Repealing the Trump Sick Tax Act

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Smith because once again our State is in mourning. After a painful summer where we lost Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in a horrific act of violence, we were once again shaken to our core by a deadly mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

It happened during the first mass of the year, an exciting time for so many students, back to school, meeting their new teacher, seeing new students. Right in the middle of that mass, two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski were murdered.

We mourn for their lost lives, their families, the 21 people injured, including 18 children, ages 6 to 15. I think about the teachers and clergy who never imagined having to instruct children to duck under church pews to save their lives, and all the kids who were forced to grow up way too quickly. They will never forget that morning.

On the day of the shooting, literally within an hour of the shooting, I found out that one of my former employees who worked in this building, whom I am very close to, Kate Nilan, she had three kids in that church that morning. She left Washington, got married, had these three children, two of them twins, and they were all three in that church.

Her daughter Cora, who is in middle school, saw two of her best friends get shot--one in the stomach, one in the neck--and she had to run out of that church when they could get to safety and told one of their dads that his daughter had been shot.

We have since heard about a teacher who got a kid out of a wheelchair, a child with disabilities, put him under the pew, and then shielded him with her own body.

We have heard the words of a young, young child who was saved because his friend laid on top of him and got shot in the back. We heard the stories of the police officers who ran toward and not away from danger and saved lives. And we have heard the stories of the medics and the first responders and the doctors and the nurses in the operating rooms that somehow were able to save all those other lives at two fine hospitals, Hennepin County Medical Center, as well as a children's hospital in Minneapolis, and I am sure several others.

You know, it is such a close-knit neighborhood that surrounds this beautiful church. Annunciation is a church on a hill, but it is not a church alone on a hill. It is a church that is attached to a school, and it is a church and a school that are right next to houses literally a few yards away. And then next to the houses are more houses, and then next to the houses are a shop. And next to that is a restaurant, and then next to that is another big high school. And then next to that are more houses.

So many houses filled with families who, on that day, Wednesday, August 27, had to tell their own kids the horror of what happened in every single one of those houses. You can't hide from this, as much as you want to shield your kids from these kinds of stories, but

when they are 6-year-olds that are in the mass shooting, that are in the church, who are the neighbors and friends of the kids in the other houses, every parent had to tell their kids about it.

This church, this school, these people of faith, these neighbors, they have all been incredibly strong, and even on this horrific day, I saw, hours after the shooting, neighbors sitting out on their lawn chairs with food for each other. Neighbors hugging people they knew and hugging perfect strangers whose lives had been just turned upside down.

But most of all, I have been thinking about that little 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel, 10-year-old Harper Moyski, and their families, whose lives were taken that day, and I am going to start by talking about them.

Fletcher was just starting third grade. He loved his family, his friends. He loved fishing and cooking, and in his Dad's words, ``any sport that he was allowed to play.'' His dad also said that Fletcher was on his way to becoming a wonderful young man. In light of his family's tragedy, the family has urged people to wear bright colors to his funeral this Sunday to honor his memory, and he asked all parents to give their kids an extra hug.

Harper Moyski, the other child we lost, had just begun fifth grade. Her parents described her as a bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10- year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone who knew her. She was adored by her little sister. Like so many girls her age, she would have sleepovers with her friends. They would stay up late watching movies and doing each other's makeup.

So I met that family just many hours after they lost Harper. They joined thousands of people at the Academy of Holy Angels nearby because they didn't want to be alone. They wanted to be with people from their community, whether they knew them or not. They were there to hear from the archbishop.

They were there to hear words of comfort. And I met Harper's little sister, sitting quietly on her mom's lap, holding a Teddy bear, knowing her life would never be the same.

Harper's family was clear that they want to see us take action. In her parents' words:

Change is possible, and it is necessary--so that Harper's

story does not become yet another in a long line of

tragedies.

Change is possible, but it takes courage, and that courage isn't supposed to come from parents in mourning or from defenseless kids in mass in the first week of school. Sixth graders should not have to protect first graders.

You know, I will never forget meeting several of the Sandy Hook parents in 2013, and I shared this story with some of the parents at Annunciation. It was the day we had the vote on the bipartisan background check bill. I remember Joe Manchin was trying to get that done. It was a strongly bipartisan bill. It was one of my worst days in the Senate because they were in my office, and I had to call Joe to get the latest--because he was trying to get the bill done--and tell the families that we weren't going to be able to get it passed. We were missing just a few votes.

