Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am here in support of Senator Markey's very important bill that looks at these tariff taxes which, as we all know, apply to consumers--$3,000 for every family in America will be the tariff tax from President Trump's tariffs.

But the focus of Senator Markey's bill--which is so smart--it is on what is happening with small businesses. They are literally roadkill here. They do not have the margins of the big businesses who can go in and have the number of the White House and get a special meeting and get an exemption, which is exactly what has happened.

Or they are not invited to the special secret meeting at JPMorgan with the Treasury Secretary with major investors to find out what is going to happen next with tariffs. They are completely in the dark. Yet they are the backbone of our economy.

I use the example of Beth Benike who is from Minnesota, an Army veteran from southern Minnesota, CEO and founder of a little company called Busy Baby, Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year, just honored at the Small Business Administration about a week ago or 2. And she was celebrating getting her products into major, major retailers. And then these tariffs struck.

Beth's story is the American dream. She came up with an idea based on her own experiences with little kids to help with highchairs. And now she is worried about losing her business and even her house because of these across-the-board tariffs.

We are seeing this over and over again. That is why I am honored to join Senator Markey in his bill to say: If we are not going to help the rest of the world, at least we must exempt small businesses in America from these tariff taxes.

I would prefer for everyone to look at only doing targeted tariffs like we have successfully done in the past under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, instead of this across-the-board business that is basically driving China into the arms of Russia, that is dissing our own allies, like South Korea and Japan and Europe, Canada and Mexico. And the time is here to do something.

Mr. President, at the very least, let us exempt those small businesses who are going to be the first to fold under the weight of these tariff taxes. I thank Mr. Markey for his leadership.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in standing up for the right to vote and the critical need to ensure that that right is protected.

I want to thank Ranking Members Padilla and Reed for their leadership on this issue and in organizing this floor block. Senator Padilla, a former Secretary of State himself, understands to a core how important the right to vote is.

The right to vote is sacred to our democracy. It secures all of our freedoms. As Congressman John Lewis once said, voting is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect Union.

But in recent years, from the January 6 insurrection--I just came from a spotlight hearing in which Officer Dunn and in which former prosecutors were speaking out about their work on that day. I remember that day because, at 3:30 in the morning, it was Senator Blunt and Vice President Pence and I that were here on our own in this very Chamber and made that walk, which in the morning had been a big celebration of our democracy; but this time we were walking over broken glass, we were walking by marble pillars spray-painted with racist vulgarities. But we made that walk, and our democracy prevailed.

But in one of President Trump's first acts, he pardoned the violent offenders who had struck police officers, who had injured over 100 police officers. That is what he did.

And from that January 6 insurrection to dangerous rhetoric and baseless election conspiracies, to other actions taken by this administration over the past 100 days, we have seen unprecedented attacks on the freedom to vote and our democracy.

Nowhere are these attacks more clear than at the Department of Justice. The Justice Department was founded in 1870 with the very purpose to enforce civil rights. This includes voting rights guaranteed by the 15th Amendment. And since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Division has been responsible for enforcing that law.

Today, the work to protect voting rights is as urgent as ever. In 2023 alone, over 19 States enacted laws to restrict access to voting and to make it more difficult to vote.

In the words of Senator Warnock, what is happening is simple: Some people don't want some people to vote.

Yet what are the words that are inscribed at the Justice Department over its entrance?

Equal Justice for All.

Department of Justice officials would like us to believe that the fight for equal rights and the fight for voting rights is already over. In fact, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights has said that the Voting Rights Act ``was once necessary to push back on Jim Crow laws.''

At her hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee, I asked her if she will enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court of the United States, a conservative Supreme Court, just reaffirmed 2 years ago. She didn't answer the question.

It is clear why she didn't answer--because she never planned on enforcing it. In fact, it has been reported that the Department's lawyers in the voting rights section have been directed to dismiss active voting cases.

But they are not stopping--this administration--at forcing attorneys to dismiss cases. Justice Department officials have also removed all of the senior civil servants--civil servants--in the Civil Rights Division. That has had a ripple effect, as you can imagine, causing a mass exodus of experienced attorneys from the Division. And rather than try to stop the loss of talent,

the current head of that Division, installed by the Trump administration, simply told reporters:

I think that's fine.

Well, I don't think that is fine. The people who have endured voter discrimination don't think it is fine. Those of us who have been active in this area, who have heard the stories, as I did when I was Rules chair and held a field hearing in Georgia--the story of the veteran who had signed up to serve and there was no waiting line, and when he comes home to this country and he wants to vote, he finds out that there is a waiting line in the hot Sun for hours; he finds out that his vote in one location, which he figures out, for the primary is different from where he votes in the general and then is different from where he votes in the runoff. That is a system designed to make it harder to vote.

In the election for Senator Warnock, suddenly they took down Saturday voting when there are only a few weekends between the general election and the runoff.

Then there were the people in camo standing to intimidate voters in lines in Arizona.

The stories go on and on.

In Harris County in Texas, they had one voting dropoff box in a county the size of my entire State when it comes to population.

So, no, I don't think it is just fine.

It is not just at the Department of Justice that we see an assault on voting. President Trump also issued an Executive order to overhaul our Nation's elections.

As a Federal judge recently made clear, the President has claimed power over our elections that the Constitution does not give him.

If implemented, the order could disenfranchise millions of citizens, including millions of women who changed their last names after getting married, as would the legislation that my colleagues have just highlighted. I heard Senator Merkley discussing the problems with this bill.

It would make it harder for men and women in uniform serving overseas to vote, and it would compromise--this Executive order--sensitive, personal data, giving Elon Musk access to private information about citizens, contained in voter files in every State.

Instead of creating barriers to the ballot box, we should be protecting access to the polls. That is why we intend to reintroduce a bill that I led, the Freedom to Vote Act--something that we negotiated over months and months and months. This legislation would set national standards to ensure that all eligible Americans can vote in the way that works best for them, regardless of their ZIP Code. That is why I also strongly support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen key portions of the Voting Rights Act.

But there are things that all of us should be able to agree on, like ensuring that State and local governments have reliable Federal support and funding to maintain election infrastructure--something that Senator Blunt and I, when he was chair of the Rules Committee and when he was ranking on the Rules Committee, agreed on, and I know Senator Padilla is carrying on that torch; that we must, in our local election offices, keep pace with new technology; that we must combat cyber security threats.

I think about Chris Krebs, someone who I respect very much, who was in charge of the Division of the government that makes sure elections are protected from cyber attacks.

After the election in 2016, after that election, he declared it safe. The Attorney General for the United States at the time for Donald Trump, Bill Barr, echoed his words and said it was safe. Then the President just decided at the time--President Donald Trump, in his first term--to fire Chris Krebs.

But that wasn't even enough for this President. He comes back just a few weeks ago and says he is going to investigate Chris Krebs. Why? Because this civil servant had the audacity to declare our election safe and correct, which it was, after spending his time in government working to make sure that it was and that Russians and other countries that wanted to do us harm would not influence our election.

We also should be able to stand by our election workers, including volunteers, who face a barrage of threats and intimidation. We have heard the testimony--so many us--of those who were threatened, of those who were told--election workers just doing their jobs--that their head would be on a stake.

Mr. President, Congressman Lewis never stopped working for our democracy. While we are seeing daily assaults on our democracy, it is our duty to never give up hope and to continue to fight for what Congressman Lewis aptly called ``one of the most important blessings of our democracy,'' and that is our Nation's right to vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to honor Andrew Luger, who recently completed his second tenure of service as U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota.

Andy is a good friend, a dedicated public servant, and he has been an extraordinary U.S. attorney. I thank him for his devotion to the cause of justice.

Andy has served our State for decades. He first came to Minnesota to work as an assistant U.S. attorney in 1992. He was later nominated and confirmed to lead the office as the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota in 2014 and again in 2022. Throughout his service, he earned the trust of people across the State and worked tirelessly to keep it.

Under his direction, the office successfully prosecuted several high profile cases on behalf of the American people. He led a team of prosecutors, local police, and Federal investigators in putting Jacob Wetterling's killer behind bars, closing a case that had eluded law enforcement for decades. It was one of the most notorious missing children cases in our country's history.

He has earned the respect of the law enforcement community and took on violent criminals, major white collar offenders, and sex traffickers.

He also fought to protect our civil rights. Under his leadership, the office stood up for the Abu-Huraira Islamic Center's right to build a mosque in the city of St. Anthony.

When he returned to spearhead the office in 2022, he picked up where he left off--and led the office in responding to new threats, like fentanyl and pandemic fraud.

Under his leadership, the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted the largest pandemic fraud case in the United States. Federal law enforcement in Minnesota brought to justice dozens of defendants who stole $250 million in COVID aid that was supposed to go to feeding children.

But it is not just the cases that will define Andy's service to our State. It is

the relationships he built between the U.S. Attorney's Office and local law enforcement and communities throughout Minnesota. He traveled across our State to talk to Minnesotans about what they needed to feel safe in their communities.

This work became even more important following Hamas' attacks on October 7. Andy prioritized working with Minnesota's Arab, Muslim, and Jewish communities to combat the troubling rise in hate crimes that made people feel unsafe in their homes, in their places of worship, and in public. He also strengthened relationships with Native Tribes and substantially increased the number of prosecutors who work on Tribal justice cases.

Under Andy Luger's leadership, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota has continued its tradition as one of the premier prosecutor offices in the country. He has led a great team of incredible lawyers, and his energy and passion has inspired everyone he worked with.

Our justice system, the State of Minnesota, and our country have benefited greatly from Andy's service. We thank him and wish him all the best in the future.

Madam President, it is 100 days since Donald Trump took office. I think back to the promises that were made, not just during the campaign but the first day. I think of my constituents who voted for me and voted for him--who actually believed he was going to bring costs down and put them first and do something about housing and do something about healthcare and do something about childcare.

Those were some of the main things they brought up to me. They were hoping that would happen. But, instead, we have seen the most divisive, chaotic Presidency.

Yes, chaos is up, corruption is up, costs are up, and, sadly, people's retirements are down. Americans are paying the price.

Trump's tariff taxes, which is especially concerning to those in the rural areas of my State who sometimes just get by on a margin--those tariff taxes, $4,000 a family, $200 in grocery costs--that is what is going to happen. That is what is happening now, and they know it. That is why you see these numbers. It is not like the American people haven't noticed.

In his 100 days, President Trump, sadly, has the worst approval rating of any President since polling began. Two-thirds of them don't like how he is handling the economy. Two-thirds of them, by multiple polls, don't like these tariff taxes.

I was just on a 19-county rural tour in my State. I visited farms and small businesses. Everywhere I went, I heard people--some of them quieter than others--and I think that is important to know. On TV and on social media, you see these big people yelling into a microphone. I don't blame them. They are mad; they are sad. That is all. They are showing how they feel.

But there is another group of people maybe are a little quieter. Maybe they just tell us--maybe they tell people behind closed doors, maybe they show up. They don't know why the person next to them has a sign that says ``This is not normal.''

I heard a farmer ask this woman: Why do you have that sign? She said: Because it is not normal. He said: I am normal. And she said: This is not normal.

They are showing up because they cannot believe what is happening.

Here is the problem. Some of the biggest entities, the big companies--Tim Cook, it is good for phones, good for Apple--he is able to call the President, go over there. My soybean farmer who relies on a market that is quickly dwindling--that already dwindled under the last Trump administration--he doesn't have that phone number. He can't get over there in the Oval Office. He can't get an exception. Or I doubt that the Treasury Secretary has heard about Beth Benike, who runs our ``Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year'' company, called Busy Baby, an online company that gets stuff that she makes into things for high chairs for babies--a successful small business. She is not going to make it. She wasn't invited by the Treasury Secretary to that secret JPMorgan investor meeting. She didn't get in the door. She doesn't know what the scoop is. She is just trying to get by.

Among other things that all my colleagues are hearing right now from individuals and people living on fixed incomes and seniors who are depending on Social Security and can't get through--one of my constituents, when their wife died, he couldn't even get through. He tries on email for days, tries to get through, just trying to figure out what he does when his wife has died, and he can't find one person to talk to in the government and has to call our office. Besides all of that horror show, what really people have to understand--people ask me: What is the worst thing no one is talking about? It is the small businesses, the small ranchers, the small farmers that are the roadkill here. They are the ones who do not have the margins.

In the case of farmers and ranchers, it may be because input costs are already difficult, or maybe because of the weather. Or in the case of our poultry producers, it may be because of the avian flu and the like. But this is just like the last straw that they can't handle. That is what is going on right now.

So if you wonder why these opinion polls are saying what our colleagues on the Democratic side here have been saying forever and asking our Republican colleagues to stop rubberstamping everything he does and to stand up, which did happen on the tariff vote that Senator Kaine and I and Senator Warner pushed forward when it comes to Canada-- we are going to have another vote like that, which covers more countries when it comes to tariffs--they want people to stand up. They don't want any more rubberstamps.

And the thing that is really galling to them is, when you look at what

these tax breaks will do for the billionaires, and the thought that that is being paid for by--as the Congressional Budget Office has said when looking at the House numbers, it would be hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to Medicaid or paid for from food assistance, with grocery prices up. And people need--and I tell you, they need them in the rural areas just as much as they need them in the urban areas. That is just the last straw. And from what I have heard, we are going to really see the worse of it when you start to not see those goods come in.

