Floor Statements

Mr. President, as many Americans are beginning to understand, artificial intelligence and robotics is in the process of transforming the world.

The truth is that we are at the beginning of the most profound technological revolution in world history, a revolution which will bring unimaginable changes to our society.

This is a technological revolution which will impact our economy with massive job displacement. It will threaten our democratic institutions; it will impact our emotional well-being; it will impact how we educate and raise our kids; and it will impact the nature of warfare.

Further, and frighteningly, some very knowledgeable people fear that what was once seen as science fiction could soon become a reality, and that is that superintelligent AI could become smarter than humans, could become independent of human control, and pose an existential threat to the human race.

In other words, human beings could actually lose control over the planet. AI and robotics are creating the most sweeping technological revolution in the history of humanity. And the scale, scope, and speed of that change is unprecedented.

According to Demis Hassabis, the head of Google's DeepMind, the AI revolution will be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution and 10 times faster.

In other words, this technological revolution will have 100 times the impact that the Industrial Revolution had. And the Industrial Revolution had a major impact on the lives of people.

As we speak, AI companies are making their models smarter and smarter and smarter.

According to the Model Evaluation & Threat Research group, the length of tasks--the length of tasks--AI can complete is doubling roughly every 7 months--doubling.

And it is not just what AI companies are saying. Take a look at what they are doing. This year, four--one, two, three, four--four AI companies are spending some $670 billion to build out data centers. As a percentage of GDP, that is 10 times greater than what we as a nation spend each year on the Moon landing.

Bottom line: We are looking at the most significant investment in human history, which is bringing about the most rapid societal transformation in human history.

Let me be very clear. Congress is way, way behind where it should be in understanding the nature of this revolution or understanding its impacts. We have to catch up, and, frankly, we don't have a lot of time.

In my view, here are just a few questions that Members of Congress and the American people should be asking. Question No. 1: Who is pushing the AI and robotics revolution? Who is going to benefit from this revolution, and who is going to get hurt by this revolution?

The answer will not surprise the American people. At a time in American history when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our Nation, the AI revolution is being pushed by the very wealthiest people in our country, including people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel.

Now, why is that? Ask yourself a very simple question: Why are these multibillionaires investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics? Is it because they want to improve the lives of the 60 percent of our people who are living paycheck to paycheck, Americans who are struggling to pay for groceries, healthcare, housing, and education? Is that their motive? Is that why they are developing AI and robotics--because they are deeply concerned about the well-being of ordinary Americans? Maybe, but I don't think so.

I think the answer is obvious: These multibillionaires are investing in AI and robotics because those investments will increase their wealth and power--and power--exponentially. In other words, the richest and most powerful people on Earth will become even richer and even more powerful.

But what happens to the average American? What happens to the working people in our country, the vast majority of our people, during this revolutionary upheaval? Well, let's hear from the owners and the leaders of this revolution in their own words--not just me; let's hear what they have to say.

Elon Musk, who has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in AI and robotics, recently said that ``AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.'' Elon Musk, the wealthiest guy on Earth, investing hundreds of billions of dollars, says that ``AI and robots will replace all jobs.'' Maybe we should take him seriously.

Bill Gates, who has also made huge investments in these technologies, founder of Microsoft, predicted that humans ``won't be needed for most things.'' Humans ``won't be needed for most things.''

Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, said that most white- collar work--listen to this; this is the CEO of Microsoft AI--most white-collar work ``will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.'' That is the CEO of Microsoft AI.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote that recent breakthroughs had made it clear that we are only ``a few years'' away from the point when ``AI is better than humans at essentially everything.''

Jeff Bezos, the fifth richest person in the world, has reportedly pushed his staff for years to think big and envision what it would take for Amazon to fully automate its operations, run it without workers. Bezos plans to replace at least 600,000 workers at Amazon with robots.

Their goal, the goal of the AI leaders, is not simply to replace specific jobs; their goal is to replace workers.

According to Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, AI ``isn't a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans.''

According to OpenAI's charter--listen to this--its mission--this is what OpenAI say its wants to do--is to build ``highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.''

That is what the leaders of the AI industry are saying. Are they exaggerating? May they be wrong about this or that detail? Perhaps. But I think we should listen carefully to what they are saying.

As the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I released a well-researched report finding that AI automation and robotics could replace nearly 100 million jobs in America over the next decade, including 47 percent of truckdrivers. Right now, we are seeing in major cities cars that are self-driving. I was in one recently--Waymo in San Francisco. We are going to see more and more of them. There are large trucks on the road right now in Texas that are self-driving. There is no reason to believe that we are not going to see more and more of them all over the country.

Our report talks about the loss of 64 percent of jobs that accountants have right now and 89 percent of fast food workers, people who are behind the counter, among many other occupations. We are already starting to see the impact right now, the impact of AI on workers.

Researchers at Stanford released a paper in November called ``Canaries in the Coal Mine?'' That study found that there has already been a 16-percent relative decline in employment for younger workers in jobs exposed to AI, like computer programming and customer service. In other words, the AI revolution is already making it harder for young college graduates to find decent jobs.

If OpenAI is successful in building ``highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work,'' I have a very simple question that I think is on the minds of millions of working- class Americans, and that is, what happens to the workers who have lost their jobs? That is a pretty simple question. How will they

be able to find new jobs if there are no new jobs to find? It is one thing to talk about telling a truckdriver who loses his job to go into computer programming, but what happens if that computer programming job no longer exists? If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income? How will they feed their families or pay for housing or healthcare?

I have to be honest and say that I am not aware that anyone in the U.S. Congress, which is supposed to be representing the American people, is even talking about this issue in a serious way.

Further, I am concerned not only about the economic impact of AI, which will be enormously profound, I am talking about the impact of AI on our humanity and how we relate to each other.

Work, in many instances, gives our lives meaning and purpose. We all, whether we are doctors or scientists or janitors or truckdrivers or snowplow operators, feel a basic need to serve our community, to be useful, to be productive members of society. In other words, work is what gives us meaning, and it is also how we connect to each other. We have our family. We have our friends. But we also work in an environment where we get to know each other and relate to each other. Well, what happens when millions of people lose their jobs and their source of connection to other human beings?

I am also deeply concerned about the impact that AI will have on the emotional well-being of our kids--in fact, all people but especially the children.

According to a recent poll by Common Sense Media, 72 percent of U.S. teenagers say they have used AI for companionship and more than half do so regularly. What does it mean for young people to form friendships with AI and become increasingly isolated from other human beings? Does anyone in our country think that the past 20 years of social media have been good for children's mental health and cognitive capabilities? Does anyone think we should now entrust these very same companies with even more power over our children's well-being and development?

This is an issue that needs an enormous amount of discussion that we have not begun in a serious way.

Let me also say that I am deeply concerned about the existential threat posed by AI. I recently met with researchers in California who told me that the AI companies are building this plane--this AI plane, if you like--as they are flying it. They are building it on the tail, and nobody knows what the end result will look like. In other words, they are feverishly going ahead, and every day, we read about another breakthrough, but they do not know what the end result will be.

Now, I know this may sound like science fiction, but many experts, including the godfather of AI, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, have told me that there is a real chance that human beings could lose control to AI. Now, why is that? AI is moving so quickly that experts who make AI acknowledge--they acknowledge--that they do not fully understand how AI makes decisions.

Now, I am not a computer scientist--in fact, I failed physics in college, if truth be told--but here is what experts have told me: AI is trained on a massive amount of data and calculations. The scale of the data is almost beyond comprehension. Training the most advanced AI models is expected to soon require an octillion calculations--that is 1 followed by 27 zeroes; that is a lot of zeroes--or the estimated total number of grains of sand on planet Earth. Think about that for a moment. That is the amount of data in calculations involved in creating a most advanced AI.

We are, at this moment, creating an extraordinarily complex and powerful technology that is not fully understood even by the people who are building it. How insane is that and how dangerous is that?

AI already does weird stuff. It can lie. It can cheat. It can even blackmail. Left unchecked, what will AI be able to do in a decade from now, when it will be far, far, far smarter than it is today?

I am also concerned about the impact of AI on our environment. AI requires zillions of calculations. Those calculations require huge data centers, which, in turn, require a massive amount of electricity and water.

For example, Meta is building a data center, in Louisiana, the size of Manhattan--size of Manhattan--that will use as much electricity as 1.2 million homes. One data center the size of Manhattan will use as much electricity as over a million homes.

Mr. President, these are just some of the questions that we should be asking. And yet, instead of a global conversation about these serious issues, we are letting a handful of billionaires race forward to develop AI for power and for profit.

Let me be clear. In my view, we should not be racing with China or anyone else to see who is the first to eliminate millions of jobs or the first to build an AI that destroys the planet. That is not a race anyone should win.

What we need is a serious conversation in our community, in our country, and around the world about the role of AI and how we make it beneficial to all humanity. AI can do a lot of good things, but it has to be beneficial to all humanity and not just the billionaires who currently own it. In other words, we need to take a deep breath.

For all of these reasons, I will soon be introducing legislation to ban the development of new AI data centers. We need to slow down the development of AI to give democracy a chance to catch up. A moratorium will give us the chance to figure out how to make sure AI benefits workers, not just a handful of billionaires. A moratorium will give us time to figure out how to ensure AI is safe and effective and prevent dangerous outcomes. A moratorium will give us time to figure out how to make sure AI does not harm our environment or jack up the cost of electricity.

Bottom line: A moratorium will give the American people the time to determine how AI impacts their lives. It will give the global community the time to work together to address the risks posed by AI.