I remember that day because one of the moms in my office described how her son had severe disabilities, and he had a school aide that would be with him all the time. Every day before he went to school, he would point at the picture of the school aide that was on their refrigerator because he loved her, and he did that that day.

She told me that was the last time she saw her son. He was autistic. He loved that aide and loved his family.

Hours later, she sat with other parents in that firehouse in Connecticut waiting as, one by one, kids would come in, and their families would cry and grab them and hug them and whisk them away. Pretty soon, the families left in that firehouse knew they were the ones left. They knew they would never see their babies again.

That mom sat there in that firehouse thinking--and the dad--and they thought about the fact that whatever happened to their child, whom they now knew was dead, would have happened to the school aide too.

When they found them, she had her arms around him in a closet. They were both shot dead.

Those families asked me that day in my office ``How come we have the courage to come here to advocate for background checks, for something that wouldn't have even saved our babies''--because in this case, if you recall, the guns were in the household that the parents had gotten. ``But we advocated for the background checks and closing the loophole because we believed that it would save the lives of other people's babies, and we believed it was the most likely thing that could pass, and we believed that, despite some of us wanting an assault weapons ban or other things, this was the smartest thing we could do. And the people in this place didn't have the courage to stand up like we did for other people's kids.''

We can never give up because it is impossible to believe--when you look at what happens in other countries that still have legal guns and still allow for hunting, you know that we can be better; you know we can do better; you know that guns should not get into the hands of the people that have been doing these shootings.

In 2018, after another horrific shooting, I worked across the aisle with Senator Hatch of Utah to pass a law which has provided over $400 million to support prevention programs to keep schools safe. We tried our best, but it is clearly not enough.

In 2022, after our Nation was rocked by mass shootings in Buffalo and at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, led by Senators Murphy and Cornyn and negotiated with a group of Senators. It was an important first step in keeping our kids safe, providing more than $2 billion for things like school-based mental health services and violence prevention efforts. It kept hundreds of firearms out of the hands of some people that shouldn't have them. It also included my legislation to close the boyfriend loophole and keep convicted--convicted--domestic abusers from buying a gun.

But it was just a first step. As this tragedy at Annunciation Catholic Church makes clear, there is still so much more that must be done. We cannot rest when gun violence remains the leading cause of the deaths of kids and teenagers. We cannot rest when there have been over 90 school shootings in this country in 2025 alone. Congress needs to act with the courage and urgency this moment demands and pass commonsense gun violence prevention laws that will save lives.

I come from a State with a time-honored tradition of hunting and fishing, like so many Senators in this Chamber. When I considered gun violence prevention measures in the past, I would always ask myself: Do these reforms in any way hurt my uncle Dick in his deer stand? My answer was always no.

The shooter in Minneapolis used an AR-15-style weapon to fire nearly 120 of his shots. You don't have to have an assault weapon in a deer stand, but that is what he used that day in that church. So that is why a majority of Americans, including many Republicans, support an assault weapons ban.

We also need to expand background checks, which over 80 percent of Americans support. And they are messy. They take too long. I think there is a lot more we could do with the information we have available to us online right now. Give me a break. We can't figure out that some of these people that have bought these guns that have been involved in mass shootings shouldn't have these guns? In today's world, with all the stuff online, we are not able to put the resources into figuring that out? How do you tell that to the parents of that 8-year-old and 10-year-old? How do you tell it to the parents of the kids that are still in the hospital right now, barely holding on to their lives?

We should close dangerous loopholes to keep guns away from the people we all know shouldn't have them.

We need to ban ghost guns and bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.

It is never one-size-fits-all. Each shooting is a little different. But if we just took these commonsense measures, which wouldn't set us back on hunting or legal gun ownership, we would make a difference.

We must restore full funding for the ATF, the Agency that enforces many of our Nation's gun laws and plays a huge role in tracing crime guns. The administration cut its budget by more than $400 million and rolled back critical

gun violence programs across the Justice Department.

I am not saying every one of these things would have prevented what happened in one shooting or the other, but I do know--especially when I look back at Uvalde and the Buffalo shooting and the dad that was just simply going to get a birthday cake and never came back from the grocery store--I do know that some of these things on assault weapons-- age limits or doing something when it comes to closing loopholes of who should be able to get these guns--it would have saved a whole bunch of lives if we got that done.

