.''

Virginia is the birthplace of James Madison, who was the architect of the Virginia Plan that created a Constitution and a government by, of, and for the people in order to form a more perfect Union.

Not only did they not remember the ladies, but they considered the enslaved people who served them every day to be three-fifths of a person for purposes of this body, apportionment, and taxation, and they excluded indigenous people altogether.

Since 1789, the story of America has been one of each generation trying to make true for all Americans the promise of our founding documents. It is a story of cyclical trauma as the Civil War tore this country apart; Reconstruction sought to bind its wounds; and a violent backlash of white supremacy erased the gains made by formerly enslaved men, like my predecessor John Mercer Langston, the first Black man to serve in this body from Virginia.

It is a story of persistence, the persistence of women forcing a seat at the table of democracy and bringing a folding chair like Shirley Chisholm when they weren't let in. It is a story of the Federal Government advancing, retreating, advancing, and retreating in the battle to protect every American citizen's right to vote.

We are in the backlash right now that we have seen to that progress, and I stand here with my father's poll tax receipt behind me to remind me: We cannot go back. We cannot go back to a time when, in the name of voter integrity, barriers are put in people's way, poll taxes are put in people's way, and the requirement to pay money to prove you have the right to vote is imposed on American citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I am tired. I am tired of fighting the same fights as my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents, but I fight those fights as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress, from a position of more power and strength than they ever dreamed. I fight those fights so that our children and grandchildren don't have to.

I implore this body not to take a giant step back by imposing Jim Crow 2.0 and a poll tax through the SAVE Act or the President's executive order.

The right to vote is sacred. We will defend it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me, and I thank her so much for leading this Special Order hour.

Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleague from Virginia to express my disagreement with the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority. The American people have made clear that they want their elected leaders to be focused on improving the economy and lowering costs.

In this area, by any measure, the Trump administration and the Republican majorities here in Congress are off to a very poor start. Projected economic growth is down along with Americans' 401(k)'s. Inflation and expectations for inflation in the coming months are up. Last week, discussing the release of higher-than-expected inflation data, one economic analyst observed ``the preliminary signs of stagflation pressures.''

Now, I am old enough to remember the stagflation of the 1970s: low growth combined with high inflation. It was devastating then, and it would be devastating now. Unsurprisingly, consumer sentiment is down substantially.

Much of this economic weakness is the result of the Trump administration's reckless, indiscriminate, and nonstrategic tariffs, which are expected to raise costs for Americans trying to make ends meet.

To take one example, The Washington Post reported that the recently announced tariffs on automobiles are likely to raise prices most significantly for the most affordable cars.

The President, however, when asked over the weekend about automobile price increases replied: ``I couldn't care less.''

The Secretary of the Treasury from my home State of South Carolina was doing quite well financially as a hedge fund manager doesn't think the American people care either. To quote him: ``Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.''

Clearly, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bessent have never struggled to make ends meet from paycheck to paycheck and appear to view those who do with disdain.

With our Nation's economy in such a precarious state and 2 weeks of session left before a 2-week recess, is the Republican majority taking urgent action to bolster Americans' finances, boost growth, and restore confidence? Regrettably, they are not.

Instead, among other ill-advised items, they are tackling the so- called problem of noncitizens voting, which is already illegal. I say so-called problem because the Bipartisan Policy Center's analysis of The Heritage Foundation database--I repeat, a Heritage Foundation database--found just 77 instances of noncitizen voting between 1999 and 2023. That is 77 instances out of hundreds of millions of votes cast over a 25-year period.

The Bipartisan Policy Center goes on to say: ``Illegal voting, including by noncitizens, is routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election's outcome.'' That is from The Heritage Foundation.

If my Republican colleagues are truly concerned about the illegal overturning of election outcomes, they should work to prevent a repeat of the current President's attempt to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the deadly attack on this building on January 6, 2021. They shouldn't waste the House's time on this legislation.

Worse than a waste of time, the bill being brought to the floor this week would disenfranchise eligible citizens by imposing onerous requirements that many could not meet.

For example, as you just heard, married women who have changed their last names could not use their birth certificates with their maiden names as proof of citizenship. Neither could those born to military parents stationed abroad.

While many of my Republican colleagues may be globetrotting jet- setters, many of my constituents in South Carolina don't have passports. A $100 passport fee is a lot of money for many people in my district--in this case, an exorbitant poll tax.