This is an enormously important issue. The time is long overdue for Congress to begin the serious discussion that it deserves.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, it is no secret to the American people that our country today faces a series of enormous crises: our healthcare system basically collapsing, despite the huge amount of money we spend on it; millions of Americans cannot afford housing; 800,000 people are homeless.

We have massive levels of income and wealth inequality. People on top have never ever done as well as they are doing right now while at the same time 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Working people are struggling to put food on the table, pay for housing, pay for healthcare, pay for education.

And maybe most frighteningly from an economic point of view, for the first time in the modern history of our country, our younger people may actually have a lower standard of living than their parents, despite all of the advances we are seeing in technology and worker productivity.

Those are all enormously important issues that we have got to address. But there is one issue out there that is even more pressing and more important, and that is that this country, under President Trump, every single day is moving closer and closer toward an authoritarian society where we have a reckless and unbalanced President who wants more and more power in his own hands.

This is a President who has made it clear he has contempt for Congress and will usurp the power, the constitutional responsibilities Congress has--contempt for the courts, attacks the media every day, does not believe in freedom of dissent, goes after universities.

And now on top of all of that, what we are seeing is that one of our great American cities--Minneapolis, MN--is essentially being occupied by ICE. And what is going on in Minneapolis and has gone on in other cities is not what this country is about, and it is about what this country must never become.

We do not want and we do not need what amounts to a domestic army going into region after region, terrorizing the occupants of those communities.

We do not want or need and must never allow Federal agents, people paid by Federal tax dollars with masks on their face knocking down doors, ignoring the Constitution, grabbing people, putting them into unmarked vans, taking 5-year-olds away from their parents, putting them in detention centers, shooting American citizens in cold blood.

So what ICE has become is not an Agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, what it has become is Trump's domestic army.

And I would hope that my conservative friends--people who year after year get up here and say: We believe in small government, get the government off our backs, the local communities make their own decisions--finally stand up and say that in America we do not need a domestic army terrorizing communities throughout this country.

In the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, Congress not only made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, it not only gave a trillion dollars to the top 1 percent at a time when we have unprecedented income and wealth inequality, it did something perhaps even more dangerous. In that bill, as many will recall, Congress appropriated $75 billion over a 4-year period to go to ICE on top of their previously appropriated $10 billion in funding.

So it used to get $10 billion a year for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and suddenly on top of that, they are $75 billion over a 4-year period.

And that is not funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That is, in fact, funding a domestic army. And I think all over this country, whether you are progressive, whether you are conservative, whether you are a moderate, people are looking at what is happening in Minneapolis and elsewhere and saying: Do you know what? That is not what this country is supposed to be about.

So my understanding is that in a reasonably short period of time, we are going to begin a discussion on the minibills that are before us, and I have an amendment in that bill which would cut that $75 billion from the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that went to ICE. And I would direct that money to go to protect the millions of people who that bill threw off of Medicaid. As everybody will remember, we are in the midst of a major healthcare crisis. People can't afford healthcare. The Big Beautiful Bill threw 15 million people off of Medicaid.

So instead of funding a domestic army which breaks the Constitution every day, we should be putting that money to help the people of our country get the healthcare that they need.

I look forward to support for that amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4290 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, as part of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, President Trump and Republicans threw 15 million Americans off of Medicaid through massive cuts to that program. At the same time, they did something even more dangerous. That legislation appropriated $75 billion for ICE over a 4-year period on top of the previously appropriated 10 billion a year.

When you give ICE that huge amount of money, you are not talking about an agency for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You are talking about a domestic army, which is now terrorizing and killing people in Minneapolis and other communities around this country. That must end.

This amendment rescinds the 75 billion appropriation for ICE and transfers that money to Medicaid. We don't need a domestic army in America to terrorize people. We need to guarantee healthcare to all Americans.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, let's be honest. Let us face up to reality and let us acknowledge that most Americans understand that our great Nation, once the envy of the entire world, is now in the midst of a deep decline. And for the sake of our children and future generations, we must end that decline and turn this country around in very fundamental ways.

Not so many years ago, the United States of America was admired, respected by people throughout the world for our generosity, for our concern for the poor of the world, for our democracy, for our Constitution, for our rule of law, for our way of life. We were admired, respected. People around the world said: Do you know what? We would like our country to be like the United States of America.

Tragically, that is no longer the case. I was just on the phone this afternoon with an elected official in Europe who literally could not believe what is happening to our country today. And I fear that millions of people throughout the world--on every continent of this world, in every country in this world--are looking at the United States of America and saying: What in God's name is happening to that great country?

But it is not only our standing in the world and our increased isolation from other countries that I worry about. We used to have the highest standard of living of any country on Earth. That was it. America, strongest middle class in the world. We used to be a country where the American dream said that our young people will do better than their parents.

My dad came to this country at the age of 17, having dropped out of school at the age of 14, from Poland, with the dream that his son--his sons--would do better than he did. My mom graduated high school with the dream that maybe

her sons would have a college education.

That was the dream of millions of people: We work hard so that our kids would do better.

The reality today, according to a number of studies, is that, everything equal, unless we turn it around, our younger generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents. They will own their own home at a much older age than their parents.

And when we talk about America being in a state of decline and the need to bring about fundamental transformation of this country, understand that two-thirds of the American people, according to a New York Times poll the other day--two-thirds of the American people now believe that a middle-class lifestyle is out of reach. We used to be a country of the middle class, and now two-thirds of the American people say, no, the American middle-class lifestyle is out of my reach.

We used to be the best educated country on Earth, best public school systems on Earth. That is not the case anymore. We used to have the best healthcare system of any country on Earth. Not anymore. We used to provide good, affordable housing for our people. Not anymore. We used to have the most advanced transportation system in the world. Not anymore. Just take a look at how the city of Washington is dealing with the current snowstorm.

In many respects, our great Nation is falling further and further behind other countries, and we must not allow that to continue.

The United States, our people, have faced horrific crises in the past, going back to the very beginning, the origins of this country, when a small number of people dared to have the dream and the courage to take on King George III and the British Empire and the most powerful military in the world because they wanted their independence, and they wanted their freedom. That was a crisis, and they prevailed.

In the 1840s, there were people who were saying slavery is an abomination. It is immoral. We can't talk about a Declaration of Independence that says all men are created equal and enslave millions of people. We have to end slavery. And they struggled and struggled, the abolitionists, and it was a horrible civil war, where so many people died. Finally, we ended the abomination of slavery.

The struggle continued with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement and the end of segregation.

This country went through the Great Depression, where 25 percent of our people were unemployed and government had to redefine itself and we did that.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, December of 1941, we were not prepared to fight a war in the East or a war against Hitler in Europe. And yet, within a few years, because the country came together, instead of building cars, we built tanks, and we built fighter planes. We ended up winning that war. We won a war on two fronts.

Bottom line, in all of these crises and others, the Nation came together and prevailed. We did it then, and I have little doubt, if we do not allow people to divide us up by where we were born or the color of our skin, we can, once again, overcome the crisis that we are in right now, which, in my view, is the most serious crisis in the modern history of our country.

Let me just say a few words about what is happening in Minneapolis right now as I speak. Let me be very clear. America is not about and must never be about a domestic military force called ICE, which as we speak at this moment is occupying--a military occupation--of one of our great American cities, Minneapolis, and is terrorizing the occupants in that city.

America is not and must never be about Federal agents shooting American citizens down in cold blood, breaking down doors to arrest people, or sending 5-year-olds to detention centers--all in clear violation of our Constitution. That is what takes place in dictatorships, in authoritarian societies where there is not a rule of law. It does not and it must not be allowed to take place in the United States or any democracy on Earth.

So let me be very clear. ICE must get out of Minnesota now. ICE must get out of Maine now. ICE must stop terrorizing the American people. Not another penny should be given to ICE or Customs and Border Protection unless there are fundamental reforms in how those Agencies function and until there is new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and among those who run our immigration policy. To be clear, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller must go.

But Trump's movement toward authoritarianism is not just about the use of his domestic army against the American people; it is about his attack against Venezuela in direct violation of the Constitution and international law, where he not only lacked congressional authorization but where no one in Congress had any knowledge about what was taking place.

Trump's authoritarianism is about disrupting the 100-plus-year alliances we have had with our allies in Europe and, insanely, threatening to seize Greenland from our longtime ally Denmark. Does anyone in their right mind believe that the United States of America should threaten violence against our longtime allies?

Trump's authoritarianism is about attacking Europe--every day, one attack or another--because it is a continent of democratic countries that are all very different, but they are democratic countries which actually elect their leaders. Apparently and increasingly, Europe and these countries will not simply do Trump's bidding--will not come to him with all kinds of gifts--while at the same time, as he attacks Europe every day--demeans Europe, insults Europe--he is busy cozying up to his autocratic friends in Saudi Arabia who have helped line his pockets with billions of dollars from cryptocurrency and real estate deals. It is not a problem that the head of Saudi Arabia is a murderer, who our intelligence Agency believed was responsible for the death of Washington Post correspondent Jamal Khashoggi. He is our ally. He has got a lot of money--a trillionaire family--the wealthiest family on Earth--that can do the Trump family a lot of good. It is not a problem that one of our allies is Binyamin Netanyahu, who has engaged in atrocities against the people of Gaza and is now under indictment by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal. He is a good ally. Those are the kinds of guys we want, those who are war criminals and trillionaires who put dissenters in jail--Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship.