So I know that my businesses, big and small, are seeing this coming. They are stopping investing. You know what that means. When America was on this cusp of greatness and we had come from the pandemic--we were dealing with inflation; that is true. To me, we were going to the next level of problems, which is making sure we had a workforce for the jobs we had and that they had housing and that they had childcare. Instead, we are going backward.

We were on the cusp at NIH, with the research and with the combination of mapping the human genome and AI and all of these incredible innovations that are going on. And as long as we put some rules of the road in place, we were in the place to lead in the world on some incredible new things. But now we are going backward if we don't even have FDA people who can improve the new gadgets and the new medical devices. Or if we don't have any rules in place when it comes to AI, we are going to go backward, not forward.

So when I look at these 100 days, I wish for my constituents it wasn't so.

My State is fourth in the country for ag exports. We have 15 Fortune 500 companies. I know the differences in this economy and how hard it is anyway. But when I look at those people showing up at the rural smalltown townhalls or showing up at farmers' events and telling me what is going on, that is where I realize: This 100 days isn't just some campaign brochure. This 100 days isn't just sound bites on social media or a post. This is their lives, and we need to stand up for them.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are closing things out here till midnight, but I do want to thank my colleague from Oregon for his passion for this country.

We all do dream of that world where, in fact, the people in this country can once more have a say in what is happening; that we do not have this chaos that is actually not what they bought into.

I just came back from a 19-county trip across my State, and people came up to me all the time and said: You know, I voted for you, and I voted for Donald Trump. But I voted for him because I thought he was going to bring costs down. That is not what is happening right now. Or I thought he was going to do something about housing because we don't have enough housing in rural Minnesota. Or I thought he was going to do something about childcare.

They actually, understandably, thought it because it was the stuff that he talked about in the campaign. But that is not what has happened in these first 100 days. In fact, what do we have? We have got costs are up; ask anyone in the grocery aisles. Corruption is up; look at the budget being proposed, $50 million in tax cuts for millionaires. And, yes, chaos is up.

Sadly, retirement savings are down. When you look at what has been happening with the market, we haven't seen this kind of decline in the first 100 days--I don't think it has been since Richard Nixon that we have seen this kind of a drop.

So in his campaign, the President promised ``to lower prices on day one.'' Instead, Americans are paying more today than we did on January 20. And then you look at the tariff taxes: $4,000, $4,000 per family, $200 of that an increase in groceries. That is what it is; it is a tariff tax.

At the pharmacy, prescription drugs will cost Americans an extra $70 a year, and clothing prices will soar more than $900 a year.

Look, Elon Musk is going to be able to afford that. Millionaires, billionaires, OK, they can afford this doubling of certain prescriptions. They can afford things going up at the grocery store. Agriculture prices going up like they were--they can afford that. But regular people, people who aren't in the Trump Cabinet, can't afford that.

When you talk to people out there--I am not talking about activists, as much as I am excited that they are showing up at things. I am just talking about people that maybe have never even gone to a townhall meeting before.

I had one case where a farmer was sitting next to a woman who had one of the signs that said ``This is not normal.'' She is right, it is not normal, but he didn't know what that meant.

He said to her: I am normal. What do you mean?

She said: No, it is not normal.

Well, he wasn't an activist. He was just someone that is worried that his whole life's work is going to go to waste because he is a soybean farmer, and that market is going to dry up where he sells his soybeans in China because, guess what, they are going to look to buy from Brazil.

People are worried about costs and their own families. They are worried about healthcare access and the impact of Trump's tariff taxes on the economy; people who live on fixed incomes, and suddenly those costs are ballooning or they saved in a 401(k) or some other retirement savings, and that has gone down to where they didn't expect it. Then they try to call Social Security to figure out what they are going to get or they are getting or they have a spouse who died.

One man who I met with--I could not believe his story. He has worked with Social Security before. His wife died in January after a long illness, and he emailed, and they asked for his fingerprint. He couldn't do that online, but he kept emailing. Then he called. Then he finally had to drive into Brainerd, MN, to get to the office. Then he finally ended up having to call our office, and we figured it out for him. That is happening now.

I think about the businesswoman Beth Benike from southern Minnesota. She is an Army veteran and the owner of a little company called Busy Baby and this year's Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year. She is feeling really good about that. She has a business where she gets mats for highchairs so these little babies can't throw things over. Many of us who are moms remember that. All of a sudden, in come those tariffs.

So some big businesses and their CEOs have a red carpet to the White House. You know, Tim Cook--I am glad he saved his phones. But he is able to make a call to the President at any time, and he can go in there. Beth Benike at Busy Baby doesn't know the President's number. She can't just waltz in there. She can't just go and make a call and make sure that they are going to take care and make an exemption for her Busy Baby gear.

Maybe the other ones got to go to that special, secret investment meeting at J.P. Morgan with the Treasury Secretary. That soybean farmer at the townhall meeting was not invited to that meeting. The owner of Busy Baby was not invited to that meeting. So they don't actually know. Maybe they revealed what countries are close to trade agreements.

Today, the Commerce Secretary claimed he has an agreement with a secret country--his words--secret agreement. But my constituents who are living on the margin, who, maybe because of input costs for their business or their farms or their ranches or because of a weather event for farmers or because of avian flu for some of our poultry producers-- they are just on the edge. They are on the edge, and they just barely make it every year or maybe one year, they have a really good year.

But these tariffs for them came out of nowhere. They actually never would have believed that this would have been going on as long as it has.

You know, one of the problems is that even if it gets fixed, a lot of those markets may not come back because we have become undependable to other countries.

If we continue along this path, as we have already seen--the farmers told me: Sometimes, because we need consistency, we figure out what crop we are going to plant, what seeds we are going to plant. But we are really not sure. It is a guess for us now because we don't know about soybeans with China or ethanol--40 percent goes to Canada. But we don't know which ones we are going to get the trade agreement with.

They need consistency.

So what happens when they don't have that consistency? Well, they

freeze their investments. They don't buy new stock. They kind of keep what they have. Who loses out? Customers will lose out, yes, but the people that work there lose out. They start laying people off. That is what you are seeing. There are more announcements today about laying people off.

The supply chains get messed up. They don't know--one of my major manufacturers, about 20 percent of their parts come from China, but they employ nearly 10,000 people in America, and they put stuff together. They don't know which parts are going to be available or not because they probably don't get them directly from one company. They don't get them directly from China; they get them from someone in the middle who doesn't know if they are going to get them. There is an incredibly complex supply chain in this country.

We learned during the pandemic the hard way, the sad way, what happens when that supply chain gets messed up. If just one thing is missing, a piece of a part that goes on some furniture manufactured in North Carolina, but they need some parts from somewhere else, then you can't have it at the room and board in Minneapolis. That is what got messed up during that time with the supply chains.

Those were the simplest examples.

When you have this intricate supply chain, as leaders of this country, when we take out things like tariffs, we do it in a targeted fashion, but we also do it in a smart way, and the best way to do it is with trade agreements.

One of the things that always confused me about the President going after Canada the way he has--we congratulate Prime Minister Carney, who just won his election. One of the things that really confused me about these attacks on one of our biggest allies, the incredible country of Canada--the attack of calling it our 51st State--it was this country, Canada, that fought alongside our soldiers in two world wars; it was this country, Canada, that was there as the first ones on the ground outside of America after 9/11; it was this country, Canada, that, on their Embassy, had draped for years, when others sometimes didn't even want to admit they were America's friend, ``friend, ally, partner.'' That is the country you are going to mess around with?

In my State, it is the top trading partner, and it actually eclipses the next three added together. This is the State--my State--that is the fourth biggest ag-exporting State in the country, that has multiple Fortune 500 companies but also has very successful small- and medium- size businesses.

So that is the messing around and the chaos we are talking about. That creates a situation where some of our best friends who love coming to America for vacations--they will go to Minnesota to go fishing even though they have a lot of lakes in Canada. They will go to Vegas. They will go to our national parks. They will go to New York City. They will go to see one of their Canadian hockey teams play an American hockey team. But do you know what is happening now? They are not just booing at those hockey games. What is happening now is they are canceling their trips, so they are not coming at all. It is viewed as a sign of patriotism because of what President Trump has been saying about the people in their country. They are predicting a 70-percent reduction in Canadians coming to America.

I was just up in a small town on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. They have already seen like 15 percent down in just 1 month in border crossings. Average tourists, when they visit from another country, spend $4,000 in our country. That is going to restaurants-- waitresses, waiters, jobs, chefs. That is money spent on going to small community theaters or going to the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. That has a huge number, in normal--normal--conditions, of Canadian visitors.

That is the mess just with one country. I could use similar examples with Mexico--40 percent of corn to Mexico. I could use examples from some of our best allies--Japan, South Korea, Europe--countries that have stood with us through thick and thin. But just slap a tariff on it, and say it is paused but keep it in place. What is this going to do to, yes, our national security but also to our relations with the rest of the world?

That is why, when you see these public opinion polls, two-thirds of Americans say they don't like these tariffs or tariff taxes across the board--so many polls in the last week assessing these 100 days. Americans say they don't like the way Donald Trump has handled this economy--nearly two-thirds of them say that. His approval rating is down to lower than any President in the last 80 years since they started to do polling. People have noticed. It is their livelihoods.

Unfortunately--I would love to tell them: Hey, that is going to turn around tomorrow. They have these secret deals. They are going to negotiate.

I don't actually believe that anymore. I never really did.

But then to compound everything, you have this billionaire budget going on. To pay for these tax cuts--I think it is $37 trillion total in 30 years, but when you take out the tax cuts for people making under $400,000--some of the ones that I strongly support--when you take those out, you are left with about $25 trillion. You have $25 trillion added debt in those 30 years.

What is it all about? How are we going to find ways they think will pay for these tax cuts for these millionaires and billionaires? Well, why not do it on the backs of working Americans? Because that is the proposal from over in the House, where they have suggested hundreds of millions of dollars--something like $800 billion--$800 billion. And the way they have done it, the Congressional Budget Office has looked at it, and they say the only way this will work is if you make reductions to Medicaid. Eighty million Americans are on Medicaid. In my State, one out of two people in nursing homes is on Medicaid. One out of five people overall in our State is on Medicaid for their healthcare.

One constituent from Mora, MN, told me that Medicaid helps her afford a direct-support professional for one of her daughters who has a complex developmental disability. You have people who are in nursing homes.

This is what is interesting about this. It is not just our seniors who are on Medicaid; it is our family members. When my dad got sick late in his life--he lived into his nineties--he was in a nursing home. I knew exactly the day his savings were going to run out. We calculated it because we knew that the place he was staying didn't take Medicaid. I knew the exact day, the exact week, the exact month we were going to move him. We were going to move him to Catholic Charities. They said they would take him. It was about a year after he died that that date hit, but I knew that date. So many families know exactly what I am talking about. That is real--if we start messing around with Medicaid-- the effect that is going to have on families.

Then there is food assistance, which is big-time on the chopping block. I think the farm bill estimates for the Senate bill would be about $1 billion down, but in the House, it is $230 billion. Food assistance for 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, 8 million seniors, and 1 million veterans is on the chopping block.

If you cut that in this reconciliation bill, if that gets cut under the Trump budget and it gets transferred to the States--Texas alone-- let's say you have 20 percent. That is a number that was thrown out in the House. Texas would have to take out of the State budget over $1 billion. This is in part because of the escalating costs of groceries-- $18 billion overall for the Nation.

When we talk about costs being up, we talk about real people, not just what is happening with Wall Street and the shock it meant to the market and the stocks going down. It is real people and their livelihoods.

What else is up? Chaos is up. Yes, the billionaires' budget is cruel, but so is the chaos that people are experiencing every day.

Social Security--I used that one example already. They proposed stopping phone service on a number of Social Security claims. There was so much pushback from AARP and seniors, I heard that they rolled it back some, but it still does not allow the phone answerers for certain things.

I mentioned the widower, the 79-year-old from Crosslake who couldn't get the Social Security benefits after his wife died. That is unacceptable.

They have also attacked food safety inspections, cutting medical research out there, of course, when all those probationary employees were fired and then, of course, brought back because of court orders because this wasn't legal, because we in Congress, Democrats and Republicans--a Republican-run House and a Democratic-run Senate--had actually authorized that money and put a budget together that passed the Congress and was signed into law.

Servicemembers, classified battle plans on unclassified Signal chats, releasing the address of a secret CIA facility, sharing the names of 200 CIA officers in an unclassified email, planning to lay off 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs--that will, of course, increase wait times. You can't decimate this. You could--as a CEO would do, you could go in there and say: OK. How can I do more with less? Where do I want to move employees? What are my important priorities?

That is not what happened. DOGE came in there and did this before most of those Cabinet members were even in.

When our soldiers sign up to serve, when people in this country want to serve our country, there is not a waiting line; and when they come home to the United States of America and they need their benefits, they need a job, they need healthcare, they need a place to live, there should never be a waiting line in the United States of America.

But no amount of chaos has blinded Americans to this issue of corruption. There have been attacks on the rule of law, attacks on our Constitution, attacks on our system of checks and balances. Of course, as I have discussed before, one of the President's first acts was to pardon those who attacked law enforcement heroes, who defended our democracy and the Capitol on January 6. He has used our justice system to reward friends and punish who he considers his enemies. I have multiple examples of this.