This bill is only the latest Republican attempt to erect barriers to the ballot box, following recent attempts to make it more difficult to vote by mail or by ballot drop boxes. Just last week, the President signed a sweeping executive order with several onerous provisions that would risk disenfranchising millions of Americans.

Democratic bills, like the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, would stop these attacks on our democracy and ensure every American is able to cast a meaningful vote.

Mr. Speaker, when the American economy is on the precipice, why are my Republican colleagues focused on making it more difficult to vote?

While I possess no special insight into their motivations, I would argue that the two are connected. Republicans don't want to face democratic accountability for their governing failures, so they are trying to curb the electoral power of the struggling Americans who their destructive economic agenda is harming the most.

I am a little bit of a student of history. What we are seeing right now evokes the dark periods of the late 1800s.

During the gilded age, low-income Black and White Americans across the South came together in pursuit of economic justice. The economic power structure responded not by expanding economic opportunities but by restricting the right to vote. The result was Jim Crow 1.0, which deprived generations of African Americans of the right to vote, the right to choose leaders who could ease their economic burdens and expand opportunities for their families.

Mr. Speaker, after these Supreme Court interpretations and these actions by these southern legislatures, let me tell you what happened in South Carolina. When more than 50 percent of the population was African American, they had zero representation here in the Congress. In fact, the last African American left Congress in 1897, and there was not another African American in this body until I took the oath of office 95 years later. That is what happened with Jim Crow 1.0, and what we are seeing happening now is Jim Crow 2.0.

I am very fond of quoting George Santayana's admonition: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I worry that we are dangerously close to repeating this democratic decline amidst economic disruption. However, heeding the lessons of history, I believe there is still time to prevent it.

As we fight against Republican attempts to diminish our democracy, like the bill on the floor this week, we must deploy this democracy to demand that they address the issues people actually care about. We must make our voices heard on this floor, at townhalls, over the phone, at peaceful protests, and at the ballot box.

We must make clear that Republicans must stop the Trump agenda of economic destruction. They must take action to lower costs. They must abandon their efforts to take healthcare

away from millions to fund tax cuts for billionaires.

It is early in this fight, but our initial efforts are starting to yield results. Republicans fear for their majority, and they should. It is my hope that this fear will prompt my Republican colleagues to rethink their agenda for purposes of electoral self-preservation. If they fail to do so, the American people, as has happened before, will rightfully rethink who they elect so that we can preserve our economy and our democracy.

I will close, Mr. Speaker, with a little story from the 1950s. I graduated high school in 1957. As I was about to graduate, one of my teachers assigned me an essay to write. The essay was simply to share what I wanted to do after graduation, which was 3 months away.

When I wrote the essay, she came to me several days later and told me that she had read my essay and was very disappointed in what I wrote. I thought she had problems with the style, or maybe I didn't get the subjects and verbs to agree.

When I went into her office, she said to me she was disappointed because I said in my essay that, upon graduating high school, I would be leaving my native South Carolina, and I wrote why. It was because I was a college student, and when my parents got the right to cast an effective vote--both of them college graduates--the Democratic primary in South Carolina was a private club, a White-only private club.

These were the kinds of laws that came out of the Slaughter-House Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson, the same kind of laws that are being signaled now in the Supreme Court in the Shelby v. Holder decision. Just read it and you will see that what Justice Roberts wrote in that decision could have been lifted from those decisions of the 1870s. Jim Crow 2.0 is upon us.

Mr. Speaker, that bill is coming to this floor. If that bill is passed by this body, we will be taking another step toward disenfranchising people going forward.

It is a sin and a shame that this body in this year will initiate the opportunity to turn the clock back to revisit those years that we thought were gone by.

As we face this great threat to our economy and our democracy, I would hope that we will get a spine, that we will exert the authority of this body, and that we will say to anybody, in low places or high places, that we will not turn the clock back.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today as Federal servants, civil servants, will check their mail or check their bank

accounts and not see the money that they have earned, the money that they have earned for doing the work of the American people because hundreds of thousands of civil servants--including roughly three quarters of a million furloughed government workers--will sit down at the kitchen table tonight and ask some hard questions: Which bills do we pay? What do we do to cut back? How long can we go without a paycheck?

These are tough questions, but they are only being asked because President Trump and Speaker Johnson and others have decided that they would rather plunge our government into a shutdown rather than address the healthcare costs crisis for millions of Americans that are facing, right now, these incredibly challenging debates.