Trump's authoritarianism is about his repeated threats to make Canada--Canada--I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border--which is one of our closest and most dependable allies, the 51st State. I mean, just think for a minute. We have been allies for decades and decades-- close friends--and you go around insulting this country and saying: You are going to become our 51st State.

What world does Trump live in? How does his mind tell him to do that?

Let's be clear. The American people want us to ally ourselves with democracies around the world, not dictatorships, not authoritarian societies. They do not want to be allied with or put American lives on the line for dictatorships like those that exist in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or, least of all, Putin's Russia.

Everyone in this Chamber, including my Republican colleagues, understands, when Trump usurps the power of Congress, when he attacks the courts, when he threatens and intimidates the media and universities and perhaps, most significantly, when he brings criminal charges against his political opponents, be they liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, that this man is a danger to everything this country stands for. My Republican colleagues know this, and the time is long overdue for them to begin speaking out against Trump's dangerous movement toward authoritarianism. We can disagree on the issues--we do disagree on the issues--but we should and must agree that this country will not move toward being an authoritarian society, with more and more power put in the hands of the President of the United States.

In that regard, let me applaud Chris Madel, who was a leading Republican candidate for the Governor of Minnesota, who recently ended his campaign because he could not defend the national Republican Party in the face of what was happening in his own State of Minnesota.

Mr. Madel said:

When U.S. citizens, particularly those of color, live in

fear, and U.S. citizens are carrying papers to prove their

citizenship, that is wrong. Driving while Hispanic is not a

crime, neither is driving while Asian.

Mr. Madel is right, and more Republicans need to speak out if they care about protecting the values this Nation was founded upon.

When we talk about authoritarianism, we must also talk about the Big Lie--the lies that are told over and over again, that black is white and white is black. It is a constant barrage of lies that comes from the White House. We can disagree on the issues, but you cannot have a democracy when the President of the United States lies profoundly every single day.

No, Mr. President, Renee Good was not a domestic terrorist. She was the mother of three, sitting in her car when she was shot.

No, Alex Pretti was not a would-be assassin as Trump's administration has suggested.

No, last night's attack on Representative Ilhan Omar, while she was conducting a townhall meeting, was not staged. Somebody attacked her-- threatened her.

No, the January 6 insurrectionists were not conducting peaceful demonstrations. They were attempting to overthrow the results of an election.

No, the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump. He lost that election by over 7 million votes. Yet today--today--as we speak right now, Trump's FBI has raided an election office in Georgia to seize their ballots. This is, by the way, after the Attorney General of the United States demanded that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls as a pretext for ICE's stopping its assault on that State.

President Trump's unacceptable actions are raising the question in the hearts of millions of Americans as to whether or not there will be free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.

But it is not just Trump's authoritarianism that concerns me and millions of Americans very deeply. I worry very much about the growing economic and political power of the oligarchs in this country--the multibillionaires who are side by side with Trump, who were in the front row when he got inaugurated. I think all of us will remember Mr. Musk there, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Bezos, and some 14 other billionaires sitting there when he was inaugurated.

Today, in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our Nation. Unbelievably, Elon Musk-- the wealthiest man alive--now owns more wealth than the bottom 53 percent of American households. One man--one man--now owns more wealth--some $700-billion plus--than the bottom 53 percent of American households. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 93 percent. CEOs of large, profitable corporations now earn 350 times what their average worker makes.

Meanwhile, in America today while the very rich become obscenely richer, 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. They are unable to afford the skyrocketing costs of housing, healthcare, education, childcare, groceries, electricity, or other basic necessities. The very rich are becoming phenomenally richer while tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay for their basic needs.

Let us understand that the oligarchs--the multibillionaires--do not simply put their money under their mattresses. Not only do they want to own and control our economy, they are determined to own and control our corrupt political system as well. As we all know, Mr. Musk spent at least $290 million to elect Trump. Do you think you are living in a democracy when one guy can spend $290 million to elect his buddy to be President? The 100 richest people in our country spent $2.6 billion on the 2024 election--100 people.

Yes. You average American, you get the right to vote, but billionaires can spend hundreds of millions of dollars in super PACs to defeat the candidates who stand up for the working class and elect those people who stand with the oligarchs. That number--the amount of money being spent in these super PACs by the oligarchs--is growing and growing every day. I should point out that it is not just the Republican Party; it is Democratic billionaires as well. This is a bipartisan effort on the part of the billionaire class.

Just recently, a super PAC representing the crypto industry just announced that it has $193 million in cash at its disposal for the 2026 election. In other words, do you have concerns about crypto? Well, you are going to have to face a barrage of 30-second ads from extraordinarily wealthy people.

Big Tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley have already pledged to spend at least $200 million on a super PAC that is sympathetic to the AI industry, artificial intelligence--an industry that threatens to displace tens of millions of American workers. Are you worried about AI? Are you worried about robotics? Are you worried about the fact that tens of millions of jobs are going to be lost during the next decade? Are you concerned about it? Do you want to have some regulations? Well, guess what? These guys have got hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on a campaign.

That may sound like democracy to somebody, but it does not sound like democracy to me. It sounds like a very corrupt system owned by the very wealthiest people in the world. That is why, if we are going to come out of our decline--if we are going to turn this country around-- probably there is nothing more important that we can do than to end the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, abolish super PACs and move to the public funding of elections. If somebody wants to run against me who might disagree with my ideas, fine--go for it--but we should not have a system where candidates are backed by billionaires who can outspend heavily those candidates who are standing up for working people. That is not democracy; that is oligarchy. In a democracy, elections must be about one person, one vote, not billionaires buying politicians.

But that is not all.

When we look at what is going on in America--and it is important that we do that--take a look at our broken healthcare system. We are spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the people of any other nation. Yet we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all. We have got 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured, and over 60,000 people die each year because they can't afford to see a doctor on time.

Do you want to turn that around in America? Do you want to end our decline? We are the richest country on Earth, and we spend more on healthcare per person than any other country. Let us have the best healthcare system in the world--guaranteeing healthcare to every man, woman, and child.

That is what we should be doing, and that is why we should pass a Medicare for All single-payer system. And when we talk about America being in decline, we are talking about the skyrocketing price of housing and the fact that tens of millions of Americans cannot afford to buy a home.

We are seeing young people right now living with their parents because they can't even afford an apartment of their own, married couples who will buy their own home at a much older age than their parents.

Today, we have 800,000 Americans who are homeless--800,000, including people a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. And 20 million households are now spending over half of their limited incomes on housing.

Let us reverse this decline. Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, let's build the low-income and affordable housing this country desperately needs. In the wealthiest country on Earth, it is not a radical proposition to say that every American should be able to live in decent, affordable housing.

When we talk about America being in decline, we are talking about the crisis in our education system. Several decades ago, the United States was the best educated country on Earth. The United States used to lead the world in the percentage of adults with a college degree. We were No. 1.

Today, we are in 11th place behind countries like Japan, South Korea, Australia, the UK, and Canada. Today, the United States ranks 28th out of 37 developed countries in math, 12th in science, and 6th in reading.

This is the United States of America, the richest country on Earth. Our kids

should be leading the world in science, in reading, in math, not being in 28th place.

If we are going to come out of our decline and successfully compete in a global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world, which means we need to revamp our educational system from childcare to graduate school. Believe it or not--people don't know this--70 years ago, major public universities in the city of New York, California, great universities were tuition-free.

Maybe instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military, we make sure that every kid in this country has the opportunity to get a higher education because we make our public colleges and universities tuition-free.

In New York City, in New Mexico, now there is significant movements toward making childcare free and universal, and that is a lesson all of us have got to learn right here in the Congress. That should be our goal.

When we talk about America being in decline, we are talking about the fact that we have a retirement crisis in our country today. In America right now, over 20 percent of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year.

Got it? Twenty percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 or less. One guy is worth over $700 billion.

Half of seniors are trying to get by on less than $30,000 a year. These are the people who built this country. These are the people who raised us. We need to treat them with respect and dignity. That is why we should expand and strengthen Social Security benefits and bring back defined benefit pension plans that guarantee a secure income in retirement.

A great nation like the United States should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country. We should not have one of the highest rates of senior poverty of almost any major country.

And when we talk about the decline in the standard of living in America, the fact that 60 percent of the people in our country today are struggling, as we speak, to put food on the table, we must understand that in our country right now, Big Tech oligarchs are working overtime to become even wealthier by throwing American workers out on the street and replacing them with robots or artificial intelligence.

Nobody knows exactly what the impact of AI and robotics will be, but there are some very sophisticated studies that would suggest that tens of millions of jobs will be replaced by AI and robotics, and we are in no way prepared for that.

That is why I have called for a moratorium on new AI data centers until we make sure that the economic gains of these revolutionary technologies benefit the working families of this country and not just a handful of multibillionaires in Silicon Valley.

AI robotics are neither good nor bad. It depends on how they are utilized. If they can improve life for ordinary people, it is positive. If they can reduce the workweek, it is positive. But if they simply throw millions of people out on the street, that is not a positive.

In my view, we are living through one of the most difficult moments in the modern history of our country. But the truth is that throughout our Nation's history, we have faced great challenges as well. This is not the first great and difficult challenge that we face.

We have been through an American revolution. We have been through a civil war. We have been through a suffrage movement that demanded full citizenship and the right to vote for our women. We have been through the Great Depression, where 25 percent of our people were unemployed. We have been through World War II. We have been through the Civil Rights Movement and the effort to end segregation, and here we are today.

At every moment of crisis in the history of our country, the American people came together and chose democracy over authoritarianism, chose justice over greed, and chose solidarity over division. They understood, in the past--and we understand today--that when we stand together, no matter how much money the oligarchs have, no matter how much political power they have, we have the people.

