Redirecting Trump Slush Funds to Lower Health Care Costs Act

Mr. President, at a time when hard-working families across this country are being squeezed by skyrocketing costs, you would think that the President of the United States and Washington Republicans would be focused on finding ways to help people afford their groceries, access affordable healthcare, and keep communities safe.

In fact, that is what Donald Trump himself ran on. He promised he would lower costs ``on day one.'' That is a quote, ``on day one.''

Instead, now that he is in office, Trump is completely fixated on his corrupt slush fund where he would give your tax dollars--your tax dollars--to his political allies.

So how did we get here? Donald Trump sued his own IRS and Treasury Department to try to get $10 billion--your tax dollars--for himself. But then, of course, he was so kind that he agreed to drop his lawsuit against his own government--our government--as long as it set up a slush fund of $1.8 billion to pay out to his allies, supporters, and even January 6 rioters who assaulted police officers.

Understandably, the American people strongly oppose this corrupt attempt to misuse their tax dollars. So the Justice Department had to come out and claim that the fund is dead.

But Donald Trump has made it perfectly clear that he still wants his slush fund to move forward so he can pay January 6 rioters who beat up police officers at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. I was here, and, frankly, I don't trust his cronies to put an end to it. It is unbelievable.

Whether it is $1 billion for a ballroom, $1.8 billion for a slush fund, Trump is focused on himself, not on the hardships of our communities--your communities--our families, not on the hardships people are facing.

Our families are struggling to put food on the table. Our families are worried about losing their healthcare. Our police departments are struggling with staffing shortages. That is why Congress has a responsibility to put an end to this wasteful slush fund, once and for all.

So I have introduced a package of three bills that would make sure the slush fund can never happen and would instead redirect that $1.8 billion to programs that actually help hard-working families and keep our communities safe.

My first bill would permanently block the slush fund from being created, and if the Trump administration still moves ahead with it, it would direct the funding to SNAP, the food assistance program that Washington Republicans have gutted to pay for their One Big Beautiful Bill.

So in Nevada alone, nearly 55,000 people lost SNAP benefits between July of last year and January of this year. And as a reminder, 40 percent of SNAP recipients in Nevada are children--are children. Children are going hungry because of Trump's cuts to pay to billionaires.

That means nearly 55,000 Nevadans now have to worry about how they are going to afford groceries at a time when groceries and gas prices are just going through the literal roof.

Now, imagine how many families $1.8 billion could help feed. Imagine how many parents could feed their children with that kind of money instead of paying January 6 rioters and Trump's allies.

And in my State, that kind of money could restore SNAP benefits for all 55,000 Nevadans--55,000 Nevadans who lost their benefits for more than 15 years.

I could feed those families for 15 years.

Mr. President, so I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged, and the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4705; further, I ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, if my Republican colleagues want to make prices lower, they can start by removing tariffs and not entering into unnecessary wars, but I want to get back to the issue at hand, which this slush fund. The slush fund, if it is truly dead like some say, then why not pass my bill?

Why not make sure that it is gone for good? What are Republicans so afraid of? And so if feeding hungry children isn't Washington Republicans' priority, there is another chance for them to do the right thing for our families. Because last year, Washington Republicans gutted--gutted--Medicaid and took healthcare coverage from millions of Americans in need so that they could give more tax breaks to billionaires, people who need it the least.

They gutted healthcare for families to give tax breaks to billionaires. And as of January of this year, nearly 170,000 fewer Nevadans were enrolled in Medicaid compared to 2023. That means fewer people seeing a doctor, fewer people getting preventive care, fewer people being able to afford treatment or the medication that they need, fewer people getting the care they need for their children when they are chronically or terminally ill. It is cruel, and the money that Trump wants for his slush fund could pay for more than 2 years of Medicaid coverage for every Nevadan who lost it because of these Republican cuts for payouts to billionaires.

So instead of rewarding Trump's political allies, we can help families get healthcare because nothing is more important than your health. Nothing.

A diagnosis can change your life in an instant, and I want people to be able to afford their prescriptions. I want people to be able to take their children to see a doctor. A diagnosis changes your life, and they took away healthcare.

And so a much better use for taxpayer dollars, that is what I want to do. I want to put it back into those Nevada families who are struggling with those life-altering diagnoses that we are all so very afraid of. And that is what my second bill aims to do. It will permanently block this slush fund from being created.