This week, Senator Smith and I and our entire Minnesota delegation, Democrats and Republicans, put forward a resolution to honor the victims and survivors of the mass shooting. The resolution condemns the violence and commends the bravery and service of law enforcement, first responders, medical caregivers, school and church staff, and community members who acted swiftly to protect and help others.

No one should have to fear this threat of gun violence. I am glad we came together across party lines to put that resolution forward, from our most liberal Members over in the House to our most conservative, but we have to do more.

In the wake of this senseless tragedy, the archbishop of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Archbishop Hebda, shared something that stuck with me. He said:

We have to recognize that it's through prayer, [but also]

through that prayer of the feet, through that action, that we

can indeed make a difference. That has to be the source of

our hope.

He read a letter from Pope Leo, who said:

We must stop the pandemic of arms . . . which infects our

world.

And the Pope prayed that we might fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their

spears into pruning hooks.

There are things we can do here. There are things that would make a difference, and we all know that. It is just going to take the courage of those little sixth graders that laid on top of first graders or the teacher that took the kid with disabilities out of a wheelchair and laid on top of him. That is real courage. We just have to have a little political courage to get this done.

So let's honor the lives of these precious kids we lost by taking action to stop senseless acts of gun violence--by praying, yes, but also praying for action.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I stand before this body trying to make sense of the terrible shooting at Annunciation Catholic School, just a couple of miles from where Archie and I live in Minneapolis, and I can't. I can't make it make sense.

You know, I know this neighborhood really well. I have lived in and around it for many, many years. I also know Annunciation School. Annunciation School is one of those places where, whether your kids go there or not, it is 2 degrees of separation from everybody that you would know. If it is not your child, it is someone that you know, their niece, their nephew, their grandchild, their child.

Here in Annunciation Catholic School, on a fall morning, sweet children were gunned down when they went to mass to celebrate the beginning of the school year, and their sense of peace and safety was shattered like the church windows that the bullets flew through.

Fletcher Merkel was 8 years old. His dad said that Fletcher had an infectious smile, and he danced with every touchdown he scored in flag football, and he loved his family and his friends, and he loved fishing and cooking.

Harper Moyski was 10. Her parents say that she was a bright, joyful, and deeply loved child whose laughter and kindness and spirit touched everyone who knew her.

There were 21 others shot that morning. There is a 12-year-old little girl in critical condition. Her mother, who is a pediatric nurse at the ICU in Hennepin County Medical Center, rushed to the hospital when she heard that there was a shooting, only to find her own daughter in the emergency room.

Another supervising nurse there rushed to the ER to help even though it wasn't her shift, and when she did, she found a little girl who was so scared and so terrified that she climbed into the CT scan with that little girl to stroke her hair and hold her hand so that she would not have to be alone.

There is another little girl whose dad is a gym teacher at Annunciation, and she is still in the hospital recovering from surgery yesterday, but she seems to be moving in the right direction. She was hurt while she was shielding her little buddy, which is what she called the therapy dog.

A fifth grader recounted how, after the shooting, he was worried that he had gotten some gunpowder on his neck, and it turned out that he had been hit by a bullet fragment that lodged so close to an artery that he needed to have surgery to remove it. He had dived under a pew, and a friend of his had crawled on top of him to protect him from the gunfire, and that friend was shot in the back.

So here we are--incredible bravery from these kiddos and their families, heroic efforts of the teachers and first responders and law enforcement and also of the doctors and nurses in the emergency rooms who saved their lives. And we have all of these feelings of grief, of rage, of frustration, I think even confusion.

You know, these school shootings are searingly personal to people, and also they are often so public, and they are not uncommon. Just in Minnesota, we remember the two students that were killed at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, MN, and we remember the nine students killed and seven injured at Red Lake Senior High School on the Red Lake Nation. And we ask ourselves all the time when this happens: How can this happen? How do we let this keep on happening?

We are, you know, thrust into this tragic cycle of collective grief and frustration and anger. Our hearts are broken for the families and the loved ones whose lives and sense of security and safety have been stolen, and our voices call out for change to end this scourge of gun violence. Our anger and frustration grow when people feel like their voices are being ignored.

I am angry because we keep choosing to protect the interest of this big gun lobby rather than the lives of our little babies. And we can do better than this. Only in this country do we see this toxic mix of hatred and guns cost so many lives.

There are over 400 million guns in this country--more guns than people. The shooter in Minneapolis was able to buy these guns that they had legally and then fire all these rounds into a church sanctuary from a rifle that was designed not for hunting, not for self-defense, but for killing people.