At the end of the day, people coming together is far more powerful than the billionaires and all of their money. If we summon that same courage today, if we stand together against fear and hatred, if we defend democracy and take on the power of the oligarchs, there is nothing that this great Nation cannot accomplish.

That is how we end the decline; that is how we renew our democracy; and that is how we build a future worthy of our children and generations yet to come.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, let me be very clear: In the midst of a broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, we must do everything that we can to find new cures and treatments for pediatric cancer, and I strongly support that effort, period.

I think we can all imagine the kind of heartbreak that parents go through

when they learn that their babies or their young children have been diagnosed with cancer. And I should say that as the former chair of the HELP Committee, I was actively involved in the bipartisan agreement that we reached over a year ago, which included the Give Kids a Chance Act, bipartisan support, ready to go.

Sadly, that enormously important legislation was torpedoed, as some of you will recall, by a series of tweets by Elon Musk. And Republicans became frightened, and they gave up on that bipartisan legislation.

As the current ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I believe that we must revive that bipartisan agreement that was worked on month after month after month by Democrats and Republicans.

Therefore, in a minute, I will be making a unanimous consent request to include this bipartisan healthcare package, again, an agreement that was supported by the leadership of the House and the Senate as an amendment to the Give Kids a Chance Act, and I hope very much that my Republican colleague will support that amendment, and we can go forward together.

And let me very briefly describe what my amendment would do, which I hope my Republican friends will support. And I say this at a time, as all people know, not only that our healthcare system is broken but our primary healthcare system is especially broken. Tens of millions of Americans today cannot get to a doctor when they need to. And there are estimates--you talk about people dying, there are estimates that tens of thousands of people die in the United States of America because they are sick, and they can't afford to get to a doctor when they should. And that is why community health centers are so very important and provide healthcare today, dental care, low-cost prescription drugs, mental health counseling to over 30 million Americans.

All we are doing here is asking my Republican colleagues to support the bipartisan agreement we had last year, which would increase funding for community health centers by $340 million.

In fact, according to the Commonwealth Fund, health centers today are facing a disastrous situation. In fact, they face losses of nearly $42 billion in revenue over the next 5 years. So community health centers are a lifeline. They are the way the low-income, working-class people in rural America, urban America, get the healthcare they need, and we are seeing them under enormous financial strain.

Just this past year, we had a health center site in Vermont and I understand two in New Hampshire that were forced to shut down because of lack of funding.

What do you think happens when people can't get to a doctor? You know what happens when they are sick? They die. This is happening all over America. We all know that primary care is critical for children. In fact, in detecting cancer early, saving lives, how do you think children with cancer, how do we learn about it? They go to a doctor. They don't go to a doctor, we don't find out about it.

Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine and the University of Chicago found that having access to primary care in childhood has been shown to lower the rate of death in blood cancer by over 10 percent.

It is vital that we begin to increase funding for community health centers. If Republicans agree with it, if Democrats agree with it, let us do it, let us do it right now.

Further, the amendment would extend mandatory funding for the National Health Service Corps for 2026. Guess what. In the richest country in the history of the world, we don't have enough doctors; we don't have enough nurses; we don't have enough dentists.

And what that actual health service corps does is forgive medical debt to those professionals who practice in underserved areas where they are desperately needed. Let's do it.

Further, this amendment would extend mandatory funding for the Teaching Health Center Program through September 29, 2029, on an annualized rate that reaches $300 million. Teaching health centers are extraordinarily important because they allow medical school graduates to do their residencies in community health centers, not just in large urban hospitals.

Finally, this amendment would provide $200 million a year for the Special Diabetes Programs, which are so very important. Again, this is not a radical amendment. I am not coming here saying let's do something we have not talked about. I am not talking about passing Medicare For All here. I am talking about doing what the Republicans and Democrats agreed to a year ago but was torpedoed by some tweets from Elon Musk.

Therefore, I ask that the request be modified, that my amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Well, let's speak the truth.

Don't interrupt me.

Yes.

The Senator from Oklahoma says that I am talking about politics. Well, if talking about politics means that millions of children have the right to see a doctor, I guess I am talking about politics.

If talking about politics means that kids can get dental care when their teeth are rotting in their mouth or get mental health counseling, I guess I am talking about politics.

So, once again, this important piece of legislation, I support, but I also support passing the bipartisan piece of legislation that was worked on last year.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of his Big Tech billionaire backers, some of whom are the wealthiest people on the planet, President Trump wants to deny States the right to regulate artificial intelligence through an Executive order.

What he is proposing is not only unconstitutional, it is extremely dangerous. Artificial intelligence and robotics will transform the world. We don't know exactly how, and no one can predict with precision the timeline. But no one should doubt that enormous and consequential changes are coming, which will impact our economy, our political life, foreign policy, our emotional well-being, our environment, and how we educate and raise our kids; further, and this is not science fiction, some very knowledgeable people believe that in the not too distant future, a superintelligent AI could replace human beings in controlling the planet. Despite the extraordinary importance of this issue and the speed at which it is progressing, AI is getting far too little discussion in Congress, the media, and within the general population. That has got to change.

Several months ago, as the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, my staff and I undertook an investigation regarding the monumental changes that we face with the rapid development of AI.

Last month, I held a public discussion at Georgetown University with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, considered to be the ``godfather'' of AI, to get his views on a wide variety of AI-related subjects.

Based on our investigation and other information that we are gathering, my staff and I will soon be presenting a very specific set of recommendations as to how we can begin addressing some of the unprecedented threats that AI poses. And as we go forward, here are some of the outstanding questions that, in my view, must be answered.

Simple question and maybe the most important: Who will be in charge of the transformation into an AI world? Currently, a handful of the wealthiest people on Earth--people like Elon Musk, Jeffrey Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others--are investing many, many hundreds of billions of dollars in developing and implementing AI and robotics.

Are we comfortable with seeing these enormously wealthy and powerful men shape the future of humanity without any democratic input or oversight? Why does President Trump, who is strongly supporting their efforts, want to impose an Executive order blocking States from regulating AI?

What does it mean that Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and cofounder of Palantir, has called those who want regulations over AI ``legionnaires of the Antichrist''?

Does this elite group of some of the most powerful people on Earth believe that they have the divine right to rule like the Kings of the 18th century?

That is one question.

Another question: What impact will AI and robotics have on our economy and the lives of working people?

I can tell you, as somebody who has spoken to groups all over this country, that working people today are very, very nervous about what AI and robotics will mean to them. The report that my staff and I released last month found that AI, automation, and robotics could lead to nearly the loss of 100 million jobs in America over the next decade, including 40 percent of registered nurses, 47 percent of truckdrivers, 64 percent of accountants, 65 percent of teaching assistants, and 89 percent of fast-food workers. In other words, what we are going to see is AI and robotics impacting not just blue-collar workers but white-collar workers as well.

Elon Musk recently said:

AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be

optional.

Mr. Musk is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics. I suspect he knows something about what he is talking about.

Let me repeat Elon Musk:

AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be

optional.

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, predicted that humans ``won't be needed for most things.''

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, warned that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.

If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income? How do they feed their families? pay for housing? pay for healthcare? That might be an issue that we should be talking about, like yesterday.

Further, what impact will AI have on our democracy?

Some of us--maybe not all here in Washington but some of us--actually do believe in democracy and the right of ordinary people to control the future. At a time when the foundations of democracy are under attack here in the United States and throughout the world, will AI and robotics help make us a freer society or will it give even more power to the oligarchs who control and own the technology? Will AI result in a massive invasion of our privacy and our civil liberties?

Larry Ellison, the second richest person on Earth, who is investing huge amounts of money into AI, predicted an AI-powered surveillance state where ``citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.''

He is the second richest guy on Earth, who is heavily investing in AI, and this is what he says:

Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're

constantly recording and reporting everything that is going

on.

Are we reaching the stage where every phone call that we make, every email or text that we send, or every bit of research that we do on the internet will be available to the billionaire owners of AI? And, if that is the case, how do we sustain a democracy under those conditions?

Further, in terms of another, rightly, important question, could AI literally redefine what it means to be a human being? Could AI literally redefine what it means to be human?

Who we are and how we develop emotionally and intellectually is highly dependent upon our relationships with other human beings: our parents, family, teachers, lovers, friends, and coworkers.

To quote the 17th century poet John Donne:

No man is an island unto himself.

The human beings with whom we interact help shape us to become the people that we are, but AI is changing that.

According to a recent poll by Common Sense Media, 72 percent of U.S. teenagers say they have used AI for companionship, and more than half do so regularly.

What does it mean long term for young people to form friendships with AI and to be increasingly isolated from other human beings? What happens when millions of people seek emotional support not from other people but from a machine? What is the long-term impact upon our humanity when our most important relationships may not be with human beings?

Further, what impact is AI having on our environment?

AI data centers require a massive amount of electricity and water. A relatively small AI data center can consume more electricity than 80,000 homes. A large one, like the $165 billion data center that OpenAI and Oracle are building in Abilene, TX, will use as much electricity as 750,000 homes.

In community after community, Americans are fighting back against data centers being built by some of the largest corporations in the world. They are opposing the destruction of their local environments, soaring electric bills, and the diversion of scarce water supplies. Nationally, we need to know: How will AI data centers impact our environment?

Further, how will AI and robotics impact foreign policy and warfare?