And if the Trump administration finds a way to move ahead with this, my bill would redirect the $1.8 billion to Medicaid, to help those mothers that I talked to, those parents, again, with sick children, to help those taking care of their family members. It matters. It is caring. And what they are doing and what they did to cut Medicaid is cruel.

Mr. President, so I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged, and the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4703; further, I ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, the objection is truly a shame because people will suffer and people will be damaged by poor health and some may lose their life from lack of care.

So my Washington Republican friends, they won't agree on funding SNAP and feeding those hungry children in Nevada for 15 or so years, funding Medicaid to help families again.

Perhaps we could agree on giving this funding for the men and women of law enforcement. Surely, they must stand up for law enforcement and for public safety and for community safety because across America our police departments are facing staffing shortages, recruitment challenges, retention issues.

Officers are being asked to do more with fewer resources. So the money from Trump's slush fund could fund more than 3 years of the COPS Hiring Program to help communities hire and retain more officers. It could fully fund more than 3 years of the Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program.

What is this program? It helps support the families of officers who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty. Nothing could be more important than supporting those families. Surely, Republicans want to help families of fallen or disabled officers.

And so the irony here is almost hard to believe, Republicans love to talk about how supportive they are of law enforcement, and yet Donald Trump wants to use your tax dollars to pay people who assaulted police officers right here in this Capitol in this room in this Chamber where we stand today on January 6.

And I think, and I hope, surely we can all agree, that the funding would be put to better use to support our men and women in uniform, our police officers. So my third and final bill would permanently block the slush fund from being created. And if the Trump administration still forges ahead with it, my bill would redirect the funding to Federal law enforcement programs.

So I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged, and that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4704; further, I ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, you know, this is truly a shame. It is extremely disappointing to me because by blocking these bills, Washington Republicans are paying tribute. They are paying tribute to the President, and they are saying that they approve of Donald Trump wasting 1.8 billion taxpayer dollars to pay his political allies and January 6 rioters.

They may claim the slush fund is dead because Trump and his administration say it is. But does anybody believe them? I would say not too many.

And so that is why I tried to pass these bills and create a fail-safe mechanism to redirect funding to food, to healthcare, to public safety, and so if Trump still tries to create this slush fund, we have a way to put it toward something good for our communities.

Unfortunately, Washington Republicans blocked these commonsense efforts.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

The only reason we are standing here and having this debate in the first place is because Democrats in administration after administration repeatedly weaponized the Federal Government against their political opponents and the American people. That is the entire reason this fund was proposed.

Weaponization of government by the Democratic administration is the entire reason for the lawsuit, and my Democrat colleagues could not distract from that fact by pretending to care about fiscal responsibility or the cost of living.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress running massive deficits is why the cost of living has skyrocketed.

Look at what the Democrats did when they controlled government under the Biden administration. Inflation hit 9 percent. At the same time, they weaponized the government.

I, unfortunately, have seen it firsthand. Democrats weaponized the government over the past three Democratic administrations. Under the Clinton administration, my company was illegally targeted by our government because I dared to stand up against ``Hillary care.''

Under the Obama administration, we saw conservative nonprofits targeted by the IRS to sabotage their mission to oppose the Obama machine.

Under the Biden administration, I was surveilled again illegally. My tax

returns were stolen and leaked to the public. Did the Biden administration do anything about it? Absolutely not. I was spied on after January 6. Democrats weaponized the government to target me and people like me. Not one person has ever been held accountable, and now they want to object to compensating victims.

How about Democrats apologize to people whose doors they beat down, whose information they stole, whose privacy they violated, and whose lives they ruined?

What about Scott Smith, a father just miles from this Chamber in Loudoun County who was targeted by the FBI because he demanded accountability from the school board after his daughter was sexually assaulted at school and the school board tried to cover it up.

How about Joe Robertson, a 77-year-old Montana Navy veteran--a veteran--who was fined $130,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison for building a pond in his remote property to fight forest fires because the government would not do its job to keep his family safe?

What about the specific religious groups that were targeted? Catholics were singled out by the Biden administration as potential domestic terror threats for living their beliefs. Mark Houck, a father of seven kids and pro-life activist was targeted and publicly arrested for his protests. His home was raided, he was dragged through Federal court, and he faced trumped-up charges for the crime of living his Catholic faith.

DOJ data shows that they weaponized the FACE Act for decades to throw the book at pro-lifers who expressed their First Amendment rights.