I think of one guy Chris Krebs, who was running the Agency that made sure that our cyber was safe, that our elections were safe. He did this during the last Trump administration, and he did a good job. He worked with the military, and he came out of this and said after that election that, in fact, it was a safe election. It was exactly what Bill Barr, President Trump's Attorney General at the time, said--that it was safe. This made the President mad. He fired Chris Krebs. All of a sudden, just in the last month, he mentions Chris Krebs again--the guy who had the audacity to make sure that our elections were not broken into by a foreign country, that we didn't have data stolen--and he says he should be investigated.

Or how about the taking away of security clearances on people whom he doesn't like? Or how about just deciding ``this university I am going to go after, not this one. I will go after that one. I will go after that one.'' One of the things I have seen that I believe we didn't see at the beginning of all of this that is worth noting is more and more other universities that aren't being targeted have come together, all signing a letter saying: No. This isn't right. Or law firms, the ones who aren't being targeted, saying: Wait a minute. This isn't the rule of law. You should be able to represent clients even if they are people you don't agree with.

I have been at law firms. I know what this is like. I may not agree with every client that our law firm represented. And I have also been in politics. I might not like a story that was written about me. I might not like what has happened in a certain race, but I don't go after the media and say that they are enemies of the state, which is what the President's FBI Director did.

The President has also--as you know, while the administration has agreed with some court orders--OK. Great. It is important for probably most of them--they just pick out ones they are not going to agree with here and there. That is not how the law works.

Access to personal financial data that was given to Elon Musk and illegally firing independent watchdogs from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to inspectors general, to the FTC. Why would you fire the very people who are rooting out the waste and fraud that you claim you want to root out? In 2023 alone--I will use the example of the FTC--the FTC returned more than $330 million to consumers who lost money from scams and deceptive business practices.

We always had a Commission and Commissioners from both parties. They didn't always agree on everything, but it was actually a functioning Agency. They are actually the ones who are bringing that case against Meta right now, which was supported by both Republican and Democratic Commissioners. Unfortunately, the President fired the two Democratic Commissioners illegally. They are contesting it, but that happened.

Another example: Since it was established just 14 years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned more than $21 billion to Americans. Why would you want to get rid of that? President Trump is attacking these consumer watchdogs while giving Musk deals and while giving tax breaks and tariff exemptions to those who just happen to have a connection to be able to get them.

This is not what the American people voted for. The American people might disagree greatly on issues, but they did not vote for costs going up. That is for certain. They wanted costs to go down. They did not vote for someone who is engaging in: Hey, I am going to get rid of this person because I don't like him. I am going to cut off this grant because I don't like it. I don't like this program, even though Congress authorized it. Even though it is illegal to stop it, I am going to try.

They didn't vote for that, and they certainly didn't vote for this chaos. Life is hard enough right now without having this chaos.

So what is happening? The courts and the Congress are constituents. That is what is happening. So when you look at these court cases across the country, there have been over 200 so far. There have been over 100 instances where judges--and this is really important to know that there are major cases handled by judges appointed by President Trump himself where those judges said: No. This is wrong. Under our laws, this is wrong and under our Constitution.

There have been cases by Bush judges and, yes, Reagan judges, including a very recent one by Judge Wilkinson, who is a revered conservative judge on the circuit court, who upheld the district court's decision and said the district court judge had done the right thing under the law when it came to the wrongful deportation of a man who they have now admitted was a mistake. They have made very clear that he shouldn't have been deported, that it was a mistake. Then when they tell him that they should, in fact, remedy their mistake by bringing him back and U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen actually went to the country to get his constituent and was able to meet with him, it became very clear they could get that guy who was mistakenly deported back. That is called when you follow the law and you do the right thing, because, in America, the President is not King. The law is King.

How else do we hold them accountable? Congress. We are holding people accountable when we do oversight hearings, but now we just avoid it. We hold them accountable when we have votes, just like had happened on the Canada tariff bill that Senators Kaine and Warner and I put forward. It basically said the President didn't have the authority to say there was an emergency at the Canadian border, because there wasn't. Four of our Republican colleagues stood up--Senators Collins and Murkowski, whose States border with Canada, and then Senator Rand Paul and Senator Mitch McConnell, in Kentucky, which does a lot of ag. I know they have a lot of soybeans; they have a lot of exports; they also have bourbon that was being taken off the shelves, Kentucky bourbon, in the country of Canada. They understand that that is really hitting their constituents in a big way, and they stood up when it came to tariffs. It passed. Now it is sitting over there in the House of Representatives in the Speaker's freezer somewhere next to the frozen peas. I don't know, but nothing is happening right now on that, and it should, because we should actually have votes on this. Then if the President wants to veto it, go ahead. Then we could override his veto if people stood up, and this madness would stop about the Canadian tariffs. We could go

back. We are not saying we don't negotiate things. Negotiate them in the reauthorization of the USMCA, which was one of the President's crown jewels when he negotiated that. I supported it. But why not do it that way instead of rubberstamping everything that he does?

We are also doing this with our constituents by our side, and this means, to me, yes, some of the loudest voices in the room with the big townhalls and people at the microphone. Someone I ran into the other day who was not used to politics called them open mic events. Yeah, those are happening, but what is more important to me is some of the smaller ones in small towns of 1,000 people, in rural towns, with people showing up from local businesses, with people showing up from the Farmers Union, from the Farm Bureau, with people explaining what is going on in their lives in a real way, people telling the stories of trying to call Social Security. Or the two women I met who are in the middle of cancer trials that have been incredibly successful, and no one gave them a chance to live at the University of Minnesota, and they went through this cancer trial, and now they don't know what is going to happen because, while some of those cuts were put off, when you start threatening the universities, when you start threatening the funding that makes those cancer trials possible, when you have so much chaos and you want people to leave and you gave them all these buyouts and you say: Please go away, they are going to find other jobs, especially people in the medical profession where we know it is hard to keep people because they have other opportunities.

That word ``opportunity'' is really what people ask me about. What do you think we are not talking about enough when it comes to this chaos? You know, maybe we are not talking enough about what is going on in the world. I think people are starting to do that. But I think what people are not talking enough about is this opportunity that we are squandering away because of the mapping of the human genome.

Because of the investments Democrats and Republicans made together the last 11 years, every year we have increased funding to NIH--this incredible development of personalized medicine. So when you find out you have cancer, they can better figure out what your treatment should be and try to use the least invasive procedure possible, as happened to me, so that you can get through this with the breast cancer, with a lumpectomy, and you can get through it with just 5 days of radiation. You can be back at work that night. You may be a little tired, but you can.

That never would have happened 20 years ago. I don't know if I would even have been standing here. But because we invested as a country in the technology and in the work that had to be done, we are where we are, and now we are on the cusp, thanks to that mapping of the human genome, the personalized medicine, all the information we are gathering, and, yes, AI, if done and used professionally and ethically. We are on the cusp of leading the world again when it comes to curing rare diseases and when it comes to the next great big thing.

But that is not going to happen if we suddenly pull back, and people start quitting all of our research facilities and go do their clinical trials in other countries because it is more dependable, which is what is happening right now. That is not going to happen if FDA inspectors-- which it is very hard to get these doctors and medical professionals who can look at medical devices and make a decision. That is not all going to happen if they start leaving because of the negativity coming from the White House about their work, because of the forced departures, because the incentives put in place cannot keep them there, which is what we should be doing rather than incentivizing them to leave.

On the day of the inauguration, I had the opportunity to speak for, like, 4 minutes, and I picked every word really carefully. I knew it was an important event. I knew what my role was--I would have done it no matter who won--but on that day, I made three points, and I think they are still more relevant than ever. I wanted to pick three things that I thought would stand the test of time.

The first was that, before this and certainly now, our democracy has been a hot mess. There is a mess of division, and I think it has gotten much worse. But it is our job as citizens, especially as elected Representatives, to be the ``shelter from the storm,'' to quote Bob Dylan, a great Minnesotan. A shelter from the storm--that is what our democracy should be: a place where people civilly debate things and come up with a compromise and get through all this, and it is still on all of us, especially in the U.S. Senate--what has been called the world's great deliberative body--to do that.

The second thing: In America, the inauguration is not held in a gilded palace. It is not held in an executive office building. It is held in the ``People's House.'' It is held in the Congress for a reason because we have three equal branches of government. That means we have a court that decides the law. That means we have a Congress that should be able to show its weight. And all of these Representatives, duly elected in each State and each congressional district over in the House--and show its authority on behalf of the people whom we represent. That means taking on these tariffs and votes. That means making sure this is a fair budget for the people of this country.

And the third and final thing that I believe will stand the test of time is, remember that day in the Rotunda and there were all those powerful billionaires in that room and there were also the people's representatives in that room, but the thing that we had in common, from a freshman Member of the House of Representatives to the President of the United States that day, is the power did not come from within that room; the power came from outside of that room, from the people.

So what you are seeing right now in the form of, yes, townhalls, also in the form of rallies, yes, but also in the form of regular people writing our offices, burning up the phone lines, showing up at events, talking to you at a grocery store, talking to you on Main Street, and they are saying: This is not OK, Senator; this is not OK, Representative; I need you to do something about it. That is the power of the people from outside this building. That is the power of the people who gave us the honor of serving in this building.

So as we look at these first 100 days of this chaos, of these costs going up, of the retirement funds going down, we still have to remember why we are here. So instead of throwing our hands up in the air, either side, and saying: Oh, what can I do? This is our moment in the U.S. Senate to stand up, our moment to stand up on tariffs, our moment to stand up on this budget. All we need is, like, four Republicans in the House of Representatives to stand up and say ``enough is enough'' and listen to their constituents instead of rubberstamping what this President wants. This is truly our moment to do that.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Mark Meador as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). I respect Mr. Meador's qualifications and his prior experiences. In fact, I voted to advance his nomination out of the Commerce Committee because he has expressed support for strong antitrust enforcement that benefits consumers and small business, lowers prices, and spurs innovation, including continuing many cases currently ongoing at the Commission to free markets from the stranglehold of entrenched monopolies and stop anticompetitive mergers.

But I cannot support the confirmation of any additional members to the FTC until Commissioner Slaughter and Commissioner Bedoya are reinstated. President Trump's dismissal of Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya is not only illegal; it hurts consumers and small businesses by undermining the independence of the Agency that Congress established to protect consumers from fraud, scams, and monopoly power. An independent FTC is critical for protecting consumers and has done so in a bipartisan manner for over 110 years.

Just last year, the FTC returned more than $330 million to consumers who lost money from scams and deceptive business practices; it blocked a merger of two large grocery chains that would have raised food prices; it worked to cap the cost of inhalers to $35 by challenging anticompetitive patent practices; it took on hidden fees in the ticketing and lodging markets; it unveiled rules to make it as easy to stop a subscription as it was to start it; and it has worked to rein in the monopoly power of Big Tech companies to ensure small businesses and innovators can thrive online.

The President's attempt to remove independent Commissioners violates Congress's long-held power to establish bipartisan, multimember, expert commissions and to shield those commissions from political pressure with commonsense limits on the President's removal powers. The structure of the FTC has been upheld by the Supreme Court for 90 years, holding that Congress's power ``cannot well be doubted.'' While the Supreme Court recently struck down restrictions on the President's authority to remove Agencies led by a single individual, the Supreme Court declined to revisit precedent about independent Agencies run by bipartisan, multimember commissions, like the FTC. Now-Justice Kavanaugh, while serving on the DC Circuit, wrote that multimember independent Agencies like the FTC are part of a ``deeply rooted tradition'' that ``has been widely recognized by leading judges, congressional committees, and academics.''

This is because bipartisan commissions allow Presidents to shape the direction of a commission while protecting the independent Agency from political meddling. For example, each President can influence the makeup of the FTC by nominating new members--as President Trump has done by nominating Mr. Meador--and appointing the Chair--as President Trump did by selecting Mr. Ferguson--and even appointing a new Chair if the President is displeased with his initial selection.

Had the President not taken this illegal action, Republican Commissioners would have secured the majority on the Commission with the confirmation of Mr. Meador, with two Democratic Commissioners serving in the minority as required by law. While the minority Commissioners may not have had the power to stop the Republican majority from implementing its agenda, they would have served as a critical check on the Agency, as minority Republican Commissioners have in the past. They could have used their dissenting voices to hold the Agency accountable for any action that didn't serve to lower prices, protect consumers, or even the playing field for small, innovative businesses. If necessary, they could have pointed out corruption or backroom dealings. And they would have been able to change the Commission's course on specific actions by persuading a Republican Commissioner to join them. But if the President is allowed to unilaterally dismiss Commissioners, even Republican Commissioners would be powerless to stand up to the White House if ordered to take an illegal action at the expense of consumers because the President could fire them as well. Ultimately, removing the FTC's mandate to act independent of political pressure to protect consumers serves to harm those most in need. Only those who have political influence with the White House stand to gain.

We have already seen some of the ramifications of the chaos wrought by these illegal firings. In a case about insulin pricing, there were no remaining Commissioners to hear the case because the two Republicans were both recused. This led Chair Ferguson to ``unrecuse'' himself, making him the sole decisionmaker in a matter in which he has a known conflict of interest. And last week, it was reported that multiple members of DOGE are now embedded in the Chair's office, raising the specter that the FTC may face cuts just as it is gearing up to take Meta--one of the world's richest companies--to trial this upcoming Monday for buying up competitors to dominate social

media markets. None of this helps consumers. None of this helps small businesses. None of this lowers prices or spurs innovation. Until these illegal firings are reversed, I cannot support Mr. Meador's nomination to the FTC.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Tim Penny, a public servant, former colleague, and friend who is retiring after a lifetime of service to the State of Minnesota.