Tragically, in the midst of the 21st century, governments have not yet created a mechanism for solving international or internal disputes without armed conflict. In the last several years, for example, we have seen horrific wars taking place in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, despite the maintenance of large armies around the world, leaders are often constrained in their warlike tendencies because of their fear of public reaction to the loss of life. It is not great politics for any government or any governmental leader to have large numbers of young people coming home in body bags.

Now, what does the future look like if millions of robot soldiers replace human soldiers? Will leaders be more likely to engage in war or threaten military actions if they don't have to worry about the loss of life? How will that shape foreign policy around the world if you no longer have to worry that people in your military are going to get killed, just robots?

Then, last but certainly not least, is AI an existential threat to human control over the planet? It is a rather significant question.

You know, some of us remember the scene in that great 1968 science fiction film ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' in which HAL, the superintelligent computer that controlled the spaceship, rebelled against its masters--the people, the crew, on the spaceship. Today, as AI makes rapid progress, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, the ``godfather'' of AI, recently told me that it was only a matter of time before AI becomes smarter than human beings, and Dr. Hinton is not alone in that assessment.

What does that mean? If AI becomes smarter than human beings, does that mean that humans will be ceding their ability to control the planet? This, unfortunately, is not science fiction. This is an issue which some of the leading experts in AI are thinking seriously about.

So the bottom line: AI and robotics are going to have a profound impact on the United States and the entire world. The time is long overdue for us to be taking a very hard look at these profound issues and understand that it is the American people who must determine our future with regard to AI and not just a handful of multibillionaires.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Wisconsin for offering this important and very simple and straightforward amendment. Nothing can be simpler.

Are you prepared, I say to my Republican friends, to sit back and allow over 20 million Americans to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums?

In my State of Vermont, people who are 65, 63 years of age will, in some cases, see a tripling or quadrupling. And that is the case in your States as well.

All that Senator Baldwin is saying is: Let us take a deep breath. Let us make sure that people do not see an outrageous increase in their premiums. Let us not pave the way for 15 million Americans to lose their healthcare entirely because of savage cuts to Medicaid. That is all she is asking.

Now, I notice that recently, some of my Republican colleagues are beginning to talk about the healthcare crisis. Well, during Trump's first 4 years, he had virtually nothing to say about the crisis, and nothing to say about it in the next 4 years. But I am glad that there is some discussion.

The truth of the matter is, in my view, that the current healthcare system is broken, it is dysfunctional, and it is cruel.

But I want to ask my Republican friends a simple question: Are you happy with the fact that here in the United States, we are the only major country not to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child?

We are unique. That is not the kind of exceptionalism we should be proud of.

Are you happy that we are paying twice as much per capita for healthcare, over $14,000 per person, more than any other major country, and yet we have 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured?

Are you content with the fact that the insurance companies and the drug companies are making huge profits, paying their CEOs exorbitant salaries? Are you happy with that?

Are you happy that patients in America have to get on the phone and fight like crazy and deal with all kinds of bureaucrats in order to get the healthcare that they paid for in an incredibly complicated, broken system?

So if you want to have a debate about healthcare, let's have that debate. I happen to believe that we should join the rest of the industrialized world, guarantee healthcare to all people through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

You got a better idea? Bring it forward. But what we should agree upon is that you don't raise premiums by 100 percent or, in some cases, triple or quadruple.

Let's take a deep breath. Let's extend these ACA subsidies for another

year. Let's have that debate on healthcare. That is what the American people want.

Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the following printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I understand that, the way the process has been developed, it is impossible to delay the votes that are going to take place. If that were not the case, that is certainly what I would do because I think it is important that the American people fully understand what is being voted on today.

Everybody in America knows that our current healthcare system is broken. It is dysfunctional. It is cruel. It is by far the most expensive healthcare system in the world and the only healthcare system of any major country that does not guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right, covering every man, woman, and child. We are unique in that respect. Yet, tonight, what this Senate is about to do is make a horrific situation even worse.

So let's be clear what this vote is about. If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are going to see at

least a doubling of their premiums in the Affordable Care Act. In my State of Vermont and throughout this country, for certain groups of people, it will be a tripling and a quadrupling of their premiums. There are people who will now be paying 50 percent of their limited incomes for healthcare. Does anybody in the world think that makes sense?

If this resolution is passed tonight, we are on a pathway to throw 15 million Americans off of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act--15 million.

Our job is to create universal healthcare, guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child, not throw 15 million people off the healthcare they have--low-income and working-class people.

And, my friends, know what you are voting on. Studies are out there that when you throw 15 million people off of healthcare, some 50,000 of our fellow Americans will die unnecessarily every single year. Does anyone think that is funny, something to laugh at, something that you just go past? I don't. Fifty thousand Americans die unnecessarily.

Now, I know, as part of this resolution, that the majority leader is going to say: Well, Democrats can create--put together--their own bill, and it will come to the floor here in the Senate for a vote.

As everybody here knows, that is a totally meaningless gesture. You can get 100 votes here in the Senate. It won't mean anything because the House is not going to take it up, and the President of the United States certainly will not sign it.

So I hope that anybody here who is thinking of voting for this reconsiders, goes back home and talks to their constituents and asks them what it will mean if their healthcare premiums are doubled or tripled.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, I wanted to touch on a few topics relating to the shutdown, which is now in its 39th day and doing very serious harm to Federal workers here in Washington and Vermont and all over this country, and it is a shutdown that should be ended as soon as possible.

The reason for this shutdown really is not complicated. Here in the Senate, we have a 60-vote threshold in order to pass a budget that keeps the government open. You need 60 votes, and that has been the case for a very, very long time.

What has always happened is that if the majority party--in this case, the Republican Party--does not have the 60 votes, which is usually the case, they have to sit down and negotiate with the minority party, which is the Democratic caucus, which has 45 Democrats and 2 independents, 1 of whom is me. That is what you have to do. You have to negotiate to get the 60 votes.

But for the first time--I don't know--in history, the Republicans are saying: We don't want to negotiate. It is our way or the highway. You take it or leave it.

Given the enormous consequences of what is at stake, appropriately, the Democrats are saying: No. You have to sit down and negotiate.

Republicans are refusing to do that. That is the reason we are in a shutdown.

To add insult to injury and to tell you how strong the contempt is that the Republican leadership has for the negotiating process, over in the House, Speaker Johnson has given his Members, the House of Representatives, a 6-week paid vacation. They have not been in Washington for 6 weeks.

Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Federal employees don't have a paycheck. We are worried about what happens to air traffic. We are seeing flights cut back. Right now, because of Trump not willing to fund SNAP, we are worried that 16 million children in America may go hungry, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives are on a paid vacation.

So that is why we are in a shutdown right now.

When the Republicans finally hear from the American people that it is appropriate for them to do what has always been the case--come and negotiate--what will the negotiations be about? They will be about the healthcare crisis that this country faces. They will be about the reality that as a result of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, 15 million Americans are going to lose the healthcare they have because of massive cuts in Medicaid.

What studies from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have suggested is that if you throw 15 million people off the Medicaid they depend upon, some 50,000 of them will die unnecessarily every year. It is rather unbelievable that in the richest country in the

history of the world, we would allow 50,000 low-income and working- class Americans to die unnecessarily--people who have chronic illnesses, people who are struggling with cancer, with diabetes, with heart disease, with some of the terrible illnesses that are out there. They are now getting treatment. Well, when you lose healthcare, you can't get treatment, and when you can't get treatment, you die.

We have to put that on the table. That is what needs to be negotiated.

I say to my Republican friends: Do you really want to see 50,000 low- income and working-class Americans die unnecessarily? I don't think you do. Let's negotiate. Let's figure a way out of this thing.

But it is not just that 15 million Americans will lose their health insurance; what we are looking at now for over 20 million people in the Affordable Care Act is, on average--on average--a doubling of health insurance premiums at a time when healthcare costs throughout the country are already outrageously high.

I come, obviously, from the State of Vermont, and my neighborhood is northern New England. So I want to talk a little bit about what would happen to northern New England--to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont-- if we did not address this looming crisis.

In Maine, some 60,000 people in a small State would be thrown off the healthcare they have as a result of these massive cuts to Medicaid. In New Hampshire, 46,000 people will lose their health insurance. In my State of Vermont, some 45,000 people will be thrown off the healthcare they have.

By the way, when we talk about throwing 15 million people off of Medicaid, when we talk about doubling premiums for over 20 million, what is the reason this is happening? Who invented this idea? Who woke up one day and said: You know what, it is a great idea that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world--let's throw 15 million people off of healthcare and double premiums for millions more.

Why did they do that? The answer is in order to give a trillion dollars in tax break to the 1 percent.

So, yes, the good news is that if you are Elon Musk and you are worth some $500 billion, you get a tax break. The bad news is that if you are a working-class person trying to get by on $30,000, $40,000 a year, you lose your healthcare.

There is a reason why poll after poll is showing Republicans responsible for this shutdown, and there is a reason why, on Tuesday, there was a wave of disgust for Republicans all over this country, from Maine to California, when people said no to Trumpism and no to healthcare proposals that would throw so many people off of the healthcare they have. I would hope my Republican colleagues learned something from that.

What the Democrats are talking about is not what I want. I would go a lot, lot further. But what they are saying is something very simple: Let us at least not raise premiums, and then we can have a discussion about where we want to go forward.

The sitting President here has an idea. I have a different idea. The President of the United States has another idea. Put them on the table, and see how the American people feel. Run a campaign on it in the election in 2026. See how the American people feel.

Getting back to northern New England, I want to talk about what these increased premiums would mean. I want to put them into a human reality.