Now, there are a lot of stories of our public servants struggling in this moment, and I understand that some of my colleagues haven't had a chance to hear them. So I wanted to come to the floor today to share my own story.

I started my career as a public servant, as a State Department officer. I worked for the Federal Government. It was the honor of my lifetime. I emphasize that I was career, not a political, appointee. I swore an oath to the Constitution, and I remember how proud I was to be able to raise my hand and recite that oath.

I remember very clearly and vividly, in 2013, I was working on counterterrorism trying to keep our Nation safe. And while I was doing that work of national security, political leaders on the Hill, at that time, hit an impasse, and our government went into a shutdown.

I remember how distant that felt for me with the work that I was doing. I am just trying to show up and do work every day to be able to keep our country safe, to be able to watch out for terrorist groups that try to do us and our allies and our partners harm.

Why was it that now I was being asked to show up to work every single day and not receive a paycheck? And, particularly, I was very early in my career, not making very much money, turned down high-paying jobs so I could serve my country. I did it because I was proud to be a public servant, proud to be amongst the many others that are willing to put our country before our own families; that we are part of something bigger than all of us.

But through that period, when we were going through that shutdown-- and to remind people, that one lasted 16 days. At the time, that was the second longest shutdown in American history. Hundreds of thousands of Federal employees did not receive their full paychecks during that shutdown. And at the time, we didn't have a guarantee and promise that we would actually get backpay for the work that we were doing.

It was challenging. I remember having to call my own family and ask them what I should be doing, try to think through what I can be doing to make sure that I can pay the bills when it comes up. I had no idea how long the shutdown would go for and felt so distant. I had no way, as a civil servant, to influence the discussions on the Hill and the leaders that were making this decision.

I remember reading afterward, the Office of Management and Budget would put together a report following the shutdown, and in that report they quoted an EPA employee who spoke with the Washington Post. That employee said:

We love public service. We're very committed to our jobs

and the mission of our agency. But it's just too unstable.

And I remember that instability. My story is not unique. And that is why, when I was actually sworn into Congress in January 2019--now, again, I was sworn into Congress in the middle of a government shutdown, a shutdown that is still, to this day, recognized as the longest shutdown.

And I remember I was sworn into the government shutdown, and I found out something that just shocked me, which is that the President and Members of Congress continue to get paid during a shutdown. I just could not believe it; that after what I had gone through as a career public servant, doing the work of the country, continuing to show up to work each and every day, not receiving the paycheck, then realizing that 435 people in the House, 100 people in the Senate, and the President of the United States continue to get a paycheck. They are the only ones in the entire government that continue to get paid.

I remember, at that point, I decided I was going to refuse my pay until the shutdown was over, and I am continuing to do that with this shutdown because I still believe in those old sayings that officers eat last, that leaders eat last, and that by taking our pay during this crisis, especially on this day when so many others are not, we are showing that we are fine having a full plate while others go without. That is not leadership. That is not acceptable.

If leaders are being paid while others are not, you can see why so many Americans believe that politicians are playing with other people's chips; that they don't feel the impact of their actions. And that is dangerous because it is easy to then think about all of this as a game and to lose sight of the actual impacts on American families.

It is something I talked about with two public servants in New Jersey during the first week of the shutdown. These are Federal workers who have so much on the line in this fight. But it is important to remember that, for them, this fight didn't begin with the shutdown. The stresses that Federal workers are facing didn't start on October 1; it started on January 20. It started with Russell Vought, the scribe of Project 2025 and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, saying that he wants Federal workers to be ``in trauma,'' saying that he wants our public servants--the people that help educate our kids, pave your roads, keep you safe--to ``not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as villains.'' That is what the current OMB Director, the mastermind of this shutdown, has said; that he wants our public servants to be ``viewed as villains.''

And let me tell you something, that is something I heard from those Federal workers that I sat down with.

So congratulations, Russell Vought. Your dream has come true. These Federal public servants I talked to said that they wake up every day feeling like they have been made to be like the enemy, be viewed in that way by the American people. They talked about the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control, the attacks upon public servants.

That word ``enemy'' is something we have seen from President Trump himself. He has repeatedly used the phrase ``enemy from within'' when talking about people whom he perceives as his enemies, fellow Americans who he thinks are engaged in a war from within.