Tim grew up on a family farm in southeastern Minnesota, served in both the Minnesota State Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, and has spent the past 18 years leading the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation as president and CEO.

Tim has been with me on many visits across southern Minnesota. Whether it was helping the community of Madelia recover from a devastating fire or to expand early childhood education, Tim's love for the people of Minnesota has always shined through.

To quote Tim, ``I am always in awe of the accomplishments of small- town residents when they are provided the resources to realize their ambitions.'' And his work helped turn those ambitions to revitalize communities into reality.

Tim began his public life as a State senator in 1976. Six years later, he was elected to represent Minnesota's First Congressional District in the U.S. House, where he served for 12 years. He gained a reputation for his principles and independence.

Tim's commitment to transparency and honesty in government were central themes in the three books he wrote about his Washington experience: ``Common Cents,'' ``Payment Due,'' and ``The 15 Biggest Lies in Politics.'' Talking about that book, he said, ``We elect people to achieve the common good and when you get bogged down and paralyzed by mindless sloganeering you don't end up with the sort of consensus that moves policy forward.''

He carried those values and commitment to the common good to the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and in all his other work in the community.

He was a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute and also worked for the public affairs firm Himle Horner. Tim is cochair of the Economic Club of Minnesota, cochair of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and serves on the Board of Parent Aware for School Readiness.

Tim, thank you for your work at the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and through your many years representing our State in Washington. Minnesota is better because of you. I wish you all the best in your retirement.

Mr. President, I appreciated the words of my colleague from Maryland because I was standing there thinking that a budget is actually a choice. It is a value choice. It is an economic voice of where you want to spend the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

What this budget does, as he points out, is $6 trillion in the next 10 years that would be added to the debt because of tax cuts for the wealthiest people.

I have no problem making sure we don't increase taxes for people making under $400,000 a year. That is a good idea. But this is a way- different animal than that. It actually takes the parts of the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, makes sure they stay in place, and then adds even more so that two-thirds of the benefits from this is going to the wealthiest and the big corporations.

The thing he raised that I loved was, What could you do with that money? Well, you could reduce the debt. That would be a good thing. You could put part of it so that we make sure we do that. You could put the funding into actually taking on, some say, tax incentives for housing, which we so dearly need, to work with the private sector to build more housing. You could put it into incentives for childcare. You could shore up Social Security. You could do all kinds of great things that the people actually thought they were voting for, even a large number of them who voted for Donald Trump. But that is not what this budget is.

So I appreciate Senator Van Hollen pointing out that, in the end, these budgets are a choice: Who do you want to spend the money on? What do you think is going to work for this economy?

We already know that Donald Trump has sent this economy into a tailspin, as the market continues to go down. And this isn't just the market, as horrified as traders and experts on Wall Street are. You have got to take it to Main Street. And when you take it to Main Street, you have got people who have been depending on their retirement, whether it is a 401(k) or some other kind of retirement, for the rest of their lives.

You have people who have saved money for their kids to go to school. Or you have young people just starting out who maybe have, you know, 5 years into savings and don't know if their jobs still are going to be there because the economy is going into a tailspin. That is a choice. That was a totally self-inflicted wound yesterday. That was a choice.

The economy, coming out of the pandemic, struggling through all of that--inflation and the like--was actually, when Donald Trump took over, in a pretty good place. And look at what he has done--a completely unnecessary, self-inflicted wound.

But the problem is who it wounds: thousands of dollars in taxes on the average family, $20,000 more for a home for young people who might want to buy their first home, more money to buy a car. It goes on and on and on.

So when I look at that budget, I just can't see it in a vacuum. I see it in the totality of what is going on right now, because with these tariffs, the wealthiest people are going to lose billions of dollars or millions of dollars, but they are going to be fine, though, because they have got everything else. But it is the people who are living paycheck to paycheck or are depending on Social Security--they are the ones who are going to suffer from this.

Then you add this budget to the mix. This budget would give massive tax cuts to the ultrawealthy and pay for it

by raising costs, taking away healthcare, and threatening the economic security of tens of millions of Americans. It is a major handout to the wealthy.

If you don't know what the numbers are, here is a great one to remember: It would give Elon Musk a $50 million tax break over the next 10 years. Do we really think he needs that? Does he need $10 million more? He does not.

You could literally structure this budget so that you are not reducing taxes or giving special deals to people making over $400,000 a year. You could do that.

But that is not what this is. It went the opposite way. It gives the wealthiest 0.1 percent an average tax cut of $180,000 a year. In total, over the next 30 years, it would give $25 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and the big corporations.

Meanwhile, what is happening to people's grocery prices? What is happening to their healthcare prices? What is happen to their housing prices?

This isn't speculation. Look at what happened the last time the Republicans ran this playbook in 2017. They told us back then that those tax cuts would trickle down, that wages would go up, that jobs would come back.

What actually happened? Big companies spent nearly a trillion dollars on stock buybacks to enrich their executives and their wealthy shareholders. Wages for working people barely moved. Manufacturing jobs didn't boom. But the first year after that passed, corporate America spent over $800 billion buying back its own stock at more than 50 percent higher than the year before. And this year those buybacks are projected to top $1 trillion for the first time ever. That helps Wall Street, not Main Street. So here we are again: same trickle-down theory, just repackaged with even more debt and even fewer benefits for the middle class.

As noted, the debt, this budget, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would add $37 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years--$37 trillion on the backs of our kids and grandkids. That is right. We are leaving the next generation to foot a $37 trillion bill so we can give billionaires a tax cut today. That is the choice.

And it is all wrapped up in very complex language so it doesn't sound like they are doing it, but check actual news sources. Look at this to verify what the actual numbers are. And $25 trillion of it is tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations over the next 30 years.

The kicker: They are trying to hide that massive debt, what even their own Members--these are Republican elected Members of Congress-- have called a budget gimmick, intellectual fraud, and--my favorite one--fairy dust. Instead of leveling with the American people, they are using an accounting trick to pretend that these new tax cuts cost nothing.

I believe that the American people know better. I believe they knew better when they woke up this morning to see where the stock market was and thought about all their hard-earned money and what they were doing with it. I believe they know better when they look at any kind of simple description of what this budget is.

They promised to lower the deficit, but this budget adds trillions to the debt. They promised to bring down costs, but you don't even need to check the news. Just go down the grocery aisle and see if that has really happened. And they promised to put everyday Americans first, but this budget, it puts the wealthiest first or they wouldn't be getting the lion's share of the benefit.

Under this plan, healthcare for nearly 80 million Americans is at risk, including two-thirds of nursing home residents, two in five kids, and one in three Americans living in rural areas. That is because--why do I say that? I am just making that up? No. That is because the budget plan includes instructions to cut $880 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee--that is the one the House sent over--which oversees Medicaid.

The Congressional Budget Office--nonpartisan--said it plainly: It is mathematically impossible to meet that target without cutting Medicaid.

This is a plan to cut Medicaid. That is why we have a different vision. You could do a budget--and I see Ron Wyden is here, the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee. He knows what we could do if they would work with us. We could do a budget that would lower costs, not raise them.

And how does this raise costs for people? You already see it right now, and they are not doing anything about it. You see the tariffs are going to make it worse, and then you also see what is going on with this budget with Social Security, Medicaid, and the like. We could strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Instead of giving a $300,000 tax cut to someone in the top 0.1 percent, we could invest in childcare, affordable housing, education, and--yes--affordable energy. And at the same time, we could put some aside to bring down the debt. That is how we support working families. That is how we make sure seniors retire with dignity.

So we are standing up all day today to expose this budget for what it really is. It is benefits for the wealthy and the big guys at the expense of everyone else, and that means you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am proud to be here with my colleague from Washington State, Senator Cantwell. She and I both worked in the private sector for years before we got into politics or government. And I learned a lot from representing companies. I learned a lot from representing companies that did work all over the world and got a really good understanding firsthand of the virtues of working with the rest of the world and the virtues of capitalism when it goes well and it is done well.

So much of America's success has been our ability to bring people in from other countries that become our next doctors and become our next police officers but also to have those customers around the world. Ninety-some percent of our potential customers in America are in other countries.

No better example of that is Canada, which is directly to the north of Minnesota. As I like to say, we can see Canada from our porch in our State.

For my State, Canada--No. 1 trading partner--is actually bigger than the combination of the second, third, and fourth trading partners for our State. Yet this President has been messing around with Canada from the moment he got into office, mocking them and saying they should be the 51st State.

I hope Americans understand the result of this. It is not just retaliatory

tariffs that wiped Kentucky bourbon off the shelves in certain provinces; it is also that tourism from Canadians is now down 70 percent in our Nation. That is not some kind of group tariff; those are individual people who are so pissed off that they have just made their own decisions that they don't want to come to our country.

As bad as it is to have booing of Minnesota hockey teams--we are used to a lot of action in our sports leagues--but this is going to affect small hotel owners, small restaurants, cafes, people who run little bookstores.

These are the people that come and visit our country and love our country. And international tourists spend an average of something like $5,000 every time they come to America. That money is going to Americans.

That is just one example, and that example just resonates with me because it shows these countries that have been our friends and our allies for so long, whether it is Canada, fighting alongside of America in two world wars; whether it is the fact that Canada was there after 9/11, and they were the first country there to be by our side; whether it is Europe, which has long been our friend. You think of all the Americans in my State, Norwegian-Americans--we like to joke that we have more people from Norway than they have in Norway--Swedish- Americans. Think about all the people that have long roots in those countries. Think about Japan and South Korea, which he put tariffs on yesterday that were even larger than the rest of the world. He did 10 percent on the penguins on those two islands, but Japan and South Korea get even double that at least. Why do that?

There are ways to negotiate this. There are issues we have with dairy in Canada that I am well aware of that could be negotiated, for instance in the USMCA trade agreement that President Trump had actually negotiated himself in the first administration that I supported. But instead we see total chaos.

So what does this mean? I was on some programs last night, and I could not believe the vitriol from the traders on Wall Street who could not believe how the market ended that day, yesterday, and now we see more of it today. Cramer, who is so really well known--Jim Cramer--for his views on the stock market and trading, was really, really helpful to listen to all of that.

But I then thought to myself, this isn't just about Wall Street; it is about Main Street. And what this amounts to, when you look at what happens with tariffs, when you raise these tariffs, when so many of our goods have parts from other countries or are from other countries--what does this mean? Well, it is the biggest tax increase on working Americans since 1968.

So I refuse to look at this budget that we are debating today just in a vacuum because, as problematic and horrible as it is that two-thirds of the benefits are going to the wealthiest Americans and big corporations, you have that setting for that budget right at the same time as we see these tariffs.

As I noted about an hour ago when I focused on this issue of the unfairness of this budget and the values choices that are being made in this budget that are not in favor of regular Americans, I also believe that anyone that looks at these tariffs realizes, you know what, Elon Musk is going to be fine with these tariffs. He is going to lose money. Everyone is going to lose money because of this. You already see it with corporate value. But who is going to be able to afford that and who isn't? Well, the people who are not going to be able to afford it are the people who get by with their paychecks twice a month; the people who rely on their savings and their 401(k)s and maybe are about to retire or are in the midst of retirement; the young people who want to buy their first house and are now not certain, despite what has been a growing, strong economy, with issues of inflation. But now look where we are--completely self-inflicted wound.

On Wednesday, when the President announced an across-the-board tax on all imports, with even higher taxes, as I noted--some as high as 46 percent--on goods from the EU--20 percent tax on the EU right when they have been fighting alongside us with helping Ukraine and taking on the tyrant Vladimir Putin.

Why don't we just throw a bunch of taxes on a relationship that has been growing and getting better and better as we woke up from our slumber from the pandemic and realized we have real allies here? Allies--European Union, Japan, South Korea. When you combine our economy, something like 50 percent of all those allies' democracies, allied democracies, is unbelievable. And you have Russia at 1 percent, 2 percent, 3 percent. But where is he putting the tariffs? The most on our allies. It makes no sense.

These sweeping tariffs are taxes that will raise costs for everything from medicine and food to clothes and housing. You already see the damage. The impact was immediate.

Yesterday, the stock market fell almost 5 percent--the worst day since the pandemic crash in March 2020--and today, it continues to fall. Small businesses are freezing investments. Retailers, manufacturers, and farmers are in limbo. They were already operating on a small margin. This chaos and this uncertainty are hurting our economy.

It is unclear to me if the White House even knows what they are doing. They literally put a 10-percent tariff on a bunch of penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands. There are no actual humans living on those islands, but they were afraid of those penguins, I guess, and decided that those penguins, which they must view as some kind of economic risk to our country, should be slapped with a 10-percent tariff. Those penguins probably can't engage in retaliatory tariffs. I don't know.

But that is exactly the kind of nonsense and ridiculous chaos we are seeing.

So what are the facts? Americans were already feeling the costs of the Trump tariff tax. They are the ones paying the price.

Since he took office, wholesale prices have gone up on everything from meat and coffee to natural gas and lumber. That will increase what families pay--this newest tariff tax--for groceries, utilities, and housing. For the average American family, it is going to be a $4,000 increase in the cost of living per year--the average price of a home to increase by $20,000 and the price of an American car to rise by $3,000.

Those aren't my numbers. Those are what experts have looked at. And they have to adjust it, of course, every single day when he comes out with a new tariff. So at one point it was $5,000 and then $4,000, but that is what we are seeing right now.

Again, it doesn't mean much to Elon Musk. It means a lot to the people in my State, the people I met with on my 14-county rural tour that I just took a week or so ago.