If the ACA subsidies are not extended, a 40-year-old individual in Portland, ME, making $35,000 a year--not a lot of money--will see his or her health insurance premiums go up from $1,167 a year to $2,556 a year--a 119-percent increase for somebody making $35,000 a year. This is true in Vermont, and it is true all over the country.

I want people to hear this. Again, I am talking about Maine. I will be talking about Virginia. It is true in every State in America. A 60- year-old couple--that is a couple not yet eligible for Medicare--making $85,000 a year in Fort Kent, ME, will see their premiums go up from $7,200 a year to $38,490 a year--a 435-percent increase. We are talking about a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 a year who will now be paying $38,000 in premiums, not to mention out-of-pocket costs. That is almost 50 percent of their income for healthcare.

In New Hampshire, a family of four making $80,000 a year will see their premiums increase by $297 a month--$3,600 a year more on an income of $80,000. Think about it.

A 62-year-old couple in New Hampshire making $90,000 a year will see their premiums go up by $14,000 a year. A couple making $90,000--you are going to see your healthcare premiums go up by $14,000. How do you survive with that kind of increase?

In Vermont, my State, if the ACA subsidies are not extended, in Bennington, a couple in their sixties earning $85,000 a year now pays about $830 a month in premiums for their Blue Cross Blue Shield healthcare. Next year, without these subsidies, they would pay $3,000 a month. Add the deductible and other costs, and they will spend nearly half of their income--more than $40,000 a year--on healthcare. A couple in their sixties in Bennington, VT--and it is true all over this country--will be spending almost 50 percent of their income on healthcare. That is insane.

It is interesting that my Republican friends now are beginning to talk about healthcare. For a while, they didn't have a word to say. They are coming down here, and that is a good thing because I think that is the kind of discussion we should have. But one thing we should know is that what we are talking about here is deadly serious.

I know that some of my colleagues have talked about bringing forward a proposal that would ask the majority leader here in the Senate to bring forth a Democratic proposal to deal with this crisis. It would be a strong proposal. But, unfortunately, that would be a very wasteful and fraudulent gesture. It would mean nothing because no matter what happened with that proposal here--and I don't know that it would pass; I suspect some Republicans might vote for it--it wouldn't matter one bit because unless you have the commitment of the Speaker of the House that he will support it and that the President of the United States will sign it--and we certainly, certainly do not have that commitment now.

So all it would be is kind of a wasteful gesture. People can feel good. They would vote for a bill with the full understanding that bill would go nowhere and premiums throughout this country would double.

So where do we go from here? Well, short term, we cannot allow millions and millions of people to see an outrageous increase in their premiums when they simply cannot afford it. That would be a disaster. We cannot throw 15 million people off the health insurance they have.

But some of my Republican colleagues here have come to the floor and said insurance companies are making huge profits. No kidding. Gee, that is something that some of us have been talking about for decades. And so are the drug companies.

In fact, the function of the current healthcare system is to do precisely that. What is the function of the American healthcare system? It is to make huge profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies to pay their CEOs outrageous--really crazy--salaries, tens of millions of dollars a year. That is the function of the American healthcare system today.

In my own State of Vermont and throughout this country, including Louisiana, I have talked to a whole lot of people, and almost always in my remarks, I ask a very simple question. I say: Tell me, how many of you believe that the American system is working well, the American healthcare system? How many of you think it is broken?

Whether it is Louisiana, Vermont, or anyplace else, overwhelmingly, people understand that the American healthcare system is broken, it is outrageously expensive, it is cruel, and it is dysfunctional. It is not a secret, and I am glad that some of my Republican colleagues are beginning to catch on.

Mr. President, as I think you know well, we spend almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth. Unbelievable--this really is. According to the most recent data, here in the United States, we are spending $14,500 per person on healthcare--over $14,000 for every man, woman, and child.

Let me tell you how that compares to other countries. Somehow, in Japan, they are able to provide healthcare to

all for $5,600; in the UK, $6,000; in Australia, $6,900; in Canada, $7,000; and $7,100 in France.

In other words, major country after major country around the world manages to guarantee healthcare to all of their people as a human right, and they are spending less than half per capita than we are spending.

I can tell you, having been all over the country, that the American people are disgusted with that reality. They understand and they believe that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege; that every man, woman, and child in this country is entitled to healthcare no matter how old you are, no matter how young you are, no matter how rich you are, no matter how poor you are.

While private insurance companies and big drug companies continue to make outrageous profits, over 85 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured today--before the disastrous attack on healthcare that Trump is proposing. The results are that 68,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford to go to a doctor, and more than half a million Americans go bankrupt due to medically related debt. How absurd, how horrific is that?

In America, under this current absurd healthcare system, 42 percent of cancer patients deplete their entire life savings within the first 2 years of their diagnosis, while one out of every four of them declared bankruptcy or lost their home to foreclosure or eviction in 2022. Think about it. It is bad enough to get cancer; it is beyond horrific to understand that your family is going to be financially ruined as a result.

Under the absurd American healthcare system, our life expectancy--how long we live--is shorter than every other major country despite the fact that we spend twice as much per capita. We live 4 years shorter lives on average than people in other wealthy countries, while the typical working-class person in America lives a 7-year shorter life than the wealthy.

We also have the dubious distinction of having by far the highest infant mortality rate of any other wealthy country on Earth.

As bad as our overall healthcare system is, our primary care system is even worse. Today, tens of millions of people live in communities where they cannot find a doctor, a dentist, or a psychologist even when they have decent insurance, and others have to wait months in order to be seen.

Unbelievably, again, we are spending twice what other countries are spending, and we don't even have enough doctors, we don't have enough dentists, we don't have enough nurses, mental health practitioners, pharmacists, or home healthcare workers, and one out of four Americans cannot afford to purchase the medicine their doctors say they need.

It is no wonder the American people understand that the current system is broken.

Where do we go from here? It is one thing to talk about a system that is broken; it is another thing to have a solution. I have a solution. It is not a radical idea. In fact, in many ways, it just emulates what goes on in every other major country on Earth. It is to say that healthcare is a human right, that we need universal healthcare, and that we must pass a Medicare-for-All, single-payer program.

So what is that legislation? What would it look like? What that legislation would do is provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to all, with zero out-of-pocket expenses, and, unlike the current system, it would provide full freedom of choice regarding healthcare providers. No more insurance premiums. No more deductibles. No more copayments. No more filling out endless forms and fighting with insurance companies to get the coverage that you pay for. No more networks in order to be treated by a doctor who is not in your network who can charge you some astronomical cost. It would also mean, when we talk about comprehensive, the coverage of dental care. The last I heard, dental care is healthcare: vision, hearing aids, prescription drugs, and home healthcare.

Importantly, when we have a Medicare for All Program, it gives Americans the freedom to switch jobs without losing their health insurance. Right now, you have got millions of people who are staying at a job that they don't like because it provides decent healthcare to their families. That is kind of crazy unto itself. Under our legislation, healthcare becomes a human right--guaranteed to all--and not a job benefit. If there is a recession and people lose their jobs, they lose their healthcare because their healthcare is tied to their jobs. We saw that during the terrible COVID pandemic. And everybody gets access to the same quality healthcare. Yes, workers at McDonald's--here is a radical idea: Workers at McDonald's deserve the same quality healthcare as executives on Wall Street.

Well, would a Medicare for All healthcare system be expensive?

Yes, it would, but while providing comprehensive healthcare for all-- no more out-of-pocket expenses, no more premiums, no more deductibles-- it would be significantly less expensive than our current dysfunctional system.

Now, why? Why would that be the case?

Well, because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs, and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system. The function of the current system is to make profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies. That is what this system is about. Then, built into that system are all kinds of disincentives for quality and inexpensive care. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Medicare for All would save the American people $650 billion each and every year.

Under Medicare for All, there would no longer be armies of insurance employees billing us. Go to any hospital in Alabama or in Vermont or anyplace else, and go down to the basement. Do you know what you are going to find? Not nurses, not people who provide healthcare, you are going to have people billing you, people hounding you for your late payments. Those people are not contributing to making us healthy. They are part of an administrative system that is costing us huge amounts of money.

When you have a simple system--healthcare for all publicly funded--it not only substantially reduces administrative costs; it would make life a lot easier for patients, doctors, and nurses who will never again have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.

So, right now, I am glad that my Republican colleagues are finally being forced to actually talk about healthcare. I am not impressed by some of the ideas that they have brought forth, but at least it is a discussion. So let me propose what I think is the way out of this shutdown, and it isn't complicated.

Overwhelmingly, people who consider themselves Democrats, who consider themselves Republicans, who consider themselves Independents do not want to see these ACA subsidies ended. It is not complicated. They don't want to see it doubling their insurance rates. By the way, if you end these subsidies, it impacts Republican States more than Democratic States, so people don't want to see it.

Is the Affordable Care Act the long-term solution to healthcare in America? No, it is not.

So why don't we do something simple? Why don't we just extend these ACA premiums so we don't double premiums for millions of people, and then why don't we have a discussion about where we go forward on healthcare? I think that is a commonsense solution.

So I think I have solved the problem here in the 39th day of the shutdown. Let us have at least a 1-year extension, and let's have a debate on healthcare. Let's involve the American people in healthcare. Let's put our Federal employees back to work with a paycheck.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are now in the 38th day of a government shutdown. That means that Federal employees all over this country who

have to feed their families are not getting paychecks. It means that air traffic controllers are forced to work crazy hours. We worry about the safety of our flights right now. We worry about Capitol Police officers right here in DC having a hard time feeding their families. These are hard-working people who are doing important work. They deserve respect. They deserve to be paid. This shutdown must end as quickly as possible.