I want to be clear. The people I sat down with earlier this month-- they are not the enemy. They are not showing up to work every day to go to war against Donald Trump. They are showing up to work every day because they believe in service. They are showing up to work every day because they believe they have an obligation as Americans to work for something bigger than themselves. We owe them better than what they are seeing right now and how they are being treated. We owe them better than a politics that demonizes them and their work.

What we see right now, though, is that we don't even have--while our public servants are not getting paid through this shutdown even though so many of them are showing up for work, I can tell you, they are furious that we have a House of Representatives that doesn't even show up, that we have Speaker Johnson continuing to give House Republicans a paid vacation even though they are not even showing up to work and do their job.

We also see the President and his mob boss-like cronies, like Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, continuing to step up and use our government, weaponizing it as a tool for political retribution and political extortion.

We owe our public servants better. We owe them not just an end to the shutdown but an end to the politics that makes our public servants an enemy or a tool.

Next year is the 250th anniversary of our Nation's independence. It is a chance to reaffirm who we are as Americans and what we believe in. I believe in service. I believe in public servants. I believe that the way out of this tailspin we are in as a country is to try to reignite a new era of public service

in this country, have a new ``ask not what this country can do for you'' kind of moment.

I believe that we must do everything we can right now to support our public servants. First of all, have the House of Representatives get back to work so we can have the negotiations, so we can have the discussions needed to address the healthcare crisis impacting American families and reopen our government so that every public servant can have the peace of mind and dignity of knowing that their service has been recognized.

It is time to support our public servants. It is time that we work to end this shutdown.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about Oswaldo Paya and, as I have done before, to urge this body to honor his legacy.

Paya was a Cuban dissident who fought against the communist regime and who stood up and fought for free speech, for democracy, and for human rights. He was a thorn in the side of the Cuban communist regime his entire life.

Oswaldo Paya was the only person at his school who refused to join the Communist Youth. Later, at the age of 35, he founded the Christian Liberation Movement, which called for nonviolent disobedience against the rule of the Cuban Communist Party. He then founded the Varela Project, which sought a referendum on Cuba's communist system. Throughout, he fought for democratic governance, religious liberty, freedom of suppression, and the freedom to start businesses.

For over three decades, Paya put pressure on the communist regime to free its political prisoners, to allow for genuine elections, and to uphold basic human rights. In retaliation, the regime harassed him. They arrested him repeatedly and, ultimately, in 2012, they killed him. But in life and in death, they never succeeded in silencing his message.

Growing up, I heard countless stories from my father about life in Cuba, and they instilled in me, from a very young age, the desire to fight for change, to fight for truth, to fight for freedom. The yearning for liberty and the courage to fight for it is universal and deeply felt in every Cuban heart.

Since 2015, in every Congress, I have introduced legislation to rename the street outside the Cuban Embassy the ``Oswaldo Paya Way.'' This body has passed it before, rightly and unanimously. Oswaldo's legacy matters deeply to Cuba and to the United States. And it matters to his family, with whom I have worked closely on this resolution.

Over the years, I met many times with his daughter Rosa Maria Paya. Rosa Maria is herself a formidable and courageous dissident and warrior for human rights. Renaming the street in front of the Cuban Embassy would help preserve that legacy.

During the Cold War, President Reagan renamed the street in front of the Soviet Embassy ``Sakharov Plaza'' after the famed human rights dissident in the Soviet Union. It was part of a broader strategy to shine a light on the abuses of the evil empire.

My strategy here is the same. Some might think a street name is not that big a deal. Well, it is. Anyone who wants to write to the Cuban Embassy will have to write Oswaldo Paya's name. Anyone who wants to go there has to look up the address and see his name. The operatives of the Cuban regime will have to say or write his name.

Saying his name has power.

In just a moment, I would propound a unanimous consent request to take up and pass the Oswaldo Paya Way resolution.

I want to point out this is bipartisan legislation. Indeed, I am joined by Senator Durbin, the Democrat whip, in this legislation. In a previous Senate, this passed the Senate 100 to nothing. That means every Republican voted for it, and every Democrat voted for it. I am hopeful this Congress can demonstrate the same unity and the same resolve to stand up in support of democracy and in support of human rights. Right now, we will find out if that is the case.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 218 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I must say, the objection from my friend from New Jersey is deeply unfortunate. The remarks that he gave were unfortunately seriously in error.