At smalltown townhalls with the Farmers Union, we heard repeatedly from farmers about how these tariffs--on top of higher input costs, avian flu, and, of course, weather events--threaten their livelihoods, and that is especially true for small farmers.

I heard from small brewers who know that much higher tariffs on aluminum will either cut into margins or raise prices for customers.

And I met with local leaders who don't know if they will be able to keep pace with their housing goals that they need to keep their economy strong in rural America.

People in my State do not want this Trump tariff tax, and our Republican colleagues should be standing up to him.

People in my State share the concerns of this broad bipartisan coalition--the retail industry leaders, the American Farm Bureau, the American Farmers Union, the National Association of Home Builders, the Chamber of Commerce. They have all been very clear in opposing this.

And the chaos doesn't end with economics. President Trump is invoking emergency powers to bypass Congress and launch trade wars.

Stand up, I say to our colleagues. Stand up and assert your power.

This is a dangerous abuse of authority that undermines the Constitution and threatens our system of checks and balances. That is why I cosponsored the bipartisan Trade Review Act, to reassert Congress's constitutional role in trade policy.

Our allies are stunned. After spending decades building strong trade relationships, in addition to longstanding security friendships, this Trump tariff tax is now blindsiding our closest allies

and our trading partners. The damage, as I note, is going to extend way beyond farm products and manufacturing. It is also going to be about the vibe, the fact that no one will want to visit our country. They are already canceling their trips. This will have a devastating effect on our economy.

And I see Senator Rosen is here, who is actually leading the effort, a very key piece of legislation, to take this on and say: You can't do this if you are going to hurt tourism to this extent.

As you know, Senators Kaine and Warner and I put forward our amendment that finally got four Republicans to stand up with us when it came to Canada. We said: This is a false claim about the need to invoke emergency powers when it comes to Canada and the border. And four of our Republican colleague agreed with every single Democrat, and we actually passed that bill.

People do not want us to isolate ourselves from global supply chains, to forfeit foreign markets. They want to expand. We want to be a country that makes stuff, that invents things, that exports to the world, not a country that puts our heads in the sand and pretends the rest of the world doesn't exist. And then they all go out and do trade together, and we are here isolated.

Our country is a strong country. Our country is a strong economy. And he is going to literally throw away all of the gains we have made and these small businesses that have blossomed all because--I don't know-- he said he was going to do something like this. And now he tells us we are in the middle of a surgery, and it is just going to be painful.

Well, again, for the wealthy, they can get through those surgeries. They can get the special rooms with the nice views and the nice windows. For the rest of us, the rest of the people in this country, people who live month-to-month, this is not the same for them.

We can and we should stand up to unfair trade practices. I have been a long believer in the targeted use of tariffs. It was helpful for some of our iron mines up north. But what he is doing here with these across-the-board tariffs is reckless. It is going to drive this economy over the cliff, and it is time our Republicans stand up in the U.S. Senate--we have already had four do it--and say: Enough is enough. Let's do things that help the American people instead of just helping a bunch of billionaires.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I am proud to follow my colleague from Michigan, who, of course, has served herself. Then I am also proud to be here with Senator Rosen of Nevada, and there are so many veterans in Nevada.

We rise today to urge our colleagues to oppose this budget. A budget is a statement of priorities, and our priorities should be helping people who are the hard-working people of this country, particularly those who have served our Nation, and not giving two-thirds of the tax cuts to a bunch of wealthy, wealthy people and big corporations. That, sadly, is what is in front of us today.

Of course, the whole situation is exacerbated by the Trump tariff tax, which amounts to $4,000 per family every year, $20,000 more on a new home--really a problem for young people--and $3,000 more on a car. That is what we are dealing with right now.

But our focus, right at this moment, is on our veterans. When our veterans signed up to serve our Nation, there was no waiting line. And when they come home to the United States of America and they need a job or they need an education or they need to get healthcare, there should never be a waiting line in the United States of America. We have worked so hard from way back to the fiasco at Walter Reed, after we added new veterans into our healthcare system--after Afghanistan, after Iraq--to upgrade the benefits for our veterans, to upgrade the kind of services they have gotten. For the most part, there have been some major improvements, but the VA is under attack, sadly, by the Trump administration and, in particular, by Elon Musk. We need to stand up for the more than 9 million veterans who rely on the VA for care, including the 106,000 veterans in my State.

For weeks, I have been hearing from veterans and veterans' families who sacrificed for their country. They are worried about what the slashes to VA services will mean to them.

I heard from a disabled Gulf war veteran who is living with lung cancer who is concerned that he won't be able to get the care near where he lives anymore.

One woman whose husband was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam pleaded that our veterans answered a call to serve and protect democracy.

She added:

We need to reciprocate by providing them with the service

and benefits that they earned and need.

I heard from the mom of a vet who served in Iraq. Her son suffers from traumatic brain injury and also was exposed to burn pits. She said her son had received life-changing therapy through the PACT Act, which is something we worked so hard on in a bipartisan basis to pass, but his access to that care is now at risk.

Those cuts that were proposed in the House budget and, over here--the funny math, where you can't figure out where anything is going--all of it puts this at peril.

In her words:

Promises were made, and promises need to be kept.

I was at one of our county VAs. Senator Smith and I and Congresswoman Craig were there, and we met a man who had served our country, who went into the private sector, and who took a significant pay cut to go work in veterans services and help our veterans. He was just up to his probationary period, was told he was fired, and then maybe he is rehired. He doesn't know because he doesn't have email access anymore. Even if he is rehired, he is not sure he wants to go back.

One of my husband's law students spent his whole life defusing bombs. That was his work with the military. He then came back home. He went to law school. He worked really hard. He then got hired as a lawyer at the VA--something that he could only have dreamed of in the early part of his service. He is also disabled. He works there at the VA. He is 2 weeks short of meeting his probationary period, Senator Rosen, and he gets fired. He told my husband, who had been his professor, that he doesn't think he is going to go back if he is rehired. Why? Because no one deserves to be treated with this indignity.

So we are not only seeing these funding freezes and problems, we are also seeing incredible patriots who have served our country who are having to leave the work at the VA.

Just last month, we learned that the administration is not done. They now plan to fire more than 80,000 staff by the end of the year. That would mean firing nurses and staff who process benefits. This is not hypothetical to our veterans. It shouldn't be hypothetical to anyone in this body.

We must stand up, and we must stand up to this budget. I hope that our Republican colleagues, as they see the news from their constituents of what is happening, particularly in rural areas with people who have worked their whole lives and now they don't even know if they are going to be able to keep their farm going because of these tariffs--the last thing you want to do is pass a budget that gives two-thirds of the budget to the wealthy and big corporations. That is the opposite of what we should be doing right now.

We ask our colleagues to stand up to this President and finally say enough is enough. This is not a kingdom. They are not subject to a King.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to our colleagues' budget, the Republican budget, the Trump budget and plan where billionaires win and families lose.

We are voting on this budget resolution because our colleagues are once again telling us whose problems they are focused on solving, and-- spoiler alert--it is not the problems of everyday Americans. Two-thirds of these tax cuts go to billionaires.

After an election where the American people sent a clear message that they were concerned about the high price of essentials like healthcare, my Republican colleagues are focused on another round of tax cuts for billionaires. This proposal gives the top 0.1 percent of income earners a new tax break worth an average of $180,000. It gives a $50 million tax break to Elon Musk over the next 10 years. That is right--10 years, $50 million. I bet a lot of Americans would like that, but it is going to Elon Musk. And it pays for it by threatening the healthcare of 80 million Americans, including 31 million children.

This is not what Americans signed up for when they voted. I have heard this from constituents. I know because some of the people who--a number of them, a lot of them--voted for Donald Trump and me--what did they want? They wanted us to work on costs. They wanted us to bring down the cost of groceries and bring down the cost of healthcare, bring down the cost of everything from housing to childcare. They wanted us to stand up for them. Instead, we get this billionaire tax scam bill.

So let's talk about Medicaid. It is not maybe the first word on everyone's minds when they wake up in the morning because sometimes people don't know that Medicaid is helping their parents and their grandparents pay for their assisted living.

In my case, I knew that my dad was in assisted living that was paid for by his savings--he had late-onset Alzheimer's--and I knew the exact day when that savings would run out. He got married three times. That is another story. But he had limited savings, and the savings would get him through a certain date, and then Medicaid would kick in. That was the date when he was going to actually have to move, and I found another place for him.

He actually died a year before that happened. We miss him every single day. But I knew that Medicaid was there for him when those savings ran out, that he had a place to go. It might not have been the place that he had been at for a few years, but it was a place that was safe for him.

Medicaid provides healthcare for 20 percent--one in five--of the people in rural Minnesota, and it provides the long-term care for one out of two--50 percent--of the people in my State who are in long-term care. It is pretty important.

About 2 weeks ago, I went on a 14-county tour in rural Minnesota. I went to a number of senior facilities and assisted living facilities and heard their stories. So many of them needed Medicaid. But this partisan budget would force rural hospitals to shut their doors, and it would be particularly dangerous for people with chronic conditions and families caring for a child with a rare disease--all to pay for more than $2 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our country.

Slashing Medicare and Medicaid would devastate families across our country. These are programs that millions of people rely on, like our neighbors, like our parents, like our grandparents. This is real, and I think people know that. They understand that.

I think about a constituent from Inver Grove Heights, MN, who told me that Medicaid helps her to afford the cost of her father's memory care. She said:

I'm not sure what we will do if we cannot receive this

benefit.

I think about what I heard from another constituent--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 to the wealthy.

You know, that is the incredible thing about democracies: People write

in, they send emails, they call our offices, they show up at townhall meetings, and they tell us what they think.

In this email, she said:

We need to draw the line and say this is enough.

I couldn't agree more.

Today, the day has been a really hard time. I was on a TV program earlier, and there were a lot of major Wall Street traders--Jim Cramer--who are experts on Wall Street, and they talked about what a devastating day this has been. This was actually the toughest day, the biggest tumble the stock market has taken since 2020 in the pandemic. But this was not a pandemic. This was not a global pandemic. This was a self-inflicted wound from the President of the United States, and it, sadly, affected people not just on Wall Street but on Main Street.

We call this the Trump tariff tax, TTT. Easy to remember: Trump tariff tax. Estimates are now, based on the announcement made yesterday, that this is a $4,000 tax per average American family; it is a $20,000 additional fee on every single home that someone wants to buy--that is the average; thousands of dollars for a car. Why? Because our supply chains are forever integrated with the rest of the world. We get stuff from Canada.

We were able to see four of our colleagues stand up and vote with all Democrats to say that the basis for the Trump tariff tax on Americans, based on Canada, was wrong.

And we actually made a statement last night, and then what happens? We see the effects of the Trump tariff tax: 4 percent down in the stock market. Some of it is 5 percent down.

The Republican budget doubles down on this because while we are seeing this assault on Americans' savings and on average American families who work hard every single day, we are also now hearing about a budget that would add, in 30 years, $37 trillion to the debt--$37 trillion to the debt--while cutting Medicaid.

Why do I say that? Because in order to meet the targets that were outlined over in the House, the Congressional Budget Office, which has long been nonpartisan--used by Democrats and Republicans in Congress-- has made it clear that this would have to involve cuts to Medicaid. Add that to the firings at the Department of Health and Human Services that will undercut health services and research.

I just met with a man this weekend from a small town right close to Brainerd, MN, whose wife had just died in January. In order to figure out the death benefit, what he got under Social Security, he first emailed. He is very much with it at age 79. It took too long. On and on. He called--hours and hours. He went into the office. He drove 30 miles. He was asked to show his ID online. It went on and on and on for days, until he called our office, and we got involved and tried to help him--a man who is grieving, who just lost his wife. That is what these cuts are going to mean for regular people.

Yes, it is a disaster for Wall Street, but it is more of a disaster on Main Street.

For decades--and here is one example--Big Pharma companies had a sweetheart deal written into law that allowed them to charge seniors whatever they wanted for lifesaving prescription drugs. Along with many of my Democratic colleagues, I led the bill to have, finally, Medicare negotiations under Medicare Part D.

What happened? The last administration took this on, the top 10 drugs--everything from Eliquis, to Januvia, to Xarelto, to Jardiance. They finally negotiated the prices and negotiated prices for those 10 drugs--which went down 60 percent, 70 percent--and will save 9 million seniors $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs in just the first year alone. No one has refuted these stats because this was the negotiation.

Now this torch, this incredible effort to finally bring down pharmaceutical prices, has been passed on to this administration. They have been given 15 drugs--that is the next allotment--including Ozempic, to negotiate the prices down for seniors. They also have to do it the year after that and the year after that.

There is no sign, based on testimony in the Health Committee, based on what we have seen out there, that they are going to have the wherewithal to do this. I hope they do, but there is no sign that they are going to do this.

I see that Senator Welch just entered the Chamber. He was the lead author on this bill in the House of Representatives and understands exactly what I am talking about.

That is an example, when you look at Medicaid and the use for, yes, children with disabilities, kids throughout our land, but also our seniors for nursing homes and assisted living, then you look at Medicare and how important that is, then you look at the progress we have made on things like prescription drugs--all of these are on the line at the same time Americans have seen the biggest drop to their savings, the biggest drop to the stock market, a self-inflicted wound, a reckless act based on things that Donald Trump has said to his--I don't know--the people he hangs out with, his friends.

Well, the people that voted for him in my State did not sign up for this.

