Floor Statements

Mr. President, 60 years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, of Minnesota, whose desk my hands sit on right now, traveled to Independence, MO. President Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. He chose that city for a reason. He wanted to make clear these programs delivered what their birthplace promises: independence, health, and security for millions of Americans.

Before that day 60 years ago, there was no comprehensive government health insurance in the United States. If you didn't get insurance through work, you were on your own. Before Medicare, no insurance company wanted to provide coverage to seniors. Most Americans without job-based coverage faced illnesses and injuries, knowing they would have to pay out of pocket, and millions, especially older Americans, kids, and low-income families, went without the care they needed. They risked their health and their financial security.

Today, over 110 million Americans, including more than 1 million people in my State, depend on Medicare and Medicaid. These programs cover everything from hospital visits to lifesaving prescriptions to long-term care that allow seniors to remain in their homes. These programs, along with Social Security, have driven poverty among seniors to record lows, but that promise is under a renewed threat.

My Republican colleagues have passed laws that have cut Medicaid and Medicare, which millions of Americans rely on. They have voted to cut healthcare by over $1 trillion to pay for a bunch of tax cuts for billionaires. These cuts will throw more than 15 million Americans off of healthcare and threaten the independence not just of our seniors but of kids, people with disabilities, rural families, and working families.

As you know, the Medicaid cuts were right there for all to see. The Medicare cuts came out of a trigger. Because they added so much to the debt at $4 trillion, it triggered an automatic Medicare cut of $500 billion. That socks rural hospitals right there, and we are already seeing the effects of the anticipation of that because rural hospitals can't wait a year. They have got to show the people who run their hospitals what is going to happen. If they think they can't make it because of these cuts and what is happening, we lose these rural hospitals, and, suddenly, moms who want to deliver babies have to drive 2 hours, and people who want to go to an emergency room have nowhere to go.

In my State, 170,000 people from all walks of life risk losing access to the care that keeps them healthy and self-sufficient. Cuts like these nationally could close over 300 rural hospitals, 200 health centers, and over 500 nursing homes. Families caring for kids with special needs, kids with disabilities, could be left without the support that allows them to thrive, and people once again will be forced to choose between putting food on the table and filling a prescription.

As my Republican colleagues attack these programs, I have heard from countless Minnesotans who are among the 71 million Americans who rely on Medicaid in particular. More than one in five in my State gets access to care through Medicaid, and for seniors in assisted living, it is one out of two.

When it comes to people who rely on Medicaid, one example is Lola, whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. A social worker advised Lola that her employer-based insurance may not cover the cancer treatments that her daughter needed and connected her with Medicaid. She said, ``Medicaid helped completely'' with the transfusions, the surgeries, the T-cell therapy, and ongoing care. Lola added: Using my own insurance would have caused delays, and ultimately I would have been, for my daughter, in a life-or-death situation without Medicaid.

Another is Robby, who, after years in adult foster care, now lives independently with a roommate because of Medicaid's disability waiver and community-based services.

For these Minnesotans, this isn't about politics. When they call our office, we don't ask if they are a Democrat or a Republican; we just help them. When they send us a letter with their stories and pleading for help, we

just help them. It is about whether we as a country honor our promise that every American deserves independence, dignity, and security.

Medicare and Medicaid are overwhelmingly popular with Americans and overwhelmingly needed by Americans. It is about caring for one another. It is about ensuring that every American can live with peace of mind and have dignity--dignity--in their senior years and strengthening health and prosperity in every corner of our country.

On this 60th anniversary, we should be strengthening these lifelines, not dismantling them.

As a nation, we have already made progress--capping out-of-pocket drug costs with the last administration; passing my bill to empower Medicare to finally negotiate drug prices--if this administration will continue this program that already, for the first 10 drugs, saved billions of dollars; making healthcare affordable; saving families thousands of dollars on therapies and hospital stays for complex illnesses,

Yet, today, on this milestone anniversary, we are again called to defend the very promise that began in Independence, MO, 60 years ago.

To paraphrase Minnesota's Happy Warrior Hubert Humphrey, who was there with President Johnson when he served as Vice President after he was Senator from the great State of Minnesota--he once said this: The moral test of a government isn't just how it treats the young and healthy; it is also how it treats the sick, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

That is definitely true for government, and I believe it is a moral test for all Americans.

I urge my colleagues, let's protect the health and security that Medicare and Medicaid provide for Americans of all ages. Let's keep the spirit of Independence alive so every kid, every family, every person, no matter their story, can count on Medicare and Medicaid for generations to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his advocacy for small businesses. I hadn't heard that--turning Main Street into Pain Street--but as usual, he is able to take a whole complex concept and put it into one sentence that people will probably remember more than my entire speech right now, but let me continue.

I rise today, just hours before yet another self-imposed tariff deadline set by the President. He has threatened our allies and trading partners with an August 1 deadline to make deals or to see a dramatic increase in reciprocal tariffs. And while a few of these agreements have been announced, the result for the American people has been chaos, costs, and corruption--all up.

Let's start with the chaos.

The President promised 90 deals in 90 days. Instead, we have gotten more than 100 tariff changes--this way, that way, up and down--and barely a handful of vague trade frameworks, most of

them announced without any details. Only one of the six agreements the President has announced this month has actually been signed. But even these newly announced frameworks are very thin on details and still amount to a historically high, 15-percent-across-the-board tariff on American consumers and businesses--the highest effective tariff rate in modern U.S. history.

This is no way to treat our friends and allies, and it is certainly no way to run trade policy and strengthen our economy.

Manufacturers and farmers in my State and across the country are being asked to make business decisions when the rules have been changing by the week or the day. I have spoken with small business owners who are holding back investments because they don't know what tariffs they will be paying next month or even next week.

And it isn't just chaos; it is also corruption. The administration slapped a 50-percent tariff on the country of Brazil even when we have a trade surplus with them. Remember, at the beginning, when he was talking about ``Well, with some countries, we have these big deficits, and that is different than the surpluses''? Why would you slap a 50- percent tariff on a country that we have a trade surplus with? Why? Because the President didn't like the political headlines coming out of the country. That isn't a trade strategy; that is weaponizing economic policy.

Meanwhile, American families are paying the price. When the administration boasts about collecting over $100 billion in tariffs this year, that is $100 billion in new taxes. It is not China paying for Trump's tariff taxes; it is the people of our country. Trump's tariff taxes are the largest tax increase on the American middle class in over half a century.

The President's new tariff taxes are already raising costs for American families by $2,400 a year--$300 of that in food costs alone. According to one estimate, fresh produce could rise nearly 7 percent under the new tariffs that are set to take effect on Friday.

It is American manufacturers who are absorbing the costs when they have parts that are coming from other countries. It is the American exporters, like farmers, who are losing markets. The markets will dry up. And it is American consumers who are feeling it at the checkout aisle. That might not mean much to the wealthy who just got those giant tax breaks, but it means a lot to seniors who are already struggling with higher grocery and prescription drug costs, and it means a lot to people who are struggling with high costs. And I just read about how the Treasury Secretary is now talking blatantly about privatizing Social Security.

In Minnesota, the Small Business Person of the Year--Busy Baby owner Beth Benike--fears her business can't survive under these policies.

I have heard from Mark, the CEO of a flower company in our State, who told me his business is being undercut by foreign competition that is exempt from the very tariffs his company is forced to pay.

I have heard from Minnesota's soybean farmers, who are concerned about losing markets that they have spent generations developing.

In my State, we export over $7 billion in goods to Canada every year. Canada is not just our top trading partner; it is our trusted ally. Yet, under Trump's policy, we are slapping tariffs on them too.

Border crossings are down, tourism is down, and it is taking a toll on our economy.

That is why Senator Kaine and I got a vote on his resolution, which I was proud to be the lead cosponsor on, to say: Unleash us from this. Congress must take back its power over tariffs and the power of the purse. And, yes, we actually passed that bill. It is sitting over there, waiting in the House, as prices go up, as chaos goes up, and as corruption goes up.

You know, these are real people, real businesses, real farmers, and they are trying to survive in the uncertainty while the President treats our economy like a game show.

Let's be clear. I support strong trade enforcement. I backed targeted tariffs to combat the unfair dumping of steel and market manipulation, especially by China. I actually went over and met with the trade enforcers in the Commerce Department a few years back. I thanked them for their work and spent hours with them.

But this isn't a targeted approach. What President Trump is doing is a blanket approach that punishes our allies and our own workers more than our adversaries. He is using emergency powers to bypass Congress, and they are just letting it happen--our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and are enacting sweeping trade taxes with little regard to the economic consequences. That is not leadership; that is an abuse of authority.

That is why, as I noted, I co-led the bipartisan Trade Review Act with Senator Kaine and Senator Warner. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO agree like they did on that bill, you know we are doing something right.

So I will keep working to restore common sense and responsible governance to our trade policy on behalf of American families, businesses, and farmers.

I supported the USMCA, which was a Trump trade agreement which the President was so proud of at the time. I would ask: Why not negotiate these issues--some of the issues I know we have? Why not negotiate that within the framework of that agreement? Because it is up for review. Instead, we have this chaos.

Right now, more than half of our major trading partners--accounting for 56 percent of U.S. imports--still don't have finalized deals. We have 24 hours to go. The clock is ticking.

But here is what we do know: This is not how you grow American manufacturing, this is not how you give farmers certainty that they can export to market, and this is certainly not how you lower costs for the middle class.

Minnesotans have had enough of these tariff taxes. They want solutions, not showmanship. They want a trade policy that works for farmers and workers and their families. They want leaders who will tell the truth about what these tariffs are: They are a tax on the people of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Nevada for her work in trying to bring these bills to a vote on the floor. I want to thank Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I want to thank Senator Durbin, who is here, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee; someone who has, by the way, been a leading voice on immigration for years in this Chamber.

One of the things I don't understand here is that we have committees for a reason, and we have hearings for a reason. You can't do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another thing a few weeks later in a big speech on the floor. I like to show up at the markups, and I like to make my case.

And I will note that Senator Booker objected to my police reauthorization bill, the COPS funding--the Clinton COPS funding, long before Donald Trump came into office. So this is not just about this. This is a long dispute over this type of funding, funding that I think is really important right now.

Our country's law enforcement professionals do some of the hardest and most important work out there. Every day across America, we ask them to put everything on the line to keep us safe. We ask them to run towards danger and to guide others to safety. And every day across America, they put on their uniforms, their bulletproof vests, their badges, and they get to work. We need to have their backs, and that is what this package of bills does--by the way, a bill supported out of the committee from some of the most liberal Senators and some of the most conservative Senators in this body. We came together. There were bills we would have liked to include that we did not.