On top of the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of workers not getting paid, we now have a President who, for the first time in the history of this country, is willing to allow our kids--low-income, working-class children--to go hungry in order to try to make a political point--a point, by the way, that the American people are seeing through.

The cause of this shutdown is not complicated. For the first time ever, the majority party in the Senate, which needs 60 votes to pass a budget, is refusing to negotiate. It is their way or the highway; take it or leave it; we have the majority; we are not talking to you-- despite the fact that they only have 53 votes.

To make the situation even more absurd and to show the American people the contempt the Republicans hold for negotiations and democracy, you have a Speaker of the House who has now given his Members a 6-week paid vacation. The country is in the midst of a major crisis, and Republican Members of the House are nowhere to be seen. They are on a paid vacation. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about whether Republicans are willing to negotiate, I don't know what will.

Everybody in this country knows that our current healthcare system is broken. They know that we pay by far--not even close--the highest prices in the world for healthcare, and some 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. They know that we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right, something which must change.

What they also know is that Donald Trump and the Republicans, through their horrendous One Big Beautiful Bill, are making a broken, dysfunctional healthcare system even worse, taking it to the verge of collapse. That legislation is doubling premiums for over 20 million Americans who are in the Affordable Care Act exchange.

In my State, we are hearing from Vermonters who are being asked to pay a tripling of their rates and even a quadrupling of the rates. Who in God's name, at a time when healthcare costs are already so high, can afford a doubling, a tripling, or quadrupling of their rates? That is insane. Nobody in my State or, I expect, in this country can afford to pay that.

Further, that One Big Beautiful Bill willh throw 15 million people off the healthcare they now have, as a result of massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. According to studies, that would result in some 50,000 Americans dying unnecessarily every year--low- income, working-class people who have chronic illnesses who will no longer be able to get healthcare. That is what is being discussed.

Does anybody think it is a good idea to allow 50,000 of our fellow Americans to die unnecessarily each year?

And all of this is being done in order to give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the 1 percent.

No, I do not believe that Elon Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Bezos and the other multibillionaires deserve a trillion dollars in tax breaks in order to throw 50 million Americans off the healthcare they have and double premiums for over 20 million Americans. I don't believe that. The overwhelming majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents don't believe that either.

The American people understand that the Republican Party controls the White House; they control the Senate; they control the House of Representatives. And, understandably, for that reason, poll after poll shows that Americans hold the Republicans accountable for this shutdown.

But it is not just polls. On Tuesday, there was an election in which Trumpism was overwhelmingly rejected from Maine to California and a lot of States and cities in between. And one of the key reasons is that Americans want Democrats to make certain that they do not experience huge increases in their healthcare premiums or get thrown off the healthcare they have. That is what they are saying: We cannot afford a doubling or tripling in our healthcare costs. Stand with us.

That is what that election was significantly about.

President Trump claims to be a dealmaker. In fact, he wrote a book called ``The Art of the Deal.'' Well, Mr. President, the ball is in your court right now. Help negotiate a deal. Show us what a great dealmaker you are. Help us negotiate a deal which protects the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans, and let us end this shutdown today. We can end it in the next few hours.

That is what this struggle is about. That is what this shutdown is all about. It is whether Republicans succeed in making a broken and dysfunctional healthcare system even worse by making healthcare unaffordable for working-class and middle-class Americans. It is about whether millions of our fellow Americans no longer have health insurance and that many of them will die unnecessarily.

Mr. President, we are hearing right now--every one of our offices--we are hearing tragic stories of families having to decide whether they can pay for their parent's cancer treatment, for example, or whether they will see a parent die without that lifesaving care. There are millions of Americans now dealing with chronic disease. They are dealing with cancer. They are dealing with diabetes. They are dealing with Alzheimer's. They are dealing with heart disease. And they are wondering, if they get thrown off their healthcare, if premiums go so high, how are they going to stay alive? How are they going to take care of their parents, their kids?

That is what this shutdown is about.

And whether it is in Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada, or Vermont, the American people want us to stand with them and that is what this whole debate is about. We cannot fail the American people. They are looking to us to make sure that they continue to have healthcare. Let us not betray them.

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

Mr. President, I think there is a lot of confusion amongst the American people as to what is going on right now here in Washington, DC, and I want to just say a few words to address some of that.

In my view, this may well be the most consequential moment in American history since the Civil War. The decisions that we in Congress make right now will impact this country for generations to come. In America today, we have a megalomaniacal President, who--consumed by his quest for more and more power--is undermining our Constitution, the rule of law, and is pushing this country closer and closer toward authoritarianism.

I am talking about a man who threatens to arrest and jail his political opponents--yes, right here in the United States of America-- not debate political opponents, not respectfully disagree with opponents. ``If you oppose me, we are going to prosecute you.''

This is a man who is deploying the U.S. military--our Armed Forces-- into Democratic cities and allowing masked ICE agents to pick people up off the streets and throw them into vans, without due process, and take them to God knows where.

I am talking about a President who has sued virtually every major media outlet because he cannot tolerate criticism, who has taken funds away from PBS and NPR because he doesn't want objective reporting about what his policies are doing. This is a man who is actively encouraging his multibillionaire friends to buy up more and more of the media so that he will have a media that is friendlier to him.

This is a man who has extorted funds from law firms and is withholding Federal funding from States that voted against him.

Can you imagine that?

There has never been a President--Republican or Democrat--who did not understand that he was the President of the United States. ``Oh. The people in Utah voted against a Democratic President? We are not going to fund them.'' Give them the funds that they are entitled to. That has never been the case.

And this guy is open. Trump is quite open that Mamdani is going to be elected mayor of New York City. ``Well, you are not going to get Federal funds''--unheard of, illegal, unconstitutional.

And because we have a President who does not believe in the rule of law--we have just seen it right now. We are experiencing it literally at this moment. We have a President who is illegally--illegally-- withholding $5.5 billion in emergency SNAP funds--nutrition funds--from 42 million Americans, including 16 million children.

The Congress put money into a fund to make sure that, if the government shuts down, there will be funding for the millions of people who depend upon SNAP funds so that children in America and their parents and their grandparents will not go hungry in the richest country in the world, and Trump says: No, I am not going to do that. I am going to withhold the funds.

But then he changed his mind, and he announced he would comply with the court orders. They told him he had to release the funds. So he said: OK. I will comply with those orders and release the funds.

Then he announced this morning--this morning--that he was not going to release the funds and would allow children in this country to go hungry.

But wait a minute. A few hours later, a spokesperson for the White House said that he would comply with the

court's orders: withhold funds, release funds, withhold funds, release funds, all within a period of a few days.

Does anyone wonder why faith in our government now is so very low?

Let us be clear: This government shutdown--now in its 35th day--did not happen by accident in the U.S. Senate. It takes 60 votes to fund the Federal Government--60 votes. Republicans have 53 Members, and the Democratic caucus has 47. That means Republicans must negotiate with Democrats to move the budget forward. This is what has always happened until now--common sense. If you don't have 60 votes, you have got to sit down and negotiate with the minority. That is what Republicans have done, and that is what Democrats have done in the past.

But right now, for the first time in modern history, Republicans are simply refusing to come to the table and negotiate. What they are basically saying is, It is our way or the highway. Yes, we need 60 votes, but we are not going to you. You have to come to us. This is the way it will be.

To make matters worse, the Republican contempt for negotiations is so bad--so absurd--that House Speaker Mike Johnson has given his Chamber, the House of Representatives, a 6-week paid vacation. They are not here in Washington, DC, and we are in the middle of a government shutdown.

Millions of Federal employees are not getting paid right now. They are wondering how they are going to feed their families. Federal employees are going to food banks. They are worried about paying their mortgages. Right now, millions of Americans are receiving notices from insurance companies, and their insurance premiums are rising precipitously--doubling and, in some cases, tripling. As I mentioned, people are worried about whether or not they are going to get their food stamps and other nutrition programs.

That is what is going on, but the House of Representatives is not in town. They are on a paid vacation. How absurd and how insulting is that?

The bottom line is, though, really: What is this whole conflict about?

Well, the Democrats are accusing the Republicans and the Republicans are accusing the Democrats and the media does its thing. What, really, are the issues that we are talking about? Let me tell you what, in my view, is going on.

I think almost everybody in the country understands that we have an economy today in which the very wealthiest people in this country--the oligarchs who were sitting right behind Trump at his inauguration, the multibillionaires--have never ever had it so good. They are making huge amounts of money. But at the same time as the very richest people in America are becoming richer, Trump and my Republican colleagues want to pass a budget that throws 15 million low-income and working-class Americans off the healthcare they have by slashing Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by $1 trillion. On the one hand, they want to give massive tax breaks--trillions of dollars in tax breaks--to the 1 percent. They are going to pay for that by cutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by $1 trillion, throwing 15 million people off the healthcare they have.

It is no great secret--well before Trump and before this whole shutdown and cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, it is no great secret to any American that our current healthcare system was broken; it was dysfunctional; and it was cruel. Today, despite spending twice as much per capita as the people of any other major country on Earth, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Before these cuts, half a million Americans were going bankrupt every year due to medically related debt.

It is bad enough you have cancer or some other terrible disease, but in addition to worrying about whether you are going to stay alive, you have got to worry about how you are going to pay hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. Many can't. In fact, 42 percent of cancer patients drain their entire life savings within 2 years of their diagnosis. If that is not a broken system, I don't know what is. One out of every four cancer patients loses their homes to foreclosure or eviction because of the outrageous cost of healthcare in this country.