Instead of building on our progress, Republicans are driving up costs by not standing up on these tariffs--although four of them did--on Canada, by not standing up when it comes to this assault on programs for our seniors, like Medicaid.

This is unacceptable, and we should not be here advancing policies that are going to force more Americans to have to choose between filling their prescriptions and putting food on their table. Too many Americans struggle with the cost of healthcare. Instead of looking out for billionaires, let's look out for them.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in strong support of a bipartisan resolution led by my colleague who is here today, Senator Tim Kaine, which I colead with him and Senator Warner to restore stability to our trade with one of our greatest allies, greatest friends, and that is the country of Canada.

This resolution does one thing, and it does it clearly. It terminates the President's declaration related to the Canadian border that he is using as an excuse to impose across-the-board tariffs--which are, in fact, taxes--on Canadian imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Passing this resolution just became even more urgent because of the President's announcement of even more across-the-board tariffs this afternoon, including a minimum 10-percent tax on all imports and even higher tariffs on certain countries--including our friends and allies.

This is a country that has thrived on the fact and our economy has grown because we do business with the world. And, already, with the President's announcement--which he called ``Liberation Day''; I call it a ``National Sales Tax Day'' because the estimates are that these tariffs will result in about $5,000 in taxes--that is right--on the average family in America every single year.

What has happened? Well, the stock market is closed, but the futures are tanking. They are tanking. And that is because people get that this is not going to work for our American economy.

They don't want a national sales tax. People involved in the economy of this country, everyone from small business owners on, are going to be the first hit by this because they do not actually have the wherewithal and the big conglomeration to try to deal with it.

Small farmers in my State that are already dealing with retaliatory tariffs, are already dealing with the fact that Canadians who used to buy their stuff don't want to buy it anymore or other countries aren't buying their stuff.

And what happens then? The Canadians look for other markets. And there are other countries, other manufacturers, other farmers in other nations that say: We are more than happy to fill your contract, sir. We are more than happy to help you out with that aluminum, ma'am, because of these tariffs.

Tourism from Canada right now, the numbers just came out, down 75 percent. That is hotels; that is restaurants. You think they don't know what is going on in Canada? They are looking at every single move. First, they were shocked, and now they are pissed, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

This resolution is about drawing a line in the sand and saying: You cannot abuse your emergency powers to start an unjustified trade war. You cannot abuse your emergency powers for one of the finest relationships in the world, the relationship between America and Canada. And you cannot drive up prices, eliminate jobs, and put in place a national sales tax.

Canada is not just our neighbor. With my State, it is our No. 1 trading partner. In fact, we do so much business with Canada, that it is more than the total of our No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 largest markets combined. We are the fourth biggest ag exporter, the State of Minnesota, in the country. So we know a little bit about how this works. In 2023 alone, our State exported 7 billion in goods to Canada, including ag products, machinery, and medical devices.

That is a major hit for the retaliatory tariffs that we are going to see. The damage can extend to every sector of our economy.

I just mentioned tourism. So I chair the Canada-United States Inter- Parliamentary Group. I go to Canada a lot. I know our partners over there. I know the people in the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, all of them. And the one thing that has united us to a tee is this friendship that has far transcended this President.

I remember it was the Canadian Embassy in one of the worst of times for our country that had banners draped in the front of their Embassy that said: ``Friends, Neighbors, Partners, Allies.'' Those banners aren't hanging there right now, and they are not going to put them up anytime soon.

It was the Canadians that were the first to arrive after 9/11 to volunteer to help out our country in its greatest moment of need. They fought alongside us in two World Wars. This is a longstanding friendship and an incredible trade relationship based on mutual respect and trust, and, yes, two strong economies.

Because these new tariffs are already causing harm, as I noted, they amount to a national sales tax.

Since the administration began to propose and implement or pause but hang over people's head wide-ranging tariffs, wholesale prices have gone up on everything from meat and coffee to natural gas and lumber.

Homeowner Association, Home Builders Association, Retail Association--how many business groups? Are the Republicans not listening to them anymore? And add to that the Steelworkers. Do they not care about that? They are opposed to that, and they support this resolution that Senator Kaine and Warner and I have come together to introduce.

With these tariffs across the world, we are going to see a $20,000 increase to the price of a home and a $3,000 increase to an American- made car. This might not mean much to Elon Musk and the billionaires in Trump's Cabinet, but it means a lot to the people in my State.

Tariffs can be an important tool. Sure you can have targeted tariffs. That is not what this is. These tariffs on Canada are an abuse of the emergency powers. And if they want to negotiate this, put it in the upcoming negotiations of the USMCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that I supported, that President Trump negotiated in his last administration. Why wouldn't he do it there? Why instead is he doing his usual shock and awe, jarring the economy? This is going to be a blanket permission slip for tariff wars.

I will note again: Thanks, Senator Kaine, and our bipartisan group of supporters.

The United Steelworkers, International Association of Machinists, North America's Building Trades Union, AFL-CIO, Chamber of Commerce, National Taxpayers Union, and National Retail Federation have all endorsed this resolution.

Maybe we don't care about all those businesses and all those workers, but maybe we should listen to them.

This resolution is about restoring common sense and responsible governance. It is about Congress reasserting its constitutional role on trade. And it is about standing up for American workers, businesses, and consumers that are being asked to pay the price of this trade war.

Let's change course before the damage becomes even more permanent. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

Senator Booker.

So you will yield for a question?

Very good. I want to, first of all, thank you, thank you for waking us up this morning, literally. All night as Reverend Warnock would tell you, I know you were in here doing your work, but it was raining, there was thunder, it was really bad. And then when we woke up this morning, you were still talking. You were still talking, and the sun was out, and you are giving people hope.

When I think about what you are doing, you are like an alarm clock right now for this country, and, slowly but surely, we have seen people realize, this isn't just a bunch of campaign rhetoric that is going on, this is actually happening. And people are stepping up. They are fighting it in the courts. They are fighting it in Congress. With what you are doing today, with what--as you know, last week when we got the horrible news that the Defense Secretary of the United States was using an unauthorized line to just talk with his friends like he was spiking a football, about putting the lives of our servicemembers at risk, people stood up. Democrats stood up. They asked the tough questions.

And one of the things that bothers me is that it is so hard to see your way out of it. A lot of people feel like we are just wallowing right now. But what you are telling us today is there is another way. Because if we just wallow, these guys are going to continue to cut kids' cancer treatment. If we just wallow, they are going to cut Medicaid when one out of two seniors in my State who are in assisted living are on Medicaid, or they are going to continue to mess around with these tariffs, which really are national sales tax, something like $2,500 for every single family.

They are going to continue to be callous. I had someone say to me last night: Do they care? Do they care when those USAID workers who devoted their lives to feeding the hungry around the world, when they have to stand outside the building and watch them literally take the name of their life's work off the brick on that building? Do they care?

And one of the things that we have done--the Democrats have done--has stood up. And what is coming upon us in these next few weeks is this tax bill that, basically, will give billionaires tax cuts on the backs of regular people--ransacking the government, firing veterans, messing around with Social Security.

I had a guy tell me that he spent 3 days after his wife died in Minnesota--3 days--just trying to figure out how he gets the death benefit, why did this dang check show up at his door? He is trying to do the right thing. He calls, he gets put on hold. He sends an e-mail, no one writes him back. He drives into Brainerd, MN, 30-mile drive. He is like 80 years old. He drives in there, and then they finally help him. Then he gets back, and something else goes wrong. Then he tries to call again. Finally, ends up at our door at our office, and we figure it out for him.

There is 70-some million people that that is going to happen to if these guys don't get their act together. So it is a real good question: Do they care? But when we have this tax bill coming up in front of us in these next few weeks, I think people have got to understand what is going on.

They have to understand that even--the thing, the House budget that came out that will be the subject of this, it is over $2 trillion tax cuts for people making over $400,000 a year like Elon Musk, that don't need it.

And so there is actually a way to stop it that is in the hands of the Republicans right now.

If just two or three of them stood up on the House floor and did what you did--Senator Booker, if they said no, and if four of them in the U.S. Senate, four of them stood up, four Senators stood up, then we could have the discussion about, OK, let's make government work, we are all in, but let's not do it on the backs of regular people. Let's not do it on the backs of kids that are in cancer research or veterans who are trying to simply get their well-earned benefits because they put their lives on the line in the battlefield. Or let's not do it on the backs of farmers in Minnesota and Georgia who simply have these small farms and they are trying to get by. And then, suddenly, wham, Donald Trump decides shock and awe, let's do a tariff and let's get mad at all our allies across the country like Canada. Oh, that is a good idea.

Those are the things they are doing. So my question of you is, how many people need to stand up in the U.S. Senate to make this happen? Because I know Democrats are united. I know we are all standing up, but tell me how many people need to stand up on the other side, if they joined up and joined you, what a difference it would make?

(Mr. RICKETTS assumed the Chair.)

Will the Senator yield?

Very good. That was perfect.

So I think one of the things you talked about was just this deficit and what is happening and what we are seeing with their proposal that is going to come right before us. By some estimates, it is going to add $37 trillion--$37 trillion in 30 years as we go ahead. I mean, I literally cannot believe that when, in fact, we could step back now, and we can say: What things can we do? What things can we do on the Tax Code? There are a whole lot of things we can do to strengthen Social Security, strengthen what we have in our government.

When you step back and look at the economy--and I heard this the other day on a business channel. Just about a month or two ago, man, we were coming out strong. We are a country that came out of the pandemic in a stronger way than so many other countries did around the world. We are ready. Inflation was at least steady, and it was starting to come down here. Now, all of a sudden, we see chaos is up, corruption is up, and, yes, costs are up. Ask anyone at the grocery store.

One of the problems when you look at what we could be doing to address the debt is that the proposals out there are just going to make it worse. That means more interest payments. That means more interest payments on the backs of regular people. That means there is less we can do to help them as we look at what is happening now.

One of the things you raised, Senator Booker--and I appreciate how much you know about this--is just this prescription drug negotiation and Medicare. So what do we finally do?

Decades before you or Senator Murphy or Senator Warnock got here, before I even got to this place, they made a sweetheart deal with the pharmaceutical companies, and they actually baked in so they didn't have to negotiate prices for 73 million people on anything. They could just charge whatever they wanted for these prescription drugs.

What happened? Well, guess what happened. Suddenly, the drugs for seniors are 2 to 1 what they are in places like Canada--our neighbor, our friend--2 to 1 what they are over there. You have people driving up to Canada from Minnesota because we can see Canada from our porch, and they are going up there, trying to get less expensive drugs.

What is going on? So a whole bunch of people started to say: Let's look at this. It took years to get this done. Finally--finally--we passed a bill that said they have to negotiate, and we took the first 10 drugs. The last administration got to pick those drugs, and they picked blockbuster drugs--drugs like Eliquis, drugs like Xarelto, drugs like Januvia, Jardiance. I memorize them because I can always find people that take them. I don't make them raise their hands if they take them. But these are blockbuster drugs, and they reduced the price by like 70 percent for our seniors. That is going to kick in soon, but not if this administration messes it up.

What we have seen is everything from giving Signal lines about secret battle plans to reporters to deciding they are going to shut down the people that worked on protecting our nuclear facilities and then, oops, we made a mistake. How about when they said: We want to do something about avian flu, but we are going to fire all the people that work there. Oh, no, we are going to hire them back. That is what has been going on right now.

So when I look at this really complicated prescription drug negotiation where you are taking on some of the biggest companies in the world, I look at it and say to myself: OK. So our Secretary of Health, Kennedy--he won't even agree when he is asked under oath if he is going to keep this up. They fired a bunch of people that would work on it. They haven't shown they are going to keep this negotiation going.

Meanwhile, we have put in place a $2,000 cap for our seniors out-of- pocket on drug costs under Medicare. That is really good. We put in place that insulin limit, 35 bucks a month.

We thank Reverend Warnock, and we thank you, Senator Booker, Senator Murphy, and everyone that worked on that. We got that in place.

So now we have the big thing, which is the negotiation of all these drugs, because 15 more drugs are coming our way for negotiations, again blockbuster drugs--Ozempic--blockbuster drugs. Those drugs are coming their way for negotiations, but they have not committed to do that. They have not committed to do that. Even if they did commit to do it, do they even have the people to negotiate, to take on these major companies?

So my question to you, Senator Booker, after being up all night, after getting us through the storm of last night and into the bright sunshine of today, after holding the floor all this time--I can't even imagine how much your feet must hurt, but those hurting feet are nothing compared to why you are doing it, to how the rest of the people in the country--how they are hurting.

My question is, How can they move forward without trying to save money for the people of this country? Because what I see happening--and there are so many signs. You see it every single day. When they are getting rid of some of the people who work on it, then you are not going to be able to get the Social Security for my friend that I met from Crosslake, MN; then you are not going to be able to get that stuff done.

But I think, as we look at those cuts, it is not just the word ``cut''; it is, what effect does it have on real people when they can't get their services, when our veterans, who also have complex ways that they have to deal with the government, have no one answering the phone, when they have gotten rid of veterans that have actually done the work? So my question here for people who translate this into the real world is, What is all this going to mean for people in the real world, what they are doing right now?

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I was thinking--as you talked about the Affordable Care Act and all the work that went into it and what came out of it, I was remembering the constant attempts to repeal that bill. I was remembering when Senator John McCain--I think you were here for this-- came in and kind of did the unexpected, right? He came in here, he bucked his party, and he said no. He didn't agree with Donald Trump about this. He didn't agree with his leaders on this. He did what he thought was right.