If the objection is based on some of this horse show that is going on out of the White House, I agree with that piece of Senator Booker's points. I have been equally vociferous taking on this administration. But all of these bills came out of the committee unanimously, and I think they deserve that support on the floor.

These bills help fund grants for mental health services for law enforcement. By the way, if this issue--which I agree with Senator Booker on about all these States should be treated the same--well, then, I suppose then he will be voting against all of this funding for New Jersey unless this is changed. So we should be watching for that for every single vote, instead of just these bills. These bills that are in front of us were supported unanimously out of committee--grants that help law enforcement combat child sexual exploitation; grants that help address recruitment and retention crisis that is plaguing local law enforcement; Senator Cortez Masto's bill, as she explained, to help support families of fallen law enforcement officers who were targeted and attacked because of their service as law enforcement.

My bill, which has now been objected to--so I am not going to mention it separately or ask for it to be called up separately. My bill, the Retired Law Enforcement Officers Continuing Service Act, done with Senator Grassley, would make sure that law enforcement agencies can continue to utilize the skills that talented law enforcement retirees have built up over their career of public service. There are many retired law enforcement officers who want an active retirement and are eager and ready to serve their community.

This might sound like small ball, but when we are looking how we are going to build up these police agencies when we don't have enough police, when they are out there at these scenes getting shot at, we have to be creative in terms of the ideas.

I believe strongly, we are going to see another President in the future. We are going to see, out of these next elections, a check on some of this. But for now, I want to get these programs started.

This bill would allow law enforcement agencies across the country to keep using their expertise to review video footage to solve carjacking cases or help cyber and financial crime investigations. This bill will also help train the next generation of law enforcement officers. These and the other police bills passed during Police Week while those police officers are sitting there in the hearing room when no one objected, they are bipartisan, commonsense legislation. They passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously.

And I can't help it if someone couldn't change their schedule to be there. I think that these hearings should mean something and that people should be saying the same thing they say in Police Week when those people are sitting out there in their uniforms who have lost loved ones. As they say on this Senate floor, if we expect law enforcement to respond to some of the most difficult crises at a moment's notice, it is on us to set them up for success.

I was there at the National Mall where it rained the entire night, and not a family wasn't there when they thought it was going to be a nicer day. And that was this year on the National Mall to honor those fallen heroes, the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Candlelight Vigil. Every single officer whose name was read that night was a beloved family member and a friend to so many, including three from my State.

There was Officer Jamal Mitchell who was shot and killed in the line of duty just last June; and Officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge who, along with Firefighter Paramedic Adam Finseth were killed responding to a domestic violence call in Burnsville, MN. They were called to duty. They answered the call. They actually got seven kids out of this house and saved their lives. One was gunned down. A paramedic came in to try to save him, and he was gunned down. I will never forget hearing from Adam Medlicott, who was there with the three fallen first responders when they answered the call.

He said of his fallen comrades:

We were there for seven children. Nothing could be more

honorable.

He is absolutely right. You can't teach that kind of heroism. Our brave law enforcement professionals deserve to know that the resources they rely on will be there when they need them.

I hope we can work some of this out. I completely agree with Senator Booker about what this administration is doing, but you can't just pick out a few bills that came out of committee and say, ``I am going to stop those,'' and then allow for other bills that fund other parts of your budget in your State.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I have addressed this before, but today I rise with a message that is both straightforward and urgent: Humanitarian aid must immediately reach the civilian population in Gaza.

As one pediatric doctor, the leader of the ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said, ``There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even myself.'' This is the pediatrician who leads the ward. ``I am speaking to you as a health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.''

The New York Times notes:

The World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, said

this week that the hunger crisis in Gaza [has] reached, in

their words, ``new and astonishing levels of desperation,

with a third of the population''--

That is right, one-third--

``not eating for multiple days in a row.''

The suffering we are seeing every day is unacceptable. More measures can be and must be taken to allow Palestinian families to access basic necessities. Those include food, medicine, and shelter.

At the same time, we must focus on achieving a cease-fire as soon as possible, one that would release hostages

held by Hamas and allow displaced Palestinians to return home.

Ultimately, what so many of us want to see is a lasting peace and a two-state solution, but that cannot happen when people are starving. As we pursue that goal, however, it is clear that the system for distributing aid that is now in place, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is nowhere near adequate. Yesterday, more than 100 nongovernmental organizations issued an urgent call to action, including CARE, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Save the Children, and so many more.

Acute malnutrition is rising. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while seeking food, most in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites and others on the routes of aid convoys. This is simply unacceptable.

Since the collapse of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in March, the humanitarian situation has only worsened. Many of us have advocated repeatedly for a change in course. In May, I joined 24 of my colleagues to call on President Trump to press for the immediate resumption of neutral and impartial humanitarian assistance, access, and distribution that fully meets the needs of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That same month, more than 40 colleagues and I sponsored a resolution calling for the urgent delivery of additional aid to Gaza.

And a few weeks ago, when Prime Minister Netanyahu and his delegation visited the Senate to meet with a bipartisan group of Senators, I attended, and I attended for one reason in my capacity as No. 3 in the Democratic leadership, and that was to raise the issue of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

And I did that. I expressed my strong opposition to cutting off vital humanitarian aid, arguing that more aid groups should be allowed into Gaza at more entry points and also conveyed my opposition to the continued displacement of Palestinians.

I say to my colleagues: You can support the people of Israel. You can be horrified and condemn, as all of us did, the terrorist attack, but we cannot continue to allow people to starve.

I believe U.S. diplomacy must focus on an urgent return to a cease- fire, the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas, and an increase in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. And following a cease-fire, we must pursue steps to end the war, establish postwar security and government arrangements in Gaza, and ultimately, as I noted, reach a two-state solution, an outcome I have long supported and a view I have conveyed in the past, strongly, to Israeli and Palestinian leadership in meetings here in Washington, DC; in meetings in Israel; and a meeting in the West Bank.

In the immediate term, lives are being lost on a daily basis--kids, innocents--and the Government of Israel must change course.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to the President's request that Congress take away money for public broadcasting and for our own security, in foreign assistance, that has already been passed and signed into law on a bipartisan basis with a Republican-led House and a Democratic-led Senate, at the time, which worked out all the details--yes, compromise is not a dirty word--and now look at what is happening.

This clawback doesn't just eliminate funding for, say, NPR and PBS. The primary impact of that part of the funding cut is going to be at local radio and TV--1,500 local public media stations across the country that receive 70 percent of this funding, jeopardizing these stations that provide local community services.

Stripping this funding is an attack on these local stations, yes, but it is the communities. I know because I know some of my communities that rely on these stations. Grand Marais, MN, the very tip of our State--the tip of Minnesota--do you think all of these other stations are covering the Canadian wildfires hourly?

They do because of the smoke. People need to know the air quality when they are making decisions about what they are going to do that day or the next day.

Do you think people know when, on Highway 61, there is a tree over the road or there has been a deer that has been hit by a car? No. They hear it on WTIP.

Or in Bemidji, MN, which has had some really, really difficult storms lately that took down so many structures and houses, they are able to get the kind of news that they need on that station. Their newspaper is now, for the most part, online. So they need these TV and radio stations that give them the information that they need.

I have had several Republicans from my State write me, former State legislators who are on the boards of these TV stations. They also view it as a way to get information.

At the local TV station in Austin, MN, the former Republican leader in the State senate is on the board. I visited with him recently, when I was down there. This is the place in Austin, in the Albert Lea area, near the Iowa border, where they are able to get their unique news that gathers people together, that brings them together.

Then there are the emergency alerts. Earlier this month, we were tragically reminded of the importance of this--Texas, New Mexico, the fires in Arizona. We rely on this information in local communities to know what to do and what is safe.

This isn't a partisan issue: 77 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats report relying on public radio for

emergency alerts and news. That is part of the reason why, for half a century, we have agreed on a bipartisan basis in the U.S. Senate to invest in public broadcasting. Yet now congressional Republicans are using a partisan process to rubberstamp the President's unchecked power and rip away these resources, despite the fact that the American people support this on a 2-to-1 margin.

I think about these stations in Duluth, in Granite Falls, in Austin. Every week, 20 million people across the country actually listen to radio programs that were started out of our local Minnesota Public Radio--maybe ``A Prairie Home Companion.'' They are listening to some of those former broadcasts. They make them smile, and they make seniors feel happy when they are alone in the assisted living.

Or maybe ``Marketplace''--that also started in my State. They are able to get the facts. They are able to get news about what is happening with the economy and interesting stories.

I think a constituent of mine said it best:

Public media serves us in many ways. We live in the middle

of the country. We only watch PBS and listen to public radio,

which provides local news coverage, arts programs, and

thoughtful discussions on a wide variety of topics--

In their words--

without loud argument or obnoxious advertising. . . . It

provides information on local disasters, such as we recently

experienced in Bemidji.

That is where Paul Bunyan is from--or that is where the statue is.

Because of the reporting done on that devastating event, we

were able to learn what was happening to the people and how

we could help.

We must support these vital resources that give voice to important local issues.

In addition are the reckless cuts to foreign aid. Foreign aid and development assistance play a critical role in promoting U.S. economic and national security by stabilizing volatile regions and decreasing the likelihood of U.S. troops being sent into battle. Helping our friends and allies, yes, it is the right thing to do, but it is also smart for us to do at home.

I have, with Republican Members of our congressional delegation in Minnesota, stood up together at press conferences to make sure we keep sending foreign aid--this is in the last 5 years--to Somalia, because we know what the threat is if we just close our eyes to terrorist forces trying to go up in leadership and take over regions of these countries. We know what happens. But if we just turn our backs, you are going to find out what does happen. It is not pretty, and it is not good for the United States of America.

It is certainly not good in our back and forth that we have with China and China's continuing investment in other parts of the world, whether it is infrastructure in Africa or sending food to countries in need.

This rescission would also weaken our global health programs. These programs not only show humanitarian leadership; they also keep us safe. You can't just put your head in the sand and hope that Ebola doesn't come your way, which we were able to at least limit its horrific spread by the work that we did overseas; or bird flu, where we have seen what happens there; or what is happening right now in the southern border with screwworm.

We are having this debate, and we are seeing the grave results of dismantling USAID.