I think any government that has the power to villainize one specific religious group or belief is a serious problem that precedes disaster. That is why back in my home State I am fighting against self-proclaimed Nazis like Kanye West for performing in my State using public dollars and facilities.

It is clear from DOJ evidence that the Biden administration weaponized the government. Meanwhile, Members of this body gave themselves the power to sue over being surveilled in Arctic Frost, yet Democrats don't want to extend that remedy to the American people they serve.

If the Democrats want lower costs for American families, they should look at how Congress spends money. Congress is spending $2 trillion--$2 trillion--more than we take in year after year.

If you spend more money than you take in, in government, it causes the cost of living to increase. Has a single Democrat acknowledged a problem with that? No.

Democrats walked away from this year's appropriations negotiations because Republicans refused to run the outrageous deficits Democrats want to continue to force onto the backs of the American people. Do my Democrat colleagues know what that deficit spending does? It fuels inflation, which makes your dollar buy less and less and forces prices higher.

Still my Democrat colleagues just want to spend and spend and spend. I am a victim of weaponized government. The American people are victims of weaponized government. A lot of them need to be made whole as best as we can.

If my Democratic colleagues want to decrease spending to lower the cost of living, great, me too. Let's balance the budget. We all have to do it in our homes. Let's go find some wasteful earmarks and fraudulent programs to cut. We know they are there. Thousands are there. These bills are nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to slander Republicans because the Democrats want to deflect from their own documented history of corruption and weaponization.

I absolutely object.

Mr. President, in my lifetime, the cost of healthcare for a family of four has gone from $700 a year to over $25,000. ObamaCare, which my Democratic colleagues all supported, was supposed to reduce family healthcare costs by $2,500. If that was true, we wouldn't be worried here about healthcare costs, would we? If you look at the cost of a new car in my lifetime it has gone from 16, 1,700 bucks. I think the minimum new car is probably $20,000.

If you look at the cost of housing, it just came out that in 242 cities in this country, the starter home is a million dollars. Now, what has caused all this? Government. Bigger and bigger government, more and more regulations. There is a study that just came out that said the Federal regulations I think it costs $3 trillion a year, something like $15,000 per family.

So if my Democratic colleagues actually really cared about the cost of living, they would stop passing bills that would have more and more regulation and stop running $2 trillion deficits.

Now, as I already said, what we are talking about in these bills are nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to slander Republicans because Democrats want to deflect from their own documented history of corruption and weaponization by Democratic administrations.

This is a history of targeting everyday Republicans, congressional opponents, Catholics, Christians, pro-life groups, gun owners, military officers that don't adhere to leftwing politics, parents standing up for their kids and challenging school boards, veterans working on their private property, farmers challenging our DC bureaucrats, and any American that fails to pay tribute to the tyrants of their administrative state.

Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

So it is interesting that, you know, my Democratic colleague cares about law enforcement. In the last, what, year and a half, in this last year and a half--what--the government has been shut down three times, so all the Federal Government wasn't paid.

I never heard my Democratic colleagues that that didn't bother them then. Look at what we just finished. Federal law enforcement, ICE, and CBP weren't paid. They shut down the government this whole year. They had no interest in funding Homeland Security.

So these bills are nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to slander Republicans because the Democrats want to deflect from their own documented history of Democrat administrations' corruption and weaponization.

Let's remember: Democrat administrations have targeted everyday Republicans, congressional opponents, Catholics, Christians, pro-life groups, gun owners, military officers, parents standing up for their kids--I just can't imagine--parents standing up for their kids and challenging school boards, veterans working on their own private property, farmers challenging the power of DC bureaucrats, and any American that fails to pay tribute to the tyrants of the Democrat administrative state.

Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, first off, there is no fund. So we are talking about a fund that has never been created. And then we are talking about how the Democrats supposedly care about the cost of living when everything they do raises the cost of living--everything.

Government is your problem. If you have a cost-of-living problem, government did it to you. If your education costs are high, government did that to you. When I went to school, junior college was 200 bucks a semester. I went there because college was $250; the university was $255. Government did that. Look at what it is now--thousands and thousands of dollars. People end up with debt. When I went to school, people didn't end up with debt.

Government has done all this. Government has caused the cost of living to be high. There is no fund. We are talking about a fund that has never been created, and we are talking about the cost of living that is caused by Big Government.

I yield the floor.