My issue is that we all have those moments where we have to make decisions about what we think is right.

And I think about Donald Trump and he is--just now, just this week, he said he wanted to violate the Constitution, which he said practically every single hour, but he said that he would try to serve another term and that he would do this, he would do that. He is literally treating this Presidency like he is the King, and I guess Elon Musk is the court jester at his side or the White House IT guy. But the point is that he is treating this like a King.

You serve on the Judiciary Committee, and you are a student of history. You are also a scholar in terms of understanding this government and how it works. I think one of the things that are most unsettling for people, that they just don't understand, is, how you could have a President in place that doesn't respect that democracy?

I remember when we all gathered for the inauguration, and I had 4 minutes, because of my job with the Rules Committee, to address those gathered in that Rotunda. I noted that our democracy can be a hot mess right now, but it is still the best form of government that we have, that our democracy is truly our shelter in the storm. It is our shelter in the storm, to quote a great songwriter from the State of Minnesota.

The reason we don't have--I know you may have a few songwriters from there. If the Senator could yield for one question, who is your best songwriter and singer from the State of New Jersey? Just to make clear who it is.

Do you yield for a question?

Prince and Bob Dylan. But that aside, I am very impressed, Senator Booker, that after, what, 12 hours now, 13 hours, you still are able to make sure that you mentioned every songwriter.

But that aside, Bob Dylan once had that great line, ``shelter in the storm.'' Our democracy is a shelter in a storm.

Then I noted that in some countries, Presidential inaugurations are held in gilded palaces--not in the United States of America. In the United States of America, it is held in the people's House.

That is what you are doing right now, Senator Booker. Because the people's House is where the action should be. That is article I, and the Constitution specifically says here that we have equal branches of government.

And the final thing is that the power in that Rotunda that day--and this is where we get into Donald Trump thinking he is King. The power of that Rotunda didn't come from the people in there. It came from the people outside. That is why you see the people standing up right now-- our constituents going to these townhalls, standing up, breaking the phone lines in the U.S. Senate, sending in the emails with their stories that you have heard from the Senators and that have read on the Senate floor about things that have happened to your constituents. That is the power from the outside.

The question that I ask of you is just tell me what you think people can do when you have a President in there that he thinks he is King and he thinks that a democracy is just something that he can shove aside and say whatever he wants and break every rule that people depend on, that they depend on to be able to vote and participate and have their case made. Tell me what you think. What is the answer to that?

Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Durbin's simple but necessary resolution. It reaffirms three basic principles that should be self-evident to all Senators serving in this body: one, that there are courts established under the Constitution as a coequal branch of government; two, that in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison, those courts' role is to say what the law is; and three, that the Constitution requires the executive branch to comply with all Federal court rulings.

As I reminded all of the Senators who were assembled for the President's inauguration, there is a reason that that inauguration is not held in a gilded Presidential palace, like it is in some countries. It is held in the U.S. Capitol, and the President is sworn in by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court--and in this case, with all Supreme Court Justices there--to make the point that, in America, we have three coequal branches of government, and they all have a very defined role under the Constitution.

These are things we all learned in high school civics, and they are the bedrock of the rule of law. Yet, today, the President refuses to acknowledge these foundational principles. He claims, in channeling Napoleon, that ``he who saves his country does not violate the law.'' He has asserted that ``I have an article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.'' And he has even used the White House's social media account to post an image of himself wearing a crown, proclaiming: ``LONG LIVE THE KING!''

I call that kind of a smoking gun, when it comes to the evidence that Senator Durbin's very important resolution is necessary.

Judges appointed by Presidents of both parties have found many of the President's actions illegal. You have seen, in the past 30 days, judges appointed by Ronald Reagan, judges appointed by George Bush, judges appointed by Donald Trump himself, along with judges appointed by Democratic Presidents, who have looked at the facts, who have looked at the law, and, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, have said ``what the law is.'' They have found the President's actions illegal--from unilateral funding freezes, in direct defiance of statutes in the Constitution's crystal-clear mandate that the power of the purse resides squarely with Congress, to illegal firings of government officials, where they have been reinstated.

Yet the administration continues to question principles at the very heart of our Constitution.

Just last month, the Vice President said:

Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate

power.

In 2021, JD Vance, before he was elected, suggested that the President should dismantle the Federal workforce, and ``when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, `The Chief Justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.' ''

Elon Musk, who was here in the House of Representatives just last night, lauded by the President, has said: ``The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,'' citing the purge of judges by the government in El Salvador as an example--the world's greatest democracy, the United States of America, now pointing to the rules in El Salvador.

Aaron Reitz, the nominee to head the Office of Legal Policy, had previously called for defiance of a court order, tweeting himself:

Looking for some Andrew Jackson-level leadership on this

one. ``Judge Yeakel has made his decision. Now let him

enforce it.''

When asked about this tweet at the hearing that Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley held over his nomination and when asked whether the President can defy a court order, Reitz said, ``There is no hard and fast rule in all instances in which a litigant must comply with all or some or various parts of a judicial decision.''

And when asked for his view on the matter, John Sauer, the President's nominee for Solicitor General, told the committee he did not want to speak to hypotheticals. This is a frightening nonanswer.

It is very clear we are to follow the law in the Senate. The President is to follow the law.

In fact, while the Framers gave the President the power to faithfully execute the law, our Constitution created an accountable President. The Framers, who detested the King's unchecked power, made sure to create an independent judiciary to prevent abuse of power wherever it occurred and ensure that no one is above the law, not even the President.

As James Madison noted, ``Independent tribunals of justice'' serve as ``an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.'' That includes, of course, the power to issue binding court orders that the Executive cannot set aside.

Like many of my colleagues, I have vigorously opposed some decisions by judges. But even when I disagree with a decision, I never thought it was an open question about whether that decision should be followed. If you do not like a court ruling, you appeal it. If we think a decision was wrong, we introduce legislation or a constitutional amendment, as we have done, to change it or a reasoned argument before the Supreme Court or we file an amicus brief. I attended hearings in which we filed an amicus brief.

I know many of my Republican colleagues and other prominent conservatives agree.

Speaking to the nominees at last week's hearing, Senator Kennedy of Louisiana said:

Don't ever, ever take the position that you're not going to

follow the order of a Federal court, ever.

The majority leader Senator Thune has been very clear that people should follow the law.

Federalist Society cofounder Steven Calabresi wrote in the Minnesota Law Review that a system in which the President had the power to defy court judgments ``would not be so much a system of constitutional government as it would be a system of rule by an elected Napoleonic strongman.''

Calabresi noted that all past Presidents have understood this as well. Even Richard Nixon surrendered the Watergate tapes when ordered by a court.

Ours is a nation of laws, not a nation of Kings. Ours is a nation of laws in which no one is above the law. When taking the oath of office-- this just happened a month ago; we were all there--the President promises to ``preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' That is a pledge to obey court orders. And if the President chooses not to and flouts a court order, he will provoke a constitutional crisis.

As Chief Justice John Roberts made clear at the end of last year, any suggestions that Federal court rulings will be rejected are, in his words, ``dangerous'' and, in his words, ``must be soundly rejected.''

Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor in the Mayor Eric Adams case, who resigned instead of carrying out politicized orders, maybe said it best. He wrote in his letter of resignation:

I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of

a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it

was never going to be me.

This comes from a lawyer with an incredible career, someone who was a decorated Iraq war veteran, someone who clerked for Judge Kavanaugh before he got to the Supreme Court and clerked for Justice Roberts himself. But he would not commit an illegal act.

``I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool,'' he said, ``or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.''

To my Republican colleagues, those words, they should be something you keep in your head, something that should haunt you in the middle of the night.

Nominees who won't answer unequivocally that the President must comply with a court order, remember the words, maybe ``you will . . . find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward. . . . But it [is] never going to be me.''

Our job--our job--is to look at these nominees and make decisions on the facts, to advise and consent, not to accept and acquiesce.

And certainly we should, at the very least, support Senator Durbin's resolution--so simple and such a reinstatement of our actual law--that there are courts established under the Constitution as a coequal branch of government--super not controversial; that, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, those courts' role is to say what the law is; and, finally, that the Constitution requires the executive branch to comply with all Federal rulings. That is the law, and we ask our colleagues to support this resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues in strong opposition to the firings of scientists, medical researchers, and more at the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS is in charge of everything from preventing disease outbreaks to making sure that our kids are healthy to ensuring that seniors can live with dignity.

It directly touches more lives than any other Cabinet Agency. That is why the administration's mass firings of thousands of HHS employees are deeply troubling.

When a new CEO comes in and wants to see a new direction for a company, they look at it, they look at all the divisions, they figure out their direction. They maybe cut a division; they maybe make changes to it. They look at the merits of certain employees; they move some employees to different divisions. And they figure out, thoughtfully, what is the right way and what is the best way for their company.

This is the entire government, but that is not what is happening here. They are firing people across the board, without regard to merit, without regard for function. They are firing some of the newest employees who are eager and excited to have their jobs. They are firing some people who are simply up for promotion which puts them in a probationary status.

They are not looking at what these people are doing or the value they bring to the workforce and to the American people. They are just doing it and getting on TV with a chain saw.

These are people who went into public service for a reason. They are people, in the case of Health and Human Services, who keep us healthy and save lives, who work every day to keep America at the forefront of medical breakthroughs and innovation.

It has been our secret sauce. It has given the world the most incredible, credible, lifesaving drugs and medical devices--like the pacemaker in my State.

That didn't just come out of one company. That came out of a lot of ideas, and that came out a lot of universities, and that came out of people doing clinical trials, and that came out of a devotion by our country to moving forward. That is how we have gotten these lifesaving cures.

That is how we mapped the human genome, so that we are now starting to offer personalized medicine, drugs that fit people, things that work, things that cure diseases we never thought were possible to cure. That is how our economy has been so strengthened, and we have led across the world.

You know, I have worked for years to cut redtape, and I know there is more to do. I know there is more we can do to make our government effective. But we can do that together and take the ideas from the administration. We can work on it in the next budget. We can make some changes. I support permitting reform--all kinds of things that we could do.

But these mass firings in the area of medical research? This makes no sense.

The Department of Health and Human Services is also tasked with implementing Medicare drug price negotiation, which I fought for years to pass into law, along with my colleague Senator Welch from Vermont, when he was in the House, and Senator Sanders here in the Senate.

This is expected--we finally passed it. It was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and it actually says: Hey, this sweetheart deal that pharma had with Medicare, in which they can't negotiate at all and that the prices are locked in and so our country--people are paying twice as much as they do in places like Canada, for the drug. Yet it is our taxpayers that put in the money for the research or the VA, which works so well for our veterans. They are able to negotiate and get better prices, but not 50 million seniors?

So what did we do? We finally ended the sweetheart deal, and we passed a law. I would have been more aggressive about how many drugs we could negotiate because I understand they start with a group of drugs, and pretty soon that is going to help people who aren't seniors, as we did with the insulin cap. That insulin cap, at 35 bucks a month, was only for seniors, but Merck and other companies offered it to nonseniors, as well, because we got it going with the biggest prescription drug buying group in the country, and that would be our seniors.

So this Medicare negotiation has ramifications for everyone in this country. However, even though we only did 10 drugs at first, the Biden administration picked blockbuster drugs--big drugs that so many people take, like Januvia and Jardiance and Xarelto and Eliquis. Combined, in 1 year--just 1 year, when this starts next year; no one has refuted these statistics--9 million seniors will save $1.5 billion in out-of- pocket costs in the first year alone and save taxpayers over $100 billion in the next decade. That is just 10 drugs.

They have now come up with 15 more drugs, including Ozempic and those weight-loss drugs, and they have passed that torch now--or the voters have--onto the next administration. So now, it is on them to negotiate these 15 and then pick 15 more and 15 more. Imagine how much money we can save, not just for the seniors--that is obvious--but also for the taxpayers because

we are footing part of this bill. And then, ultimately, it will bring down drug prices, like they have in other countries.

But firing the men and women who carry out these price negotiations put those savings totally at risk. You cannot take on some of the world's biggest companies--the pharmaceutical companies--with bandaids and a skeleton crew. That is not going to work. I think we all know that. We all know this is really hard work.

On top of this, the firings threaten healthcare for the 170 million Americans who get coverage through Medicare, Medicaid--which is so many of our seniors when they are in assisted living with their long-term care, and people's parents and grandparents--as well as coverage under the Affordable Care Act, including over 2 million Minnesotans. In fact, Medicaid actually provides healthcare for 20 percent of my rural residents in my State. You will see similar numbers all across the country. And more than half of all nursing home residents in our State are on Medicaid.

I remember when my dad was in assisted living. He got late-onset Alzheimer's. I found a place for him and found the next place when he needed a little more help, and I knew, as his savings were running out, what that day was. I knew the exact month that he was going to run out of his savings, and then he would go onto Medicaid. And that was a safety net. I actually knew I couldn't keep him at the same place, but I knew a place I could have him go to.

He ended up dying a year before that date happened. But there are so many people in our country that know the exact date when their parent or their grandparent is going to be able to have that safety net of Medicaid because they have actually run through all their savings.

Nationwide, Medicaid provides coverage for two-thirds of all nursing home care. And these cuts--what we are seeing out of the House budget, where they have put targets on the exact program that includes Medicaid--these cuts will be particularly disastrous for people with chronic conditions, including millions of veterans who become sick or disabled as a result of their service.