In the midst of an intensifying war in Ukraine, the rescission would also drastically cut funding from the account that provides economic assistance to our partners.

You think about the President's work in the Middle East and the potential for extending the Abraham accords and the potential for a peace deal there. Well, that is not going to be helped if we cut off the foreign aid to some of our only allies that are in the region, countries like Jordan.

Foreign aid is about demonstrating leadership and compassion, but it is also about security.

To conclude, as a daughter of a newspaperman, I know how important public media and the free press are to strengthening our democracy. Hacking away at public broadcasting and international aid is not just shortsighted; it is dangerous. These investments are relatively small in cost yet immense in impact. They strengthen our country and strengthen our leadership.

We ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to look at what this means for our role in the world.

We have three independent branches of government. We have a process that--just as Senator Murray, who is here, and Senator Collins showed just last week--can be bipartisan, where we agree on budget amounts going forward. We have the power of the purse. We are article I in the Constitution, and we better show our power instead of just being rolled and being Members over there who are rubberstamping this President.

Stand up and do your job.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: myself for up to 5 minutes, Senator Lujan for up to 5 minutes, Senator Blunt Rochester for up to 5 minutes, Senator Markey for up to 8 minutes, and Senator Ernst for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for bringing us together, and I rise today in strong opposition to this request that Congress take away funding that has already passed on a bipartisan basis--Democrats and Republicans working together, House and Senate.

This proposal would gut already designated funding for public broadcasting and slash critical international aid funding, programs that have long had bipartisan support.

As the daughter of a newspaperman, I know how important public media and the free press are to our country. Public broadcasting reaches nearly 99 percent of Americans--99 percent--with programming they don't have to pay for, delivering educational programming for our kids, coverage of local news stories, and lifesaving emergency alerts.

I can't tell you how many times, in some of the most remote areas of my State, in that tip of Minnesota--I was just listening to the public radio station up there--they will inform you of what is happening with wildfires in Canada, because they wouldn't really care about that in certain parts of the country, even in certain parts of my own State. But it matters to people for emergency reasons. Or the flooding of roads matters to them. They don't even know if they can get from one place to another. We have had sudden incidences, even in those remote areas, where it is the source of news.

Access to this programming is important to people in urban, suburban, and

rural areas alike. We have long agreed on a bipartisan basis to support the more than 1,500 local and regional public TV and radio stations throughout the country. I loved the map that Senator Cantwell showed us because it showed how these stations are distributed across the Nation, in what we might call the reddest of States, in the most rural areas. I would argue that, in some of those rural areas, they are the most important.

And yet they are trying to undo this critical funding--but not all of them. I understand that people are working together on this, and I think we must continue the support.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports public TV stations in my State--in places like Duluth and Granite Falls and Austin--and supports 16 public radio stations across our State, like the ones in Grand Rapids, in Bemidji, and in Brainerd. We have a long history of producing public programming that is quite outstanding in our State, from ``A Prairie Home Companion,'' which many have heard of, to ``Marketplace,'' which came out of local stations out of Minnesota.

Public media in Minnesota has also created amazing original TV series, like the ones to inspire more young people to enter STEM fields and spotlighting our artists and our local chefs.

And we can't forget the impact on kids. When kids are exposed to so much bad stuff on the internet--PBS Kids: 15 million monthly viewers. They don't have those kinds of bad ads that pop up that they see or the bad links that they see. They see things that are suitable for kids, and parents know it.

All across the country, in times of crisis, public radio is essential to public safety. The Florida Public Radio Emergency Network provides geotargeted information with live forecasts, evacuation routes, and shelter details.

Alabama Public TV serves as the emergency alert station hub for the State, broadcasting signals to all radio and TV broadcasters throughout the State, as well as is the primary outlet for AMBER Alerts for missing kids.

Twin Cities PBS launched the Nation's first 24/7 TV channel broadcasting realtime emergency alerts. And, recently, in the wake of the horrific shooting of the State lawmakers in the State, when portions of our State were in shelter-in-place when a madman was out loose, Minnesota Public Radio kept people informed around the clock about how to stay safe, about where the shelter-in-place areas were, and what was happening with the manhunt.

It is NPR that continues to report on State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, whom I got to talk with yesterday, about their recovery, even when the national attention has moved on. That is what local public TV and local radio do for us.

This request, of course, would also deepen the damage when it comes to foreign aid. The President would impose major cuts to PEPFAR, the program that began under President George W. Bush, supported by so many Republicans in this Chamber, to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS. This has bipartisan support. It is credited with saving over 25 million lives.

The rescission would also weaken our other global health efforts, whether it is Ebola or malaria or bird flu. We know so many of these start in different places. And we can't just bury our heads in the sand. We actually need to take them on where they are because you just can't hope that no one is going to come knocking at your door--because it does, and it comes in the form of a very dangerous disease, or to your constituents who are stranded over in another place.

Or the need to help other countries so you increase your own national security--we know that very much in Minnesota, with our Somalian population and what they have faced in Somalia.

We know that when it comes to other countries that actually come up through all of it and are some of our best trading partners.

The President's proposed cuts to funding for UNICEF are also misguided. We should be at the forefront of supporting bright futures for kids.

This is about leadership. It is about national security. It is about building trading partners that are so important for us in the Midwest with our farmers. It is about the USAID Food for Peace Program. Minnesota farmers and ag businesses sold a total of $70 million to that program in 2024 alone. When America shares its bounty with the world and we do it in a smart and targeted way, we benefit.

Hacking away at public broadcasting and public radio is not just shortsighted; it is dangerous. And the same for the foreign aid. These investments are a small cost compared to what we get out of them.

We have made a decision--a Democratic Senate at the time, a Republican House at the time, together--on how we want to spend our funding. This is on us to stand up for, yes, the separation of powers but to stand up for the people in our community. I hope we can do it on a bipartisan basis.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I make a point of order that the pending measure contains an unfunded intergovernmental mandate, and thus it violates section 425(a)(2) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

In nutrition assistance alone, this bill shifts tens of billions of dollars onto the States, creating chaos for State budgets and hardship for families.

The CBO score for this bill says this:

The nontax provisions of the substitute amendment would

impose intergovernmental and private sector mandates as

defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and that the

SNAP cost-shift provision would impose the largest

intergovernmental mandate.

Seriously, the largest shift in this whole bill, the largest unfunded mandate is on the backs of kids and veterans and seniors and people with disabilities.

Sixty-four billion dollars over to the States, 44 of them have balanced budget amendments. You know they can't pay for this. It is hurting local grocery stores; it is hurting our farmers; and it is all done to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

I say to our colleagues, vote for families over billionaires. Vote for fiscal sanity over this ``Big Beautiful Betrayal,'' and vote yes. This is an unfunded mandate.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment with Senator Kelly of Arizona, No. 2849, and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, in addition to the many outrages of this bill--$4 trillion in debt, millions of people off of their healthcare--in the middle of the night, it got worse. It is something that must see the light of day, and that is, we all know it shifts $64 billion to the States that they can't pay for for food assistance on the backs of veterans, on the backs of kids, on the backs of people with disabilities. But the whole reason we were told that it was shifted over to the States was so that we would incentivize States to reduce errors. In the middle of the night, the biggest hypocrisy of the entire bill, the Republicans have rewarded States that have the highest error rates in the country--10 States with the highest error rates-- just to help Alaska, which has the highest error rate.

So the message to the country and the Nation's Governors and the Republican Senators is this: Raise your error rates. Get them up to 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent. Make a whole bunch of mistakes when it comes to SNAP because then you will get more money. You won't have your cuts for a year, you won't even have them for the next year. For the rest of us, the States--all the States in the Midwest--that are doing their best, they have got to pay in.

So, Senators, decide: Are you going to go with your States, or are you going to reward waste, fraud, and abuse, because with this provision that you put in there, you have done the opposite.

Strike this fiscal insanity from the bill and vote yes.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in strong opposition to the recently revealed Senate congressional budget bill. I will note that this is a 940-page bill that was just put out there at midnight. For me, that was a moment because, one, I realized that nothing has changed in terms of the proposal--it has actually added to the debt--and, two, from about $3.4 trillion to one analysis says $4 trillion, and it actually adds more Medicaid cuts, another $100 billion, up to $900 billion in Medicaid cuts. Those are the top lines, and I don't think anyone has had the time to look at every single detail of that bill, but to me it meant something else. That meant that I knew I was going to stay here, along with my colleague Senator Smith, because we have a job to do that is really important on this budget.

But it was hard to not go home and grieve for one of my very good and beloved friends Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, whose funeral was held today in our State. And I would have been there in person. Because of the gravity of the legislation we are considering today, I was able to watch it online.

One of the things that I most remember and will always remember from that funeral, in addition to the beauty of it, in addition to the trees and the bushes that awaited the guests outside because Melissa loved the beauty of the world and cared a lot about the world around her, but it was the words of our archbishop, Archbishop Hebda. It was a very religious service, full mass. My husband got to be there and take part in that mass.

But Archbishop said at the close of the ceremony, he quoted the new Pope, Pope Leo, who recently said that politics is one of the greatest forms of charity. Melissa always believed that. She believed that in how she lived her life and got things done for people. Whether it was school lunches or better paid family leave or more fairness for people in our State, she believed that to her core, and her husband did too.

When their kids wrote just a few days after their parents were murdered by a madman, their two kids in their twenties--one is going to get married in December, his fiancee was there, Melissa was planning the wedding--they asked people to make the world just a little bit better. They said: Plant a tree, pet a dog--hopefully, a golden retriever--because they loved dogs so much, do something small or big.

So I figure that is what we are going to be doing the next few days, and this is big. But it is something that is going to make a difference to people in this country if we don't do something about this bill right now.

What does this bill do? It kicks 16 million people off their healthcare--16 million people off their healthcare--in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest, in order to give multimillionaires a $400,000 tax cut? That doesn't make the world a better place.

Adding $4 trillion in debt--a trillion of it is interest, which is going to make mortgage rates go up. It is going to make it harder for young people to be able, maybe, to get their first house or pay their rent. It is putting it on their backs. It is putting it on their shoulders.

That is why I don't see this as a Big Beautiful Bill, I see this as a ``Big Beautiful Betrayal'' of the hard-working people of this country.

Why are our colleagues scrambling to get this done in 2 days? Just because the President sets a deadline and says: Jump, and they say: How high?