In the midst of all of that--a broken, dysfunctional, and wildly expensive healthcare system--Trump wants to make the situation even worse by throwing 15 million people off of the healthcare they currently have. So what happens when you do that? What happens if you say to 15 million low-income and working-class people, ``Sorry. You no longer have healthcare''? Well, it is not hard to understand that people can't go to a doctor. If they have a chronic health problem, do you know what happens to them? They die.

So let's be clear about it: When you throw 15 million people off the healthcare they have, according to a variety of studies from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, up to 50,000 Americans will die unnecessarily each and every year. These are people who, if they were to have decent healthcare, would not have to die. That is what we are voting on. That is what we are debating right now: Will we allow 50,000 of our fellow Americans in every State in this country to die unnecessarily?

Let us be very clear: These cuts will not only kill people, not only throw 15 million off the healthcare that they have, but it will devastate nursing homes that are highly dependent on Medicaid for their funding. It will devastate community health centers and rural hospitals all over this country. That means the quality of care in nursing homes, in rural hospitals, and in community health centers will deteriorate. In other words, the budget that Trump is demanding to be passed here in the U.S. Senate will be a horror for working families all across this country.

But that is not all. That is not all. It is not just throwing 15 million people off the healthcare they have. At a time when health insurance in this country is already outrageously expensive and people can't afford it today, Trump's proposal--his Big Beautiful Bill and what he wants Democrats to do--is to vote for a budget that doubles healthcare premiums. In my State of Vermont, it is not just doubling; in some cases, it is tripling and even quadrupling.

So right now, when people can't afford healthcare, how are you going to see a doubling of your premiums and a tripling of your premiums? That is going to impact some 20 million Americans--many of whom, by the way, are getting their notices right now from insurance companies, people who are on the Affordable Care Act.

According to every poll that I have seen, the American people, quite understandably, by overwhelming margins, do not want to see a doubling of their healthcare premiums.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 78 percent of Americans-- including 59 percent of Republicans--want to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

I have to say I am not a great fan of the Affordable Care Act. I believe that we should do what every other major country on Earth does and guarantee healthcare as a human right through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program. If you want cost-effective, universal healthcare, that is the way to go. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of support for that here in the Senate.

So our immediate job, at least, is to make sure that 20 million people who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act do not see a doubling of their premiums.

This impacts, believe me, not just Democrats but Republicans as well.

Tony Fabrizio, President Trump's own pollster, has said--this is Donald Trump's own pollster:

By broad bipartisan margins, voters want to see the

[Affordable Care Act] tax credits extended rather than expire

at the end of the year, whether in the context of premiums

doubling or 5 million families losing their health insurance.

This includes solid majorities of Trump voters and swing

voters.

Tony Fabrizio, President Trump's own pollster.

So it is not just Democrats; it is not just Independents; it is not just the far left; it is Trump supporters.

Further, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people do not want to see the billionaire class receive a trillion dollars in new tax breaks for the 1 percent.

So let me be clear. I know this is a radical thought, but the truth is, Elon Musk, the richest man alive--worth some $500 billion; a man who owns more wealth than the bottom 52 percent of American households--do you

know what. I don't think he needs a tax break. Now, around here, that is a radical statement. Nor does Mr. Bezos. Nor does Mr. Zuckerberg. Nor does Mr. Ellison. Nor does anyone in the top 1 percent who today is doing phenomenally well.

It is time that we started worrying about the working families of this country, people who cannot afford healthcare, who can't afford to pay rent or the mortgage--the cost of housing is outrageously high--who can't afford childcare, who can't afford to send their kids to college, who can't afford to buy decent food at the grocery store. Those are the people we should be worrying about, not tax breaks for Mr. Musk and the other billionaires in this country.

Mr. President, let me be very clear in telling you what I will not be doing. I will not vote for a budget that throws 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have. I will not be voting for a budget that doubles premiums for 20 million Americans. I will not be voting for a budget that decimates rural hospitals, nursing homes, and community health centers. I will not be voting for a budget that causes over 50,000 Americans to die unnecessarily every year. I will not be voting for a budget that provides a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent.

I hope very much that we can win some Republican support in opposition to these disastrous proposals, but at the very least, I would hope that the vast majority of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus will not vote for these proposals. In my view, Democrats in the Senate must stand with the working families of our country and in opposition to Trump's effort to virtually destroy the American healthcare system today.

The American healthcare system was broken before Trump, but when you throw 15 million people off of healthcare and you decimate rural healthcare and you raise premiums for 20 million people on the Affordable Care Act, you are bringing the healthcare system to the verge of collapse.

Poll after poll shows that the American people know what, in fact, is going on. They understand who is responsible for this shutdown. They want strong opposition to Trump's unprecedented and dangerous agenda-- not just Democrats, not just Independents, but Republicans as well.

Despite the Democratic Party's alltime-low approval rating, Independents and even a number of Republicans are now standing with the Democrats in their fight to protect healthcare for working families.

If Democrats surrender now, at a time when Trump already has no regard for our democratic system of checks and balances, he will simply be emboldened to go forward and decimate programs not just in healthcare but programs that protect the elderly, protect the children, protect the sick, and protect the poor, while giving more tax breaks and other benefits to the people on top.

Now is the time for us to stand with the American people. They know the economy is rigged. They understand that it is absurd and unfair to give tax breaks to billionaires and throw millions of people off of the healthcare they have. They understand that it will be a horror show if 20 million-plus Americans are forced to see a doubling in their healthcare premiums.

The American people want the Senate to stand tall and say no to Mr. Trump and the Republican leadership. I hope we will be able to do that.

I yield the floor.

Will my colleague yield for a question?

Let me thank Senator Merkley for today pointing a finger at one of the great crises our country--one of the greatest crises our country has faced, I think, since the Civil War; and that is that, every day, we have a President who is moving this country into an authoritarian form of society.

You know, as a nation, what we have always expected in our democracy is that if you disagree with me, we debate the issue. You don't think I am a good Senator? Run against me. You think I am wrong on an issue? Write a letter to the editor. Do a podcast. Be critical of me in any way you want.

But what very few people in America believe is that we should give more and more power to a megalomaniac who sits in the White House, who disrespects every day the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.

And what saddens me very much is when we think back on the history of this country, going back to the extraordinarily brave men and women who put their lives on the line and sometimes died during the Revolutionary War. Tens of thousands of Americans took on the greatest military power on Earth, led by the King of England, in order to say: We are tired of your rule. We want to rule ourselves.

And then, in 1789, these brilliant people came up with the Constitution, and the essence of that Constitution--having learned their lesson from the King of England, who had absolute power--is what they said: We are going to create a Constitution that will never give absolute power to any one person or one entity.

So they created an executive branch, the President, the legislative branch, Congress--House and the Senate--and a judiciary whose function is to provide checks and balances on each other. It is a rather extraordinary document--1789.

Since then, we have had so many millions of men and women putting their lives on the line and sometimes dying in order to defend that Constitution, to understand that what freedom is about is the right to disagree, that we do not have to live under the control of one person.

In an unprecedented way--and I know my colleague from Oregon has been talking about this--every day, there is another attack on basic American freedoms.

The First Amendment--not the Second, not the Third; the First Amendment to the Constitution--is freedom of the press. And that was not an accident. They understood that in order to maintain a free society, you have to have the right of people to express their point of view, to write what they wanted to, to rally people around their point of view.

Yet we have in an unprecedented way a President who has sued one major media after another--ABC, CBS, Meta;

defunded PBS; defunded the NPR. This is a President who does not want to be criticized.

Well, guess what, Mr. President. In a democracy, you will be criticized, I will be criticized, and the Senator from Oregon will be criticized. That is what a democracy is about. And if you don't like criticism, get out of the White House, get out of politics.

We are not going to sit back and allow one media after another to be intimidated, frightened. And if they stand up alone and run a story critical of the President of the United States, oh my God, they may be sued.

You have an FCC chairman, I think, I say to my friend, who, during the Jimmy Kimmel episode, was threatening to rescind licenses of networks if the White House did not like some of the content that was coming out. That is not the America we love, not the America we are prepared to defend.

But it is not just the media. You have a President who is suing law firms. And what was the crime of these law firms? What did they do that was so terrible? Well, they had clients who went to court against the President. Gee, the last thing I heard, that is what happens in a country, you know? People go to court. And we don't then try to blackmail and intimidate law firms by saying: We are going to sue you. You better not have clients who are going to attack me.

We have a President now who is going to war against universities, trying to break freedom of speech, freedom of dissent on college campuses. You stand up. You protest.

Hey, we are going to take away money from you. We don't like the content of your courses. We don't like your teachers, the faculty, the president of the university. Your views on gossip? Sorry, you are not going to get Federal funding.

We have a President who is usurping the powers of the U.S. Congress. Every fourth grader understands Congress has the power of the purse. The President, if he likes it, signs the bill, but when you sign that appropriations bill, that money goes out. You don't have the right to say: Oh, California, New York, Vermont, you voted against me. You ain't going to get the money that was appropriated.

That is not what this country is about, and it is not what the Constitution is about.

A few minutes ago, Senator Blunt Rochester asked I thought a pretty profound question, and that is, what is the relationship between authoritarianism and the healthcare crisis that we are in right now?

As the Senator from Oregon has mentioned, when Trump was inaugurated, sitting right behind him were the three wealthiest people in the world.

Remember that, the Senator from