The Senator from New Jersey suggested that it is only the DC City Council that has the power to do this. This is objectively false. DC is a city unlike any city in America because DC--the Constitution explicitly gives the authority to govern DC to the Congress of the United States. That is written into the Constitution.

My friend from New Jersey said he would object if this were done in Newark, NJ. Well, Newark, NJ, is not in the Federal District of Columbia, which the Constitution gives to Congress to govern.

It is also objectively disproven by the example I gave. We have done this before. When Ronald Reagan was President, he signed into law legislation renaming the street in front of the Soviet Union ``Sakharov Plaza.'' The author of that legislation is someone you and I still serve with. He is the senior most serving Member of this body. Senator Chuck Grassley, then a brandnew Senator, introduced the legislation to rename the street in front of the Soviet Embassy. It was part of shining a light on communist oppression.

The legislation that the Senator from New Jersey just objected to is Cruz-Durbin. Its lead Democrat author is Senator Dick Durbin, the whip for the Democrat party. This is not partisan legislation.

Indeed, this exact legislation--Senator Booker, who just objected, voted for it just 2 years ago in this Congress. It passed 100 to nothing, and 1 of those 100 was my friend Senator Booker. He voted yes.

By the way, one of the most vocal advocates of this legislation was Senator Booker's former colleague Senator Bob Menendez, another Cuban- American. And there is a rich irony because, after Florida, the State of New Jersey has a massive Cuban-American population.

To see a Senator from New Jersey objecting--I know this is not his intent, but the communist Government of Cuba is cheering right now because they do not want to acknowledge Oswaldo Paya. They murdered him, and they don't want to have to say his name. They don't want anyone to say his name.

I know there are Cuban-American residents of New Jersey whose hearts are heavy right now. They are hurting to see their elected Senator object over not just honoring Oswaldo Paya but calling out the regime.

Senator Booker suggests, oh, some other general statement; Paya is a nice guy; we should do that. That is not the purpose here. I am happy to support any resolution praising Oswaldo Paya. I have done so many times. The purpose here is to put pressure on the Cuban communist regime, and naming the street does that.

As I pointed out, Senator Booker voted for this identical legislation just 2 years ago, this bipartisan legislation. That leads to the obvious question: What has changed?

One thing has changed: the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When Senator Booker voted for this bipartisan legislation, Joe Biden was the President. Today, Donald J. Trump is the President. Unfortunately, our Democrat colleagues have decided that bipartisan cooperation is no longer something they are interested in. Their party is instead unified behind one principle, which is that they hate Donald J. Trump.

We are on day 15 of a government shutdown because the Democrats are unwilling to fund the Federal Government, unwilling to pass a clean continuing resolution.

By the way, every one of them, including the Senator from New Jersey, has given speeches about how it is reckless and irresponsible to shut the government down, not to pass a clean continuing resolution. Yet, earlier today, almost every single Democrat voted, for the ninth time in the last 2 weeks, to shut the government down, whereas Republicans are unified to reopen it.

This weekend, there will be a rally in DC of leftwing radicals, the so-called No Kings rally. Many, if not most, of us on the Republican side of the Chamber believe that the reason the government is still shut down is because Democrat Senators are terrified for that rally to occur and those leftwing radicals to see that the government is open because they have to demonstrate that they hate President Trump.

Just this week, President Trump announced a historic Middle East peace deal. Yet virtually zero Democrats could bring themselves even to say his name.

Bill Clinton praised President Trump for the Middle East peace deal. Hillary Clinton praised President Trump for the Middle East peace deal. I commend Bill and Hillary Clinton. I will say that in my time in the Senate, that is the first time that sentence has ever come out of my mouth: I commend Bill and Hillary Clinton. But why is it--indeed, Senator Booker put out a statement about the Middle East peace deal, but nowhere in it was President Trump's name to be found.

I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that there is power in saying his name. Just as the Democrats are terrified of saying the name ``Donald J. Trump'' in any way connected to anything positive, so, too, are the Cuban communists terrified of saying the name ``Oswaldo Paya.''

I am hopeful that my friend the Senator from New Jersey will put aside the partisan rancor that characterizes the Democrats in this body and will say: Let's come together and stand for the Cuban people. Let's stand for Cuban-Americans in this country. Let's stand for freedom. Let's stand for democracy. Let's stand for human rights.

That ought to be bipartisan. Time will tell whether it continues to be at the U.S. Senate.

I yield the floor.