Why are they always rubberstamping things that they don't actually believe in? We still know this newest draft, the 940 pages that no one has really read--we know that the bill still rips away healthcare for millions of Americans and closes hundreds of rural hospitals. It still shifts costs to States and threatens food assistance for families across the country. It still adds trillions of dollars to the Federal debt.

People in this country, the more they hear about this, the more they don't like it. A FOX News poll recently, 60 percent of the people don't like it; 2 to 1 people say: This isn't going to help me; it is going to help wealthy people.

People on Medicaid, they don't want to lose access to healthcare. One out of two people in assisted living are actually on Medicaid. You know, when my dad was in assisted living, he had some savings. He was married three times so a lot of that money had gone away. Better to talk about another time. But I knew the exact day that that savings was going to run out. I knew the exact savings day because I was going to move him over to a Catholic Charities place that actually took Medicaid because that was the day that his Medicaid would kick in. And it gave me some solace, even though he was in a place that didn't take Medicaid, that I had a plan for him. I had a place for him to go. He worked hard his whole life. Grew up in a hardscrabble mine. He deserved to have the end of his life be a life of dignity.

This is not what the American people voted for. When I get out to rural Minnesota--I visit all of 87 counties every single year. I have done 49 so far. So I have been in a lot of our rural counties

in the last 6 months. They are scared to death of what this is going to do to rural hospitals because the debt is so huge in this bill, it actually triggers some rules on Medicare that will cut $500 billion in Medicare, in addition to the Medicaid cuts I already laid out, which are now up to $900 billion. That is devastating for rural hospitals. It is projected 300 rural hospitals will close. This is the lifeline--the lifeline--for people in rural America.

When they get something, a very, very serious illness, yes, they will go to another hospital in maybe a bigger area, bigger town, metro area, but when they need emergency care, unless they are going to get a helicopter coming in to get them or they break a leg--and there are a lot of people working outside in rural areas, farming, logging, you name it--they need to have a local hospital there. They need to have local doctors there.

There is no avoiding the facts: 16 million people cut off healthcare, closing over 300 rural hospitals and 500 nursing homes across the country.

Republicans want to say the updated text will help rural providers with additional funding, but the bill is now making over $900 billion in cuts instead of the $800 billion when it comes to healthcare.

I have heard from a working mom of two whose parents rely on Medicaid for healthcare. She told me she doesn't think it is fair to shift the cost of care to families like hers to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Duh. She said we need to draw the line and say this is enough.

I have heard from so many people across my State about the food assistance cuts: 4 million people off of food assistance. Do you know who are the majority--vast majority--of people on food assistance? Veterans, seniors, people with little kids, old people. Those are the people on food assistance.

Grocery stores, in rural areas, you may have one grocery store in a town, more likely in a county, more likely in four counties. They are operating already--many of them are independent groceries--on thin margins. You make these kinds of cuts, you make these kinds of cuts to SNAP, the results are going to be that you are going to lose these grocery stores.

As ranking member of the Senate Ag Committee, I have heard over and over again from farmers who are already facing headwinds--the Trump tariffs--they don't have markets now that they had markets before; the cuts to the international food assistance that we were always so proud of in this country, that was other organizations buying American farmers' food; the input costs; what is happening with avian flu and other things, and now you add this? This is food that is produced by American farmers when you cut $200 billion, as the Senate bill does, from the SNAP program.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Senate bill would end SNAP for 2.9 million Americans, including over nearly a million seniors and 270,000 veterans. The bill passed by the House would add $3.4 trillion, as I noted, to the national debt, and this Senate bill is now up to $4 trillion. And it uses this funky budgeting, which let me just explain an easy way, it is called baseline budgeting.

Everyone that looks at this from the outside says this is a $4 trillion debt adder, but they use something where they say: OK, let's say--the Washington Post did this today. You go to a movie and you buy a movie ticket. Let's say it is $10. Then you get some popcorn. And you do that one week because you want to see that ``F1`` movie, the new movie. Then, 2 weeks later, you go and you want to see it again, but you get some popcorn for $5--small popcorn for $5. OK.

Instead of saying, ``You are paying your 10 bucks for the ticket and your 5 bucks for the popcorn,'' they say, ``Oh, it is only 5 bucks because that is how much it went up over the last few weeks.'' That is the funky budgeting. That is the joke. That is the faux budgeting that is going on, on the other side.

So $4 trillion in 10 years--that is what it costs. This is not what Americans voted for.

The President promised to lower costs and stand up for the middle class. This bill does the opposite. It raises costs. It takes from working people to pad the pockets of the wealthy, and that is why this bill is so unpopular.

Whether it is a mom from Louisiana whose son has Down syndrome and counts on Medicaid or a busdriver from Kansas, like the one I met, who uses SNAP to feed her kids, the American people are speaking out against this bill.

We will have the weekend to fight this bill, and I think people, in the middle of the summer, maybe they are not tuned in, but they better tune in because we should be protecting healthcare, not taking it away; defending food assistance, not raising grocery costs. We should not be giving tax breaks to the wealthy. We should be helping out the middle class and hard-working Americans.

That is what our job should be. It is not what this bill is.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today, along with my colleagues from Illinois and from Wisconsin. And you just heard from Senator Baldwin about the effects of this budget bill on the Midwest.

I guess I would start by asking the same questions as our colleague Senator Tillis, who just announced he wasn't going to seek reelection, after the President threatened him with a primary, and after he took a vote and had the audacity to ask the questions that had to be asked about this bill.

And you heard him today. He talked about how he had talked to the hospital association in his State, how he had talked to the Governor's Office, how he had gotten the actual data on the effects of Medicaid in North Carolina. And then he asked the question: How hard is it to see the impact of these proposals? And he asked: What is wrong with putting a little daylight on what is going on here?

So that is what I am going to do in my few minutes here--put a little Midwestern daylight on what is going on here--and that is that, under this bill, 17 million people would be kicked off their healthcare because of the Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act changes.

That was 16 million people until we got the updated numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. That is a nonpartisan group.

It also drives $4 trillion in debt. It used to be $3.4. Now it is up to $4 trillion. And what will that mean? That will mean big time in the Midwest, where I have so many of my own constituents wanting to buy their first house. It is going to mean major increased interest rates. It is going to mean difficulty in buying all kinds of things for which you would take out loans or for small businesses--all for giving a bunch of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, $400,000 for multimillionaires.

Our colleagues are going to raise costs and take healthcare and food away from millions of Americans.

So my colleagues have talked about Senator Baldwin and Senator Durbin, and talked about the effects that this bill has in the Midwest when it comes to healthcare and the closing of the rural hospitals. The Midwest has a huge number of these rural hospitals. It is about half of them that would be forecast to close.

She talked about the Medicaid cuts. So I am going to talk about a different piece of this, and this is the impact of cuts to food assistance.

There is no avoiding the facts. Here they are. About a month ago, the House passed a budget bill, as you know, that cut nutrition assistance by nearly $300 million. It put the country on track to eliminate SNAP for 4 million Americans and reduce benefits for millions more. I was hopeful that we would go in another direction. And while there were some changes made by the Republicans on the Agriculture Committee that I appreciated, it still amounts to over $185 billion in cuts from the SNAP program.

And let me remind you that the vast majority of people on SNAP are older Americans, people with kids, veterans, and people with disabilities.

We were just out on the Senate steps with a number of those people and the groups that they represent and faith leaders, talking about this very subject.

Why them? Why give tax cuts to the wealthy on their backs?

We know that the impact of the ``Big Beautiful Betrayal of a Bill'' will be even more stark in the Midwest.

In the Midwest, here are some examples. Americans use SNAP benefits-- nearly 155,000 people in Nebraska. And let's face it. That is not the biggest population State, but 155,000 Nebraskans use SNAP; about 190,000 people in Kansas; 260,000 people in Iowa; 660,000 people in Missouri; 700,000 people in the State of Wisconsin. Senator Baldwin just talked about the impact of healthcare there--but 700,000 people of my neighbors in Wisconsin. Nearly 1.5 million people in Michigan use SNAP. And in Minnesota, it is 450,000.

So, yes, those people will be affected greatly by this faux shift to the States. And, unfortunately, while we tried to fight part of this-- the State shift--we were not able to get that changed, in the last few days.

This means certain States. I am just going to give you some examples. Hundreds of millions of dollars are supposed to shift over to States in the Midwest. When 41 of the 50 States in our country have balanced budget amendments, what are they supposed to do? Cut infrastructure? Cut law enforcement?

The majority of these cuts--and this is why this is such funny math-- are shifts to the States, and it is why Governors, especially in the Midwest, like Governor Kelly in the State of Kansas, who has been speaking out big time on this, why they are so concerned about the shift.

In addition--and this is not something everyone thinks about when they think about SNAP, but we think about it big time in the Midwest-- it is farmers and grocers. Over a third of America's farmland is located in the Midwest. That includes more than 722,000 farm operations, which is more than one-third of farms nationwide.

So why would farmers care about this? Well, they will lose revenue because Americans won't be able to buy their products. And that loss-- that is the SNAP program. Right? It buys food from America, just like international organizations were buying food from America with USAID. That has been cut. Or the Trump tariffs which dry up

markets in places all over the world because of retaliatory tariffs, that is hitting our farmers. Input costs, inflation, you name it. And now, this on top of it.

In addition, this is going to be a big hit to our grocers. In many rural counties throughout the Midwest, their independent grocery store is the lone grocer in the county. So in 76 counties nationwide, they don't even have a single grocery store, and half of those are in the Midwest.

I recently visited an employee-owned grocery store in rural Long Prairie, MN--population: 3,600. Businesses like that operate on tight margins, and they usually serve not just that county, as you can see from the numbers I just provided you, but the surrounding counties, or they may be the only ones in town. To businesses like that, the cuts to SNAP are pretty significant because that is sometimes the margin on which they are able to stay alive as a business.

This would make it harder and harder and more expensive for those grocery stores. It could put them out of business. That is for sure. That is what the grocery stores believe. But it also hurts the individual people in their areas, because in the rural areas, you have an overwhelming number of seniors, you have got an overwhelming number of veterans, and you have just an overwhelming number of the people who are using these kinds of grocery store.

So SNAP supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in wages of these independent grocers, farm and other industries, including more than 1,700 jobs in Nebraska, more than 1,900 jobs in Kansas, more than 2,600 jobs in Iowa, more than 7,000 jobs in Missouri, more than 6,000 jobs in Wisconsin, more than 13,000 jobs in Michigan, more than 4,000 jobs in Minnesota.