Mr. President, I have been in the Senate now for nearly 8 years, and I am a realist and I know how this goes: the hopes and the prayers and then the moving on.

I know how this goes.

But I am also an optimist. I believe that if we don't try, nothing will ever change. So I ask this body to listen to the words of people-- not political people--who are pleading for change, who are asking us to pray by moving our feet and to take action.

As my dear colleague Senator Klobuchar said, Pope Leo asked this past weekend for us to ``plead to God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.''

Annunciation principal Matt DeBoer said:

We can't change the past, but we can do something about the

future. There is an African proverb that [goes]: ``When you

pray, move your feet.'' So I beg you, and I ask you to please

pray, but don't stop with your words. Let's make a difference

and support this community, these children, [and] these

families and these teachers, [and] never again can we let

this happen.

A Minneapolis student wrote an opinion piece for our newspaper, the Star Tribune. They said:

Do not offer thoughts and prayers as you systematically

enable these tragedies. Do not claim prayers are sufficient

when children die as they pray. Do not pretend you do not

understand.

Sam Hasler has a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old, children who are at Annunciation. This is what he said:

I'm heartbroken this happened. That the third day of school

was marred by something my kids may carry forever, even

though they weren't physically harmed. That the joy of a new

school year gave way to fear almost instantly. I'm sad

knowing this will happen

again--in another school, in another town--and we'll do it

all again. The GoFundMes. The social posts. The trauma

interviews.

Sam continued:

It always comes back to the guns. We are not the only

country with mental illness. Or social media. Or divided

politics. But we are the only ones where this happens again

and again--and we shrug and stall because regulating weapons

of war is somehow off the table. If the right to own these

guns matters more than children's right to live, then say

that out loud.

That is what this father said.

[L]et the rest of us decide how to live in a country like

that. For me, though, that is not OK. That is not normal.

Harper Moyski's grieving parents said:

While our immediate focus is on Harper and our family's

healing, we also believe it is important memory fuels action.

No family should ever have to endure this kind of pain. We

urge our leaders and communities to take meaningful steps to

address gun violence and the mental health crisis in this

country. Change is possible, and it is necessary--so that

Harper's story does not yet become another in a long line of

tragedies.

These are the words of people who have lived through this tragedy.

Colleagues, this body has shown that we can take steps to keep our children safer. After the tragedy in Uvalde, my colleague Chris Murphy and Republicans joined together to write the Safer Communities Act, which invested billions of dollars to help Americans, and especially young people, get the mental health support they need. And it took important, meaningful steps to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns. There is more work to do, but we showed we can make progress.

Today, I plead with my Republican colleagues to stand up to this administration as it is refusing to fund those local violence prevention initiatives--those grants that we funded in a bipartisan way through the Safer Communities Act.

We should undo the cuts to Medicaid that just got pushed through with the One Big Beautiful Bill. It is the No. 1 source of insurance for people who are seeking mental health care in this country. We should condemn the Secretary of Health and Human Services when he says, with no basis, that somehow anti-depressants cause school shootings. Then we should come together and negotiate in a meaningful way to keep assault weapons, like the ones that killed and injured the students of Annunciation Catholic School, out of the hands of dangerous people.

We know there is no one answer to this terrible scourge of gun violence that is killing our children; there is no one thing that we can do to change the shameful statistic that the No. 1 cause of death for children in this country are firearms. But because there is no one answer doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. We have to try.

So to any Minnesota children--especially those who go to Annunciation School, who are listening right now--I just want to say to you this: Your community loves you. Your family loves you. And we are going to do everything we can to keep you safe. I am in awe of your resilience, but you should never have to go through what you have been through this last week. I am so sorry that the adults have not done enough to keep you safe, and we need to do better.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the proposal that is sought to be adopted by unanimous consent on the floor today-- which means bypassing the committee of jurisdiction so that the committee of jurisdiction doesn't have the opportunity to work on the bill--is framed in the discussion today as an effort to try to reduce drug pricing. There is no disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on whether we need to reduce the cost of drugs in the United States. Both parties are working to do it in their own way.

The battle here is over government price fixing. That is something that most of those on our side have resisted for a long time. That is something that is being pursued in the request in this legislation. The solution is not to have the government take over yet another part of our economy. The solution is to work on market-based solutions, like those we are working on.