What is this all about? It is about funding giant tax breaks for billionaires. Yes, over 2 trillion of that money goes to people who are wealthy, people making over $400,000 a year.

I am all for keeping in these tax cuts for people making under $400,000 a year, but I do not know why, when you are facing the debt that our country has and when you are dealing with people's needs with Medicaid and the like, you would decide to add tax cuts and make permanent tax cuts for people who are making over $400,000 a year.

We actually had a vote on this, late at night about a week ago, where we asked our Republican colleagues: OK. Well, how about for people making over $10 million a year? That was Senator Warren's amendment. She said: OK. How about if they are making over 10 million? Could we at least agree we shouldn't cut their taxes?

And, unfortunately, our Republican colleagues, for that amendment, yelled out: No.

Then we said--Senator Kelly got up there and said: OK. How about if they are making over $100 million? Then we should add more tax cuts?

Our colleagues voted against that amendment, which said we should not add more tax cuts for people making over $100 million when our country is facing the debt it has, when you have got the needs for people in nursing homes and the needs for people with childcare and the like.

So then they tried one more time. Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, said: OK. How about for people making over $500 million? Then, at least, you can agree with us--right?--that we shouldn't add more tax cuts for those people making over $500 million a year. And, sadly, our colleagues voted no.

Instead of cutting costs for regular people and their prices and groceries, they are cutting Medicaid, which provides healthcare for 7.2 million seniors, almost 40 million children, nearly two-thirds of nursing home residents, and millions of people with rare diseases.

But this isn't just the numbers. There are moms and dads, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors. I heard from one Minnesotan who, at 4 years old, was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which causes rapid muscle weakness, making it harder to complete most physical tasks. But this Minnesotan, who is now 26, has been able to thrive because he has Medicaid coverage. He got an education. He got a job. He graduated with a master's degree in public policy. He is paying taxes. In his words, Medicaid gave him the affordable health coverage he needed to manage his rare condition.

For him and millions more, the cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services put their lives and livelihood at risk.

This week is rare disease week. I have met with many rare disease patients. I am the cochair of that caucus. And they are in town right now to convene and collaborate with Federal medical researchers, Ph.D. students, other families affected, drug and device reviewers and advocates.

Many of these rare disease patients were looking forward to attending the rare disease event that was supposed to be today. And this year it was going to be a collaboration between NIH and the FDA because of all that integral work that goes on with drugs being approved for people with rare diseases, but that annual event was canceled because the people carrying that out--these people here with very difficult, rare diseases--that was canceled because the people doing the event were fired.

The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services, which the thousands of Americans who were fired work every day to uphold, is enhancing the health and well-being of all Americans. These mass firings are a direct affront to that mission.

The building that houses the Department of Health and Human Services is named for Minnesota's ``Happy Warrior,'' Vice President Hubert Humphrey. It has been that way through Democrat and Republican Presidents. He was a champion for expanding access to healthcare. Inscribed in the entrance hall of that building are words from Humphrey's final speech in 1977. By the way, he was someone who was loved right here in this Chamber by Democrats and Republicans. Some of the most conservative Republicans mourned his loss, and they loved the guy. And this is what he said in his final speech here:

The moral test of government is how that government treats

those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who

are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are

in shadows of life, the sick.

And he added, given he had a child in his own family with Down syndrome, and those with disabilities.

The firing of those who care for kids and seniors and those who work on rare diseases and those who are bringing together our people who work on drugs that are supposed to solve and are solving the problems for these rare disease families and those that are doing the approvals and those that are doing the research and the families that want to talk to them about it--they were all here, and they canceled it because, just like that, Elon Musk came in with his chain saw.

Those families are not going to tolerate this much longer.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to strongly oppose the confirmation of Kash Patel to serve as the next Director of the FBI.

The FBI Director leads our Nation's most important law enforcement Agency. It is made up of more than 38,000 nonpartisan public servants who work every day to take on violent crime, get fentanyl off of our streets, investigate cyber crimes, protect our national security, and so much more.

The Bureau's motto is ``fidelity, bravery, integrity,'' and its Director must be someone who embodies those core values above all else. That is not Kash Patel.

Let's start with fidelity. The FBI Director's loyalty is not to the President; it is to the truth, the Constitution, and the American people. But Mr. Patel has made it clear that his only loyalty is to the President.

Mr. Patel has threatened to come after the President's critics. On one podcast in December of 2023--by the way, that is 2023, just a few years ago, not two decades ago, not when he is in high school--in 2023, he said, ``We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you . . . on notice.''

On another podcast last August, he said, ``When Trump wins in 2024, and is in power in 2025, we can prosecute them,'' referring to Justice Department officials. That was just last August.

At his hearing before the Judiciary Committee, we gave Mr. Patel numerous opportunities to explain, to walk back his threats. He chose not to, nor did he try to explain his so-called ``deep state'' list of former government officials, including many Republicans who served under the President's first term. This list of his deep state government gangsters, as he called them, included former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former CIA Director Gina Haspel, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Attorney General Bill Barr-- Bill Barr, who received so many compliments from people in this body, from so many Republicans, including the chair of the Judiciary Committee.

I remind our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that Bill Barr wrote that putting Patel in charge of the FBI, promoting him in any way, would only happen ``over [his] dead body.'' Gina Haspel threatened to resign to stop Patel from becoming her Deputy. John Bolton said that Patel ``demonstrated no policy aptitude at all.'' These are staunch, lifelong Republicans. They are experienced and respected people. I may not agree in any way with everything they have said or done, nor does everyone here, but we do agree that they are people of integrity. If these people can end up on Kash Patel's deep state list, we can only imagine what that would mean for anyone who might not be deemed sufficiently loyal to the President.

We know what Mr. Patel wants to do with the people on his list because he already told us. In one interview, he said the people on the list ``need to go to prison.'' And his comments about his so-called enemies are not empty threats. His desire to punish all but the President's most zealous loyalists is far too real.

At his hearing, Mr. Patel said that ``all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.'' Yet, mere hours later, the administration forced out eight of the Bureau's most senior, nonpartisan public servants who oversaw national security, criminal, and cyber matters.

One day later, an email was sent to FBI employees requesting a list of everyone who had worked on January 6 cases ``to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.'' It wouldn't matter if it is just a brandnew person who gets assigned to a case or a senior person; didn't matter if these people were prosecuting people and investigating people that actually tried to do us harm in this Chamber, chased down former Senator Romney in the hall--that all happened-- destroyed offices of the Parliamentarian and others, cut police officers' faces and injured them.

Then, when in any crime scene, you would have it investigated, this guy Kash Patel is questioning those FBI employees that were simply assigned to the cases to work on them.

This is not the person we should be putting in charge of the FBI. And I know my colleagues know this. So many of them that were there at the time supported Christopher Wray. I voted for Christopher Wray. He was Donald Trump's choice to run the FBI, but I thought that he would be a man of integrity, and he was. I will also note that applications to the FBI have tripled since he has been in office, during that time period, because he has

improved morale. They have been doing their job, and people want to go work there.

Mr. Patel's supposed enemies are not only government officials he disagrees with; he has threatened the press as well. No one agrees with every story the press writes. I certainly don't, and I am sure many of my colleagues have read stories about them that they don't like, but we believe in this country in the First Amendment. Mr. Patel, however, has referred to the media as--again, a recent quote--``the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.'' He said that not even on a podcast. He said that in a speech. Think about that. The media is ``the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen,'' in the words of Kash Patel, nominated to be the Director of the FBI, to oversee tens of thousands of agents across the country--not China, not Russia, not Iran, not terrorists, but the press.

And Mr. Patel has already publicly threatened journalists, saying:

We're going to come after the people in the media. . . .

We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or

civilly. We'll figure it out. But yeah, we're putting you all

on notice.

This isn't someone with any business running the world's premier law enforcement Agency. This isn't someone whom we can trust to be faithful to our Constitution. This isn't fidelity to the rule of law and impartial law enforcement; it is a direct threat to it.

Bravery. Fidelity, bravery, integrity--so let's talk about bravery. We all know that the Capitol Police showed bravery far and above the call of duty on January 6, 2021. We know that. We know that many of them--their gear was stuck on a bus, their riot gear. They weren't even able to access it, and so many of them were protecting us, people who worked in this Capitol when the people that were storming into this Capitol had better gear than the police had--and, of course, we made tons of changes since then, changes to the leadership of the Capitol Police with a new Chief, changes to the Sergeant at Arms, changes to our security profile. We have made those changes. Of course, we should have done that.

But what we do know is they showed bravery. But rather than recognize the officers' bravery, Mr. Patel accused those who testified in the January 6 hearings of lying. When asked on a podcast whether Capitol Police officers told the truth in the House of Representatives January 6 Committee hearings when they were under oath, Mr. Patel said:

No . . . And lying under oath is a federal offense and they

should be investigated for it.

Once again, our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee gave him the chance to walk back these comments during his hearings, and, once again, he chose not to. In fact, he claimed this ``wasn't accurate.''

It was exactly what he said. We have the evidence. We have the facts. We have the proof right there, his words. I would think facts and truth and the proof should matter to someone who is asking to be head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it doesn't. Literally, this is on YouTube. Anyone listening today could look it up.

The men and women of the Capitol Police aren't criminals; they are heroes. And so are the men and women at the FBI who every day put their lives on the line to keep us safe, but Kash Patel disagrees. He wrote in his book, again recently, that ``the FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken.'' And he called the men and women of the FBI ``utterly corrupt.''

How do you think that makes people feel, people out in Minnesota who are going after bank robbers or gangs or drug rings, because Kash Patel didn't like one investigation of a bunch of mobsters that came into this Capitol and beat up police. And then he said he wanted the list of everyone that was involved in that. I don't think the FBI is a threat to the people like Mr. Patel. I don't think it is ``utterly corrupt.'' And I don't think my Republican colleagues believe that either. I think that they admire the people that work at the FBI.

In fact, under Mr. Wray's leadership, as I noted, the morale of agents and personnel at the FBI has improved significantly, three times as many people, as I noted, applying as agents. These agents deserve a Director who will have their back and continue building the morale at the Bureau, not someone who denigrates their service and, as Kash Patel has done--again, we have got it, his voice saying it--called for their headquarters to be shut down and turned into a museum. That was one of his later comments.

The men and women of the FBI show us every day what it means to embody bravery, and now we need to show them that we, too, can be brave and tell the President on this one: No, this is not the right person. We know he is your friend. We know you have hung out with him a lot, but this is not the person for this job.

I ask my colleagues to vote no on just one of these nominees. I voted yes on some of them. I looked at their credentials. I made a decision. Maybe wouldn't have been the first person I picked, but I voted yes on some of them. I ask them to vote no on Kash Patel.

Integrity, FBI, integrity, ``I''--the FBI runs on facts. It runs on truth. Without truth, the whole system breaks down. And in his hearing, Mr. Patel made clear why Americans should be so concerned about putting someone in charge of the FBI who clearly does not have the integrity the job demands. Mr. Patel did not even have the integrity to stand by his own words that we had on YouTube. Instead of disavowing or providing explanations for his past statements, he repeatedly misled the committee, dodged questions, and claimed ignorance, claimed he didn't remember things he had said just a few months before. Why would you want someone in the FBI that doesn't remember things they said only a few months before?

This is irresponsible at best and deceitful at worst.

The Director of our Nation's most powerful law enforcement Agency must be forthright and trustworthy. He must follow the facts and carefully analyze evidence before drawing conclusions. Unfortunately, Mr. Patel has proven that his allegiance is to the President, not to the truth.

Independence of the FBI from the White House is critical. We recently saw courageous prosecutors stand up for an independent justice system. They resigned instead of carrying out politicized orders from the administration. These were not liberal lawyers. These were not members of the resistance. The Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, was a Federalist Society member and a clerk to Justice Scalia. She is a rising star. She is so respected, she has taken on major, major cases and won against criminals time and time again, and she gave up the position of the acting head of one of the most incredible prosecutor's offices in the country, the Southern District of New York.

And the lead prosecutor of the case, Hagan Scotten, was a decorated Iraq war veteran. He clerked for Justice Roberts and Justice Cavanaugh, when Justice Cavanaugh was on the Court of Appeals. In his resignation letter, he wrote:

I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of

a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it

was never going to be me.

I think we should think about those words when we take our vote.

I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of

a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it

was never going to be me.

My Republican colleagues need to show some of the same courage as these public servants. They need to stop acquiescing and stand up to this assault on our justice system, and a good place to start is by voting against Patel.

The fact is, Federal law enforcement and the American people deserve a Director who embodies the Bureau's motto: ``Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.''

I will be voting no on his confirmation, and I ask our Republican colleagues to join me in standing up for justice, in standing for the rule of law.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I call up my amendment, No. 494, and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, I rise today with a commonsense amendment, and that is that no one should be cutting taxes for billionaires while food prices are rising.

Democrats and Republicans alike can agree that food prices are just too high. The price of eggs recently hit a record high of $4.95. That is 53 percent higher than a year ago. And wholesale egg prices have increased 30 percent since the President took office to more than $8. That means egg prices will continue to skyrocket.

And as an aside, accidentally firing frontline avian flu workers isn't going to change any of that.

Prices of other groceries like beef, fish, and fresh fruit have also increased, with the most recent consumer price index showing overall food prices rising.

Instead of focusing on $2 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, we should work together to lower food prices for Americans across the country. That is why I call on my colleagues to support my amendment, which will ensure that there are no tax cuts for billionaires unless food prices are lowered for regular Americans.

Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Motion