We know that from farmers and truckers to local grocers, for every dollar invested in SNAP about $1.50 of economic activity is generated nationwide.

For many Midwesterners, this bill would make the difference between having a grocery store in their region or not.

I mentioned the shift of billions of dollars of costs to States that will blow holes through the State budget. They won't be able to support it, and, sadly, our Republican colleagues know this, because 44 States--44 States--have this balanced budget rule, and they are going to be forced to choose between paying the cost for food and paying for critical services. That is why 23 Democratic Governors, all of them, just laid out in a letter to Congress that these cuts don't just increase State costs; they make it nearly impossible for States to effectively plan for these long-term budget impacts.

Those are Governors from Kentucky, with Governor Beshear, to Arizona, with Governor Hobbs. Across the entire Nation, we heard from these Governors, not to mention the Governors such as Governor Pritzker in Illinois and Governor Walz in Minnesota and Governor Kelly in Kansas and Governor Whitmer in Michigan.

Based on 2023 figures--ready for this?--the House and Senate version of this bill would shift--and it varies because the bills are different. But this is how much money we are talking about: between $16 million and $49 million onto the State of Nebraska, between $61 million and $101 million in costs onto Kansas. Imagine the budget. Suddenly, oh, you have got to do an extra $60 million. Too bad, you have a balanced budget amendment.

Up to $26 million in costs onto Iowa, between $225 million and $376 million onto the State budget in Missouri, up to $68 million in costs onto Wisconsin, where Governor Evers was also a signatory of this letter.

Between 456 and 761 million in costs onto Michigan and between 43 million and 128 million in costs onto Minnesota.

And those numbers are on top--on top--of an increased administrative cost shift to States. It used to be 50-50; now it is 75-25.

Hello, States. You with strapped budgets, we are now making you pay 75 percent of administrative costs, which would make it even harder for States to invest in the staff training and upgraded financial systems that would make the program more sound and reduce payment errors.

It is not just the State budgets that will be affected. In many States, including Minnesota and Wisconsin, it is counties rather than the States that run the SNAP program.

So I had a visit from some of the rural counties. And they--talk about living off a margin, a thin margin, trying to help their taxpayers trying to get this done, in States like Minnesota and Wisconsin that believe in strong local government--big surprise--our States and a number of other States with bigger rural areas have decided: We would rather have the counties do this.

So now these cost shifts will go directly to these county governments. And you would not believe the numbers of what they would have to do to increase their taxes in these rural counties. They said: We can't do that.

So if that happens, they will have to raise their local property taxes or cut county services.

In the past, we have said that if you are raising kids or taking care of an older relative, we are going to help you feed your family, even if you don't have a job. This reconciliation bill would change that. It would withhold food assistance from families raising kids over the age of 13 and adults 55 and up if they don't meet the new requirements.

The Senate bill also eliminates an existing exemption for veterans, homeless people, and former foster youth, an exemption my Republican colleagues supported in the Fiscal Responsibility Act just 2 years ago.

So this is a shift among the party. The Republican party actually said this was a good idea to have exemptions for vets and homeless people and former foster youth. Not anymore. These are people who are already struggling, veterans who have sacrificed to serve our country.

I believe that when our veterans signed up to serve, there was no waiting line. And when they are in this country and they need help with food or they need a job or they need a home, there shouldn't be a waiting line in the United States of America.

So everyone that I have talked to about this, just as Senator Tillis was saying about Medicaid in North Carolina--and I spent time on this. I visit all 87 counties in my State every year. I am up to 49. So I have been able to talk to people who aren't political, who are Republicans, talk to people I just run into in rural grocery stores in the vegetable line. I mean, I have talked to a ton of people. And what they have said to the store managers, to the food shelf volunteers, to those that take SNAP: This isn't a good idea.

That is what the public opinion polls say: FOX News poll, 60 percent of people say this bill is a bad idea; 2 to 1 say it is going to help wealthy people and not them.

Well, they are right about that. This is a betrayal of the middle class, and it only takes four of our colleagues--and four in the House, by the way--to stand up and say: We need to rewrite this thing. Let's start over.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today, on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to shred nearly five decades of precedent protecting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions, to say that now is the time to protect freedom.

I appreciated the words of Senator Hassan from the State of New Hampshire, a State grounded in freedom, for her focus on freedom. I also thank Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester for bringing us together today.

In the 3 years since the Supreme Court went against the 70 percent of Americans who believe that healthcare decisions should be made by a woman, with her family and her doctor, instead of by politicians, women have been at the mercy of a patchwork of State laws that are creating chaos when it comes to accessing reproductive healthcare.

Today, 20 States partially or fully ban abortion, affecting more than 31 million women across the country. I ask why women in Minnesota should have different rights--different fundamental rights--than women in Texas, why a woman in Oregon should have different rights than a woman in Georgia.

Women are also being forced away from emergency rooms and left to travel hundreds of miles for healthcare, and doctors are being threatened with prosecution for just doing their jobs.

In Texas, a pregnant teenager died after being denied care at three different hospitals. I will never forget the gut-wrenching testimony I heard from another woman, Amanda Zurawski, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. She nearly died from sepsis after being forced to carry her stillborn daughter Willow to term due to Texas's abortion ban. It was a heartbreaking story.

President Trump has made clear that he was and is, in his own words, proudly the person who ended Roe v. Wade, and his administration is continuing its assault on women's reproductive freedom. The Trump administration has rolled back policies that protect access to lifesaving abortion care during medical crises. It has announced it will be putting mifepristone under review despite the fact that the American Medical Association stated that ``there is no evidence that people are harmed by having access to this safe and effective medication'' that has been on the market, I would add, for more than two decades and is safely used in 90 countries.

But the Trump administration has decided: Well, we know better. We know better than the American Medical Association. We know better than the women of the country that have been using this medication safely. We know better than 90 other countries.

And the President is putting forward nominees to the Federal bench, including ones I have recently questioned, with a demonstrated hostility to reproductive freedom.

As if this wasn't enough, congressional Republicans are also seeking to pass a budget that would leave 1.1 million patients who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for critical and lifesaving services like cancer screening, STI tests and treatment, and birth control, among other things, with nowhere to go.

We are at a pivotal moment for women's rights in this country. Are we going to continue to move forward or are we going to be sent further back in time? Enough is enough.

As my colleagues have made clear today, we refuse to back down. We

refuse to give up. We will not settle for a world in which our daughters and our granddaughters have fewer rights than their moms and fewer rights than their grandmas.

We need to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into law once and for all and guarantee the right to access care. That is why we must pass the Women's Health Protection Act--the first step in addressing the devastating reproductive healthcare crisis that Dobbs unleashed-- and keep fighting any effort to deprive women of the healthcare we need and deserve.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague from Minnesota Senator Smith to honor two Minnesotans, who are friends of ours, who were taken from us this weekend in a shocking act of political violence: Representative Melissa Hortman, our former speaker of the house, and her husband Mark Hortman.

I am also continuing to pray for State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, who survived a brutal assassination attempt. John took nine bullets, and Yvette took eight, and they are continuing to recover in the hospital. I have been in touch with Yvette, and she is grateful for the outpouring of support from all over the country for their family.

And I want to extend my enormous gratitude to the hundreds and hundreds of local, State, and Federal law enforcement who worked tirelessly over the course of a 43-hour manhunt to apprehend the suspect. They ran toward the danger. They risked their lives. And because of their bravery and diligence, our State was able to breathe a sigh of relief Sunday night knowing that this man was no longer at large.

The local officers from Brooklyn Park, MN, also stopped further assassinations, along with other officers, in the moment by going over to check on legislators after learning about what had happened at Senator Hoffman's house. We now know that the assassin went to two other legislators' homes in between the two shootings that night and in one case sped off after being spotted by the police.

While it was too late to save Melissa and Mark, the officers' decision to check on their house allowed them to spot the assassin, separate him from his vehicle, and begin the manhunt.

But, right now, we want to focus on who Melissa and Mark were as people. They were great neighbors, wonderful friends, and great parents to their beloved children, Sophie and Colin.

Melissa is someone whom I wish the whole Senate and the whole Nation knew. We treasured her in Minnesota. She was the epitome of what you want in a public servant. She went into it for all the right reasons.

She grew up in Spring Lake Park and Andover, MN, working at her family's used auto parts company in Blaine in the summers. After leaving for college, she came back to Minnesota for law school and began her career in our State.

She was always devoted to her community. She was a Girl Scout leader and taught Sunday school at her local Catholic church, and she was always one of the first to raise her hand when someone needed a volunteer for, well, just about anything, including training service dogs for veterans.

One of them, Gilbert, was just too friendly for service because he couldn't just focus on one person, and so their family adopted him and loved him very much. Sadly, he was shot that night, and the two children had to make the decision to put him down this weekend. How they loved that dog.

Melissa and I first ran for public office around the same time--both with little kids--me for the county attorney's office and her for the State legislature. That is how I got to know her: I was the county attorney; she was running for the legislature. We went door to door together, and it seemed like she knew everyone in the district already.

She was elected in 2004 and served in the Minnesota House for 20 years, and she left a lasting impact. As a legislator, she authored legislation that created Minnesota's solar energy standard. As minority leader, she guided her caucus with conviction and a sense of humor. And she wasn't afraid to call out the all-male card game taking place during debates. When her colleagues chose to make her the speaker, her first order of business was getting rid of the speaker's mute button. As she said at the time, ``I have a gavel . . . and a gavel is good enough for me.''

Melissa was one of the most consequential speakers in the history of our State. She knew no limits in terms of trying to get people together, trying to get things done. And while I cannot

believe she is gone, Minnesotans will be feeling the impact of her leadership forever.

When a Minnesota student gets a free school lunch, that is Melissa. When a Minnesota parent is able to take paid leave to spend those early precious moments with a newborn, that is Melissa. When a Minnesota voter casts a ballot without facing unfair discrimination, that is Melissa. When a woman is able to access reproductive care in our State, that is Melissa. And when our State achieves 100 percent clean energy by 2040, that will be because of Melissa. And when we had a tied State house this year, it was Melissa who forged a power-sharing agreement and a budget with her Republican counterpart. She was a generational leader, and she led with integrity and with courage.

She and her husband Mark, who you see here, who also was accomplished in business and a kind, kind person--they were compassionate, and they were smart. They were just nice to everyone, and I can't believe they are gone.

Here they are with their kids.