But there is another part of this bill that is being proposed on the floor today that just makes it even doubly objectionable, and that is, this bill has a price tag. And to pay for it, there are provisions in this bill that deal with provisions that repeal provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill that helped to start reforming our entitlement system.

Over the past two decades, Medicaid spending has ballooned by over 200 percent, risking the program's financial sustainability for those who need it the most. This last July, Congress passed some commonsense Medicaid reforms--the first time any Congress of the

United States has ever sought to do some serious, meaningful entitlement reform, which is the real cause of the debt and the deficit that we face.

What we did there was to reduce wasteful and unnecessary spending and to remove disincentives to work.

One of those specific reforms required some able-bodied adults--and I mean able-bodied adults who are at least over 100 percent over the poverty level--to require able-bodied adults to pay a small copay, $35, if they seek medical care under Medicaid. Asking certain Medicaid beneficiaries who have the resources to be able to do it and who are able-bodied adults who are not disabled, who are not children, and who do not even have to care for children in their home--many of them--to pay a very small, minimal amount, not only reduces unnecessary healthcare utilization, but it removes a benefit clip that discourages them from earning higher wages and moving out of poverty.

These are those kinds of solutions I was talking about before that are based on work and markets and free economies, rather than on government price-fixing and government mandates. Unfortunately, the bill before us today eliminates this important reform and increases unnecessary spending by over $7 billion.

More concerning, the bill also repeals a bipartisan policy supported by over 30 patient-advocacy groups to spur investment in the lifesaving cures for patients with rare diseases.

This policy offers hope to the 95 percent of Americans living with a rare disease who lack an approved treatment. The Finance Committee has a deep history of bipartisan efforts to bolster patient access to care and to properly align market incentives to strengthen our Federal healthcare system. Today's bill falls short of those objectives, but I look forward to working with my colleagues on these types of issues and other priorities to achieve these goals. This bill should be reviewed by the Finance Committee, and I commit that we will continue to work on proper, meaningful entitlement reform and healthcare improvement across the United States.

For those reasons, I object.

Mr. President, I rise today to request unanimous consent to pass a bill I introduced with Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Our bill, the Repealing the Trump Sick Tax Act, would repeal provisions of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including a provision that excludes certain pharmaceutical drugs from the Medicare drug price negotiation program. It is a provision that hurts seniors particularly, people with cancer particularly, and helps pharmaceutical companies evade the responsibility to bring to heel their high-price prescription drugs.

Our bill would also repeal the provisions of the reconciliation bill that would force Medicaid enrollees to pay out-of-pocket fees every time they need to see a provider. That is nothing more than a tax on patients. And it must be reversed.

Mr. President, just this morning, with Senator Crapo and the Senate Finance Committee, we had the opportunity to interview, demand answers, and engage with Secretary Kennedy. Over the course of that hearing and in prior hearings, one of the points that Secretary Kennedy tried to make was that Members of the Senate, particularly Democrats--and he accused Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet of being pharma shills. Yet Secretary Kennedy and President Trump have championed the bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill--so-called--that literally is a $5 billion bailout for pharma by allowing them to get out of or delay indefinitely--and maybe forever--the obligation to negotiate fair prices.

Let me give an example. Keytruda is a major cancer drug. It has been on the market since 2014. It costs between $150,000 and $170,000 per patient annually. Just think about that. You have cancer, you need this drug--I am glad it is there--but who can afford that kind of money? By the way, if it is paid for by Medicare or Medicaid, that means the taxpayers are paying this. It is not sustainable. It is not necessary. And as President Trump has often said, we pay the highest prices in the United States, even when it is us, the United States, that actually backs a lot of the research that goes into creating these drugs.

We were making progress on price negotiations to have us achieve a goal of making our prescription drug prices come down, make them more affordable and not have the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. employer, and the U.S. families pay the most in the world. It just is not right.

The One Big Beautiful Bill also included provisions that would delay the Trump administration from using Medicare drug price negotiations to lower the price of Keytruda. That is wrong. That is wrong. There is nothing beautiful about it, except that it maintains a big fat profit.

Our bill would also repeal this part of the bill and allow the Trump administration to negotiate a lower price for cancer patients. I sincerely hope my colleagues will join me in helping pass this bill.

Secretary Kennedy and President Trump said that their party wants to lower the price of drugs. I want to do that, and this bill would help us do that. My goal is we should pass this with unanimous consent.

Therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged; and that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2447, Repealing the Trump Sick Tax Act; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott).

Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty) would have voted ``yea.''