The polarization in our country--the divisions, the online hate-- needs to stop. Violence has absolutely no place in our democracy. We need to come together and bring down the rhetoric. We must be united in the face of this attack. It was simply un-American.

That is why the entire Minnesota delegation, Democrats and Republicans--including Senator Smith, including Congressman Emmer--came together over the weekend to call this violence out. We spoke with one voice to condemn it. And in our State, Melissa's colleagues on both sides of the aisle have done the same.

We need to recognize the reality that there are unbalanced people out there who read things online, they believe them, and they act on them. We have seen this too many times.

There are many things we can do as a body to fix this problem, and I am sure, in the days to come, we will offer legislation on security and all kinds of things. But we don't need to pass a law for people to turn down the rhetoric, to treat each other with decency and respect, to act a little more like Melissa and Mark.

Mr. President, Melissa and Mark Hortman were the best of us. I am shattered to have lost them but eternally grateful to have known them.

I want to end by sharing a message from their beloved kids Sophie and Colin. They wrote this just last night:

This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together.

Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors.

Treat each other with kindness and respect. The best way to

honor our parents' memory--

they said--

is to do something, whether big or small, to make our

community just a little better for someone else.

I urge my colleagues to hear that message, and I am honored to be here with my wonderful colleague Senator Smith.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to the President's request to Congress this week to eliminate $9.4 billion in funding that has already been passed and signed into law. Let's say that again--that has already been passed and signed into law.

Anyone who watches ``Schoolhouse Rock!'' and listens to the song knows how a bill becomes a law. A Republican-led House at the time and a Democratic-led Senate came together; they made an agreement; they passed a bill; and it was signed into law by the then-President. But this President thinks he can just come in and change everything when it comes to really important things for people in this country that I am about to get to. That is just not how it works. We have got to do our jobs, and people need to stand up and say: This is our part of the job. We make the decisions about the funding. The President can veto them. He can work with us, you know, as we could be doing right now. Instead, it is just a one-pony show, but that is how this place works.

So what this proposal would do would gut funding that has already been appropriated for broadcasting--public broadcasting--and slash critical international aid funding, which are programs that have long had bipartisan support. I am the daughter of a newspaperman. I care a lot about people getting information, getting news, and right now, I care a lot about it in rural America because there has been such a breakdown of news coverage--of small newspapers that have folded, in part, because we won't do anything about the social media companies-- about Facebook and Google--and how they are able to use the content without being reimbursed. We just let it sit there as their lobbyists come in and stop it.

But while we are doing that in a lot of these areas now, the only news--the only way for them to find out about what is going on with a storm or what is happening with a wildfire or what is even happening with their local softball team or what is happening with the high school or what business is opening or closing--is through these sources of public radio and public TV.

Public broadcasting reaches nearly 99 percent of Americans with free programming, delivering lifesaving emergency alerts by the local news and shows that talk about what is actually happening locally and what is true and

what is happening and what events are going on and when they can attend the school fair--all those kinds of things. But President Trump has decided to try to claw back the money Congress has already provided, I guess, to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthiest and to try to claw it back for over 1,500 local and regional public TV and radio stations throughout the country. Many of these stations provide free, high- quality programming to millions of households in rural areas. A lot of them don't even have what they need to see it online, and this is actually how they get their news. Even without that, they are in their cars a lot. They have a long way to drive, and they get a lot of stuff off the radio.

I know that in my State this will be particularly devastating. We have a lot of rural areas. Minnesota has a long history of public radio and TV programming. Every week, 20 million people across the country listen to the Minnesota Public Radio programs that were originally produced by the Marketplace, right? Since 1967, its award-winning news operation has documented some of the most important stories of our time. With Minnesotans coming from Cambodia and as to what was happening there, it was public radio that was covering that. In 1988, MPR's Main Street radio produced a documentary called ``Against the Grain,'' which gave rural Minnesotans the mic to talk about how they were handling economic change. In 2007, MPR News covered every detail of the collapse of the I-35W bridge, which was, of course, also warning people of where they had to go, of what was happening, of what was closed down. They are covering research on dementia, State plans for K through 12 education. The legislative session right now--both the public TV and public radio stations--are diligently covering every single detail of that while so many other news organizations have gone away or broken down.

What do we want to have--no coverage of a city council in Bemidji, MN? We don't want to know what is happening on Main Street? We don't want to know, when a flood comes in, what stores are open and when? Why would we decide to cut ourselves off from information at this moment in time?

Public TV is a place where so many people get their news that 58 percent of households watch PBS programming in a year. PBS Kids? There are 15 million monthly viewers of PBS Kids, and, yes, that is right. They don't get exposed to all the advertising and all the stuff they would see online because they are watching the PBS Kids. I think that is actually a pretty cool thing for our country that there is a place that kids can watch these programs. Every month, 36 million Americans watch their local PBS.

I was just at KSMQ TV in Austin, MN. I am sure most of the people haven't heard of it, but, boy, to the people in Austin, it is pretty important. For tens of thousands of people, that is where they get their news--72 percent. The former Republican Senate leader in the State senate is on the board because they know this is a place that can find out about local news or what is happening and where they can find out about local news in places like Granite Falls, MN, and in places like Bemidji, MN.

All across the country, in times of crisis, public radio and TV are essential to public safety. While many other news sources lost power and the internet during Hurricane Helene, Asheville's Blue Ridge Public Radio stayed online, bringing lifesaving news and information to the over 500,000 people in the region who were without power. When Hurricane Milton devastated the Tampa area, local public station WUSF hosted live call-in shows. It aired frequent local news briefings and maintained a regularly updated live blog with a text-only bandwidth option to keep residents informed and safe before and after the storm.

I have been in so many areas of my State in a time of crisis of flooding, where you go down there, and the mayor in a really small town is sitting there, but he is live-streaming on their local public access because that is the way. Where else are people going to go? Are they going to try 80 different platforms on social media? Hmm. Are they going to go and try to figure out which local TV station in the Twin Cities--miles away--is, maybe, showing something every so often about their problems? They go to public access purely for safety's sake and much less for kids seeing really good programming that is free of all the commercial aspects that are coming kids' ways every single day. There is the interesting, in-depth kind of reporting you can have on a place like Marketplace for what is happening with the economy or something to listen to when you are driving for hours and hours and hours that doesn't mean endless ads and endless marketing because you actually get to hear the news or you actually get to hear some music you like.

That is what public TV and public radio do for us. It is a treasure in our country. Public broadcasting creates a more informed community through quality programming on local and national events, and I think it is really going to be important, as we debate this in the next few weeks, to remember that ``local'' part. It shines a light on the people, places, history, and stories that are the fabric of towns and cities that are addressing the most pressing issues. We must support these vital resources that give voice to important local issues that wouldn't otherwise be heard. They are going to be lost to history. It is going to be a future erosion of the fabric.

So what do people do instead? Oh, go look on Twitter and see if you can protect your kids from a bunch of bad stuff that is on there. I use it. A bunch of us in here--almost all of us--have accounts. It is an important way to reach people. I am not cutting it down, but I would much rather have a kid in my State be watching the programming on public radio than looking on social media accounts right now or be watching it on public TV and listening to the radio. It is a safe space for them to get some programming.

The President's request would also deepen the damage this administration has done to our standing in the world through reckless cuts to foreign aid. I will give you one example. The President would impose major cuts to PEPFAR, the program that began under President George W. Bush to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Over many years, this program has earned consistent bipartisan support across 4 administrations and 10 Congresses. It is credited with saving over 25 million lives. These programs not only demonstrate Americans' humanitarian leadership, which certainly helps when you need a friend when there is a conflict going on abroad and you can point to things that you did in working with other countries, but they are also good for our country. We know that you just can't bury your head in the sand and hope that these problems in other countries and diseases aren't heading your way, whether it is Ebola or malaria or the bird flu. Oftentimes, these things come in from other countries. A pandemic, right? They come in from other countries.

So why would we, at this moment in time, cut off our investments in public health and in food aid and other things that are not only right, based on your belief that we are part of this world, and your faith or whatever makes you believe that, if we can save some lives for a small part of the Federal budget in America? Because we are so good at innovation and we are so good at producing things, and, yes, we have some extra food, and, yes, we have some rural economy that we want to keep strong, but also, just from a purely American, selfish version of this--and I don't mean ``selfish'' like a bad thing; I mean ``selfish'' like looking out for ourselves and our country--you would want to work with the rest of the world so these diseases don't come through your doors or you don't shut out and anger other countries when 90 percent of our customers, potential customers, are outside of our borders. You want to be able to sell stuff to them but not if we cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and make fun of them and call them the 51st State.

The President's proposed cuts to funding for UNICEF are also misguided. I was one of those kids at Halloween who would go trick-or- treating. I would have my bag and this little UNICEF box so people would put some pennies in, and I learned how much each of those dimes would mean for food for kids in other countries. We should be at the forefront of supporting brighter futures for children who are facing the hardships of poverty so the

next generation can build strong societies and become close partners with the United States.

Think about people who study in our colleges and graduate schools from other countries. Think about what they offer us. Yes, they pay their way a lot of the time. That helps college. But do you know what else they do? Sometimes they stay. Sometimes they stay for a few years. Basically, they are getting advanced degrees. They are getting skills that we want them to get, and sometimes we want them to stay in our country. In my mind, we should be stapling a green card to their diplomas. That is why, when you look at Fortune 500 companies in our country and who has headed them up, a huge number of them are immigrants or are kids of immigrants who were educated in our country.

That is such a big part of our economy and our advantage across the world. Why would we be cutting them off--or they go back to their home countries and say: You know, I kind of liked it there. They start a business. Then they do business with our country. That is how this has worked.

American businesses need access to emerging markets. Many countries that have received U.S. assistance have become important American trading partners. The connection between foreign assistance and American prosperity is especially clear in agriculture. America has proudly fed the world for decades, and foreign aid has been a critical component of that effort. Food aid is a significant market for American farmers, purchasing over $4.25 billion in American commodities from 2020 to 2024.

Minnesota farmers and ag businesses sold a total of $70 million in ag products to USAID's Food for Peace Program in 2024 alone.

Continuing this aid should not be a partisan issue. It never has been, or we never would have gotten it done for all these years. It has been completely bipartisan. Some people come at it, as I said, because of their faith and their belief in helping the world. Some people come at it in terms of economics and think this is how we help people, and then this opens the markets for us. Some people come at it from a security standpoint, which I mentioned with health but also applies in other ways. If you help people and you are their friends, it can lead to good things down the line.

Cutting funding for this international aid, not to mention cutting ourselves off from the information we need, especially in rural areas that so often in news deserts rely on public radio and public TV for their information, is sending our democracy backward at a time when we are completely connected and should be connected to the rest of the world.

These investments, compared to the rest of the Federal budget, aren't as big, but their influence in the immediate and in the long term is immense. They strengthen our country at home and strengthen American leadership around the world.

This is a test of our values, yes, but it is also economically the right thing to do to keep a fragmented country that is ever-divided somewhat on the same plane, by their kids having a public TV program to watch and learn from, from their community being able to tune in and watch a local sports game and are able to get their news about what happened on their city council and talk about it the next day.

So one person says: I don't know what happened. I read this on Facebook.

Then the other person says: No, that is not true. I actually saw the local news in Austin, and I saw what it said on our local public TV network--they don't even, maybe, know what that is, but they know what it is--and this is what I found out.

That is how people can come to some common agreement about what is happening in our world.

And there is no better place to start than on a local level, which is why, when you talk to Republican or Democratic mayors or city council members, they will tell you: If we don't have that, how are we ever going to debate this levy proposal? How are we ever going to get people to understand why we have to make a decision about the school and whether we close it down or whether we expand it or whether we close another school down?

How are they ever going to have that without a public access station?

In this day and age, this idea that we are--what are we going to do? Just expect everyone to go out when they have three kids? Are they supposed to go out to every single meeting and watch it themselves? Or are they supposed to rely on that, maybe, they are going to get the right information on Twitter, but they are not sure if that person is telling the truth or that person is telling the truth? Or are we going to give them the first frontline of information, which is what C-SPAN does, by the way, which is why Senator Grassley and I are trying to make sure that we get C-SPAN on platforms like YouTube, owned by Google; by Hulu, owned by Disney, in the modern day.

It is the same thing here. I want to make sure there are some sources where people can gather and look at this news and know they are getting something of quality, know they are getting something either that entertains them with music, without every single song having an ad in the middle of it, and that they are able to get the news they need to be good citizens of this great country. That is what is on the line with these rescissions.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on January 20, 2025, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies--JCCIC--hosted the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

This year, I chaired the joint committee with Senator Fischer, my counterpart on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. I thank her and the rest of the committee members--Leader Schumer, Speaker Johnson, Leader Scalise, and Leader Jeffries--for their partnership.

In the first 20 days of January, the Capitol Complex was the focus of three large-scale events--the January 6 Election Certification, the lying in state of former President Jimmy Carter, and the 60th inaugural ceremonies. And after the President-elect requested the ceremonies be held indoors, our staff and partners worked around the clock to prepare the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for the ceremonies and the Capitol Visitor Center Emancipation Hall for additional guests to watch the proceedings.

Today, I want to thank those who worked tirelessly to plan and execute the 60th inaugural ceremonies. The JCCIC staff, partners, and volunteers were all crucial in countless ways.

I want to especially thank the staff director of the Rules Committee Elizabeth Farrar, who also served as staff director for JCCIC.

Our committee's U.S. Capitol Police Liaison Captain Sean Patton worked tirelessly to synchronize the work of the JCCIC and the department's inaugural task force, commanded by Inspector Mike Spochart. I want to thank Captain Patton, the inaugural task force, the National Guard, and the entire law enforcement and security partnership which makes up the Washington Metropolitan Area's National Special Security Event Executive Steering Committee.

I also want to acknowledge JCCIC's important partnership with Mayor Bowser's District of Columbia Presidential Inaugural Committee under the leadership of Lindsey Parker. Together, we were able to focus on the end-to-end guest experience of constituents visiting our Nation's Capital for the inauguration.

The JCCIC ticketing and Member services team, led by Davita Jones and including Anthony Davis, both detailed from the House Sergeant at Arms Office, and Navy CAPT Judy Malana, counted, organized, and distributed more than 200,000 tickets for the ceremonies and coordinated the attendance with all JCCIC's traditional guests. They were aided in the counting by over 200 volunteers. Sarah Wheeling and the congressional publishing team at the Government Publishing Office oversaw the design, printing, and inspection of all tickets and program materials, working efficiently on tight deadlines to deliver products worthy of the occasion.

The operations team, led by Lauren McBride, who was on loan from the House Sergeant at Arms Office and is a veteran JCCIC staffer, kept track of every detail, planning rehearsals and walkthroughs, and executing the day. The operations team supporting JCCIC included Abby Stahl, Randall Bethea, Elizabeth Khader, Jordan Prince, Destiny Davis, Martha McPhee, Zachary Hassay, and Chris Brantley.

Abby, a JCCIC veteran from Senator Fischer's office, effectively led multiple timeline meetings, ensuring both the production timeline and the Inauguration Day ``run of show'' reflected the synchronized best information from JCCIC, the Architect of the Capitol, the Capitol Police, and the military.

Randall taught radio protocols and, by leading Capitol Compass walkthroughs each week, ensured staff knew their way around the Capitol. Randall also led inclement weather planning and coordinated JCCIC participation in the Department of Defense dress rehearsal on January 12.

Elizabeth, on loan from the Senate Sergeant at Arms office, coordinated all the rooms JCCIC needed to hold guests and other Inauguration Day assets, accommodating special requests, furniture, and catering. Elizabeth was additionally responsible for the signing ceremony in the President's Room.

As platform director, Jordan ensured the platform was ready to hold more than 1,300 guests, each with a specific seat based on inaugural protocol and

precedent. When plans shifted indoors, Jordan's focus pivoted to accommodating Congress, the President-elect's guests, and traditional guests in the Rotunda. Destiny provided critical administrative and logistical support to Jordan.

Martha, another veteran JCCIC staffer, and Zachary had the task of working with our U.S. Capitol Police partners, including Captain Patton and the inaugural task force, to manage the credentialing process for more than 8,000 personnel. They also provided critical liaison with our Joint Task Force-National Capital Region military partners on all the military resources needed on Inauguration Day.

Chris Brantley, from visitor services in the Capitol Visitor Center, recruited, tracked, trained, and managed employment of more than 350 volunteer ``JCCIC Ambassadors'' in tasks ranging from ticket counting to wayfinding to escorting participants and guests. Though not all served on Inauguration Day, their contributions were essential to our overall success, and I would like to thank the following Volunteer JCCIC Ambassadors:

Althea Abbott, Sara Adams, Harley Adsit, Joey Aguilo, Nolan

Ahern, Joshua Anderson, Michael Appelbaum, Claudette

Archambault, Rebekah Armstrong, Benjamin Arquit, Abigail

Ashcraft, Alexander Attebery, Grant Auman, Sky Avants, Zehra

Bakirdan, Shawn Baldy, Andrew Bambrick, Zachary Bannon,

Jennifer Bastin, Audrey Beck, Sara Bell, Lyssa Bell, Caroline

Bender, Ashlynne Beninga, Craig Berning, Jacqueline Bisille,

Thomas Blanford, Jackson Blodgett, Anthony Bocchino, Micah

Bock, Jody Bogoslavski, Savannah Bolender, Claire Bossong,

Scott Boswell, Taylor Bradley, Lindsay Brand, Matt Brennan,

Alyssa Bretan, Caroline Broom, Joseph Brown, Sarah Brown,

Alex Brunner, Britney Butler, John Byers, Larry Calhoun,

Jillian Cantrell, Molly Carpenter, Luke Catanzaro, Paloma

Chacon, Christy Charbonnet, Daniela Chirinos Vasquez, Peter

Chong, William Christian, Madelon Clark, Patricia Clarke,

Matthew Clemence, Adam Cloch, Sarah Coffman, Rachel Coll,

Katherine Covington, Caleb Crosswhite, Peter Crumpler,

Candace Cunningham, Jacob Custer, David D'Antonio, Miranda

Dabney, Marjorie Daily, Noelle Dana, Owen Dankworth, Graydon

Daubert, Isabel David, Jasper Davis, Bryer Davis, Alexandra

Davis, Alexis Davis, Sean Decker, Catalina Delgado, Arianna

Delgado, Margaret Deneen, Nora Derrick, Luke Diel, Madeleine

Dierksheide, Nathan Dinh, Logan Dobbins, Connor Domingue,

Caroline Donlon, Kelsie Donovan, Jonathan Downing, Sarah

Drake, John Draxler, Benjamin Driscoll, Samanta Dunford,

Elizabeth Dunlap, Darin Durand, James Durham, Anne Earthman,

Benjamin Easter, Flannery Egner, Manik Elahi, Margaret

Elliott, Ross Elston, William Emerson, Alyssa Erdel, Benjamin

Esposito, Carley Esser, Samantha Ewing, Jeanne Fahey, Adam

Fairchild, Lila Farris, Charlotte Featherston, Sarah

Fernandes, Sarah Ferrell, Alex Fink, John Fossum, Emma

Fullerton, Mary Galey, John Ganter, Sara Garcia, Brianna

Garcia, Thomas Garloch, Chongyang Ge, Eric Gebhart, Kristen

Gentile, Madelyn Gerken, Sarah Gilbert, Andrea Gilsdorf,

Andrew Gleaton, Celestine Gold, Ernest Gomez, Kaily

Grabemann, Patrick Green, Nicholas Greene, Mariah Greenlee,

Haley Griffiths, Maddisen Grimm, Khenadi Grubb, Andrew

Guernsey, Ella Gunn, Caroline Hamilton, Hannah Hancock,

Wesley Harkins, Laurie Harris, Austin Harrison, Grace

Harrison, Michael Hart, Daniel Hartl, John Hatfield, Wesley

Helms, Holly Hendrix, Bridget Henne, Bryson Henriott, Nicole

Herman, Rosanna Hernandez, Sofia Herring Jones, Allison

Hibben, Elliot Higgins, Grace Higgins, Emma Hoffschneider,

Ryan Hofmann, Elizabeth Hood, Randall Hopkins, David Horsley,

Kelsie Hovenden, Preston Howey, Charles Huang, Calvin

Huggins, Margaret Hughes, Cecilia Hutton, John Isaacs,

Madeline Jackson, Janquil Jackson, Noah Jackson, Hannah

Jahreis, Danielle Janowski, Matthew Jansen, Andrea Jenkins,

Alexandra Jenkins, Conrad Johnson, Jamie Johnson, Demarion

Johnson, Joseph Johnston, Dylan Jones, Tekia Jones, Hiroya

Jordan, Charles Judson, Samuel Kaardal, Haig Kadian, Charles

Kaiman, Benjamin Kelley, Macie Kelly, Megan Kenney, Lauren

Ketchum, Chelsie Keys, Edward Kim, Hunter Kirkland, Jake

Kirshen, Steven Klausner, Arden Koenecke, Christine

Kortokrax, Alexandra Kotsovos, Sidney Kucera, Erin Kuil,

Brayden Lacefield, Matthew Lamb, John Laseter, Robyn Lea,

Hannah Levins, Luke Lilly, Jack Lincoln, William Lissau,

Amelia Litynski, Alana Lomis, Parker Loy, Kate Lundberg,

April Lyman, Connor Lynch, Joseph Madel, Mary-Eileen Manning,

Andrew Mansell, Skyler Mansell, Joseph Martin, Sarah Martin,

Victor Martins, Kimberly Mash, Justin Mastrangelo, Donald

Mathis, Reagan Mays, Georgette Mbengue, Shekyla McBroom, Max

McClendon, Meghan McCully, Scott McElhaney, Tara McGee,

William McKenna, Brenda McKinney, Jacob McMeekin, Leah

McPhearson, Ian McPhearson, Bryce McWilliams, Walton Mears,

Lauren Meininger, Davis Michols, William Miles, Matthew

Mondello, Morgan Money, Nathanael Monroe, Meredith Moore,

Emma Morris, Ruby Moukadam, Jackson Mountain, Prisila Munoz,

Braden Murphy, William Murphy, Margaret Murphy, Amy Nabozny,

Antonia Nascimento, Bradley Nathan, Casey Nelson, Benjamin

Newhart, Madison Newsom, Luke Nickless, Katherine Nikas,

Malaika Nji-Kerber, Blake Nolan, Amy Nycz, Susan Occhipinti,

Elizabeth Oien, Anderson Okoniewski, Brooke Oliver, Haley

Parker, Adam Parkinson, Drew Parks, John Pecaro, Angelika

Pellegrino, Colm Pelletier, Madeline Peltzer, Mehgan Perez-

Acosta, Carolyn Perlmutter, Matthew Perricone, Mark Peterson,

Jana Pierce, Riley Pingree, Chad Pit-Og, Tyler Platt, Mary

Popadiuk, Gigi Powers, Gavin Proffitt, Ryan Prosperie,

Harrison Ransley, Thomas Reckling, Paula Restrepo, Lauren

Reuss, Kyle Rimando, Katherine Robbins, Elizabeth Robbins,

Ann Robinson, Joseph Rosenwinkel, Elizabeth Rowland, Jackson

Rudden, Joseph Russo, Rebecca Rybczyk, Eduardo Sacasa,

Samantha Salonen, Coby Sammis, Jessica Santos, Robert Sar,

Robby Saunders, Bethan Saunders, Karen Schmitt, Ansley

Schoen, Athena Schritz, Emma Schultheis, Lisa Schultz, Hannah

Schwartz, John Seibels, Sara Severens, Mitchell Shea, Michael

Shinholster, Alexia Sikora, Sophia Slacik, Alexandria Smith,

Elliot Smith, Stephen Spaulding, Adam Stewart, Kennedy

Stowater, Caroline Strock, Kirby Struhar, Robert Sucher, Kate

Sweeney, John Szymanski, Ruby Tavernier, Brooke Taylor, Grey

Taylor, Jon Tester, Christopher Thomas, Katherine Thomas,

Kaitlyn Tomko, Ann Topp, Dominic Travis, Courtney Trigg, Ajai

Tripathi, Shay Turman, Kimberly Vander Meulen, Trysten

Villarreal, Ashlee Vinyard, Jesse von Stein, Landy Wade,

Rachel Walker, Thomas Walker, Carolanne Walls, James Walsh,

Lindsay Walton, Christina Ware, Emily Welch, Laura Wengloski,

Nicholas West, Grayson Westmoreland, Garrett Wilbanks,

Clifford Williams, Jordan Wilson, Luke Wilt, Kaitlyn Wolfe,

Zoe Wong, Noah Yantis, Elizabeth Yoder, Connor Young, Amira

Zaidi, and Kristina Zuccarelli.

The Capitol venues team was led by Grant Scherling from the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer, whose acquisition and use of detailed Capitol complex maps, schematics, and diagrams were essential to the planning effort. The east front team of Michael Delaune and Brian Hublar coordinated with partners from the inaugural task force, U.S. Secret Service, and the Presidential Inaugural Committee on all motorcade arrivals, movements, and departures on the east front of the Capitol, to include the landing and take-off of the HMX-1 helicopter for the farewell of President Biden.

Inside the halls of the Capitol Building, the Capitol core team of veteran JCCIC staffers Molly Stevens and Abby Stahl was joined by Noreen Kassam and became the backbone of JCCIC execution on Inauguration Day. They led multiple walkthroughs with principals and senior staff and pivoted seamlessly when the ceremonies moved indoors. Not only did they rehearse every step for every guest, but they also made sure to document it in ``PILLARS''--the Presidential Inauguration Line-by-Line and Relevant Seating application developed by the expert software development team at the Senate Sergeant at Arms--so staff and volunteers would have real-time access to the most up-to-date plan.

Maggie Tyler, detailed from the National Park Service, worked tirelessly with the Capitol Police, Tyler Pumphrey and Liz Aduso from the Office of Congressional Accessibility Services, and other Capitol Hill and DC partners to plan all aspects of the guest experience on the west front of the Capitol. With the help of Michelle Reinshuttle, on loan from the Capitol Police Board staff, Maggie's team maximized on- site viewing of the inaugural ceremonies and allowed the first-ever indoor rendering of First Honors for the President by the military.

I want to thank Abbie Platt, another former JCCIC staffer, and McKinley Scholtz for their artistic eye, attention to detail, and perseverance in the face of change, which made this year's inaugural luncheon a success. We are grateful for the support of Korbel, Lenox, the Wine Institute, Brown-Forman, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian Chamber Players.

The communications team was led by Eliza Duckworth. Eliza, working closely with my personal office staff, focused on response to and engagement with national media, while Reilly McBride focused on the livestream production which reached over 5 million people with the help of Paul Winston of Razor Management and Ronn Jackson and Emily Boisvert from Capitol Visitor Services, who served as emcees throughout the day. Meanwhile, Chase Baran managed our online presence for internal and external audiences.

Wendy Dawson, our director of press logistics, brought to the team extensive industry experience covering numerous political conventions, State of the Union Addresses, and six Presidential inaugurations. The strong relationships she developed across the Capitol campus, especially with the Media Galleries and Senate Photographic Services, enabled the highest standard of press coverage.

The efforts of the administration team of Elisa Mendez, Nick Stella, and Teddy Kohlhaas, all under the leadership of Christi Mayer, helped to keep everyone on track and to feel supported, and Thomas Weber ensured our IT resources never let us down. Toni Coverton, from the Office of the Clerk of the House, led the gifts and commemoratives section of the administrative team, spearheading selection and acquisition of the luncheon gifts and distribution of thousands of program kits and hundreds of other commemorative items.

I also want to thank my staff, including my chief of staff Tamara Fucile, Heidi Kraus Kaplan, Jane Meyer, Lizzie Haskell, Jack Hostager, Madeline Coles, and Maixee Lee, as well as my Rules Committee staff, especially Ben Driscoll and Stephen Spaulding, who--in addition to their normal duties--provided expert advice and counsel to the JCCIC. Thank you also to the JCCIC staff representatives of our committee members.

Cami Morrison, a veteran of six JCCICs, concurrently served as both chief clerk of the Senate Rules Committee and senior adviser to JCCIC. She provided administrative oversight to the JCCIC but, more importantly, served as a valued mentor to every member of the staff from the staff assistants to the executive director. When the ceremonies moved indoors, Cami's in-depth knowledge of inaugural- specific protocol and precedence was critical to the event.

Julia Daniel, our chief of staff, retired from Active-Duty Marine Corps service halfway through her time with JCCIC and came back onto the team as a civilian without missing a beat. A veteran of six inaugurations, her meticulous attention to detail improved all our plans, and her calm professionalism and decisive leadership preserved essential elements of the ceremonies while still ensuring the President-elect was sworn in on time. Stefanie Muchow from Leader Thune's office provided invaluable support to Julia backstage as she expertly addressed challenges.

For Mike Wagner, our executive director, participation in inaugural ceremonies began when he was a high school tuba player at President Nixon's second inauguration in 1973 and includes a 44-year Army career culminating as the military lead for the 57th, 58th, and 59th Presidential inaugurations. His organizational skills, calm demeanor, and quiet confidence served JCCIC well in this, his 13th Presidential inauguration.

I want to thank Secretaries of the Senate Ann Berry and Jackie Barber and from the Office of the Secretary, Sydney Butler, Senate Historian Kate Scott, Senate Curator Melinda Smith; and from the Curator's staff, Lacey Baradel, Theresa Malanum, and Jennifer Krafchik.

I also want to thank the Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin, who built the outdoor platform and media risers, then seamlessly pivoted to design, build, and install a beautiful new stage in the Capitol Rotunda. From Thomas's staff, I thank Mark Reed, Raynell Bennett, Matthew Aye, Jason McIntyre, and Dwayne Thomas.

I thank House Sergeant at Arms Bill McFarland and his staff, especially Ted Daniel, Seton Gardner, and Becky Fontaine.

I thank Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway and her staff, including Carly Flick and Hannah Pfaltzgraff; Mike Mastrian, Jeff Kent, Laura Reed, and Justin Wilson from the Media Galleries; Myles Cullen and the Photographic Services team; Yvonne Bennett, Scott Mead, Chris Wilde, Blair Cooper, and Diego Torres from the Senate Recording Studio; Sam Jacobs from Capitol Facilities; Ray Woeller and Jim Green, who managed the credentialing contract; and the entire PILLARS development team of Casey Bishop, Jason Blum, Roger Masse, Atul Patel, Silvino Da Sul, Mehmet Yuksel, Brad Nathan, Claudette Archambault, and Jason Tongarm.

On January 20, 2025, the world witnessed the 60th inaugural ceremonies, as they have every 4 years since 1789, and I offer my sincere thanks to everyone who worked on these ceremonies.

Mr. President, I rise today in the middle of a whole lot going on, concerned about the reconciliation bill that will be considered in the Senate and what it means to the people of my State and in the country. But one of the ways that people find out what is going on here, whether they agree with us or not, is by watching us and listening to speeches. And one of the ways they do that is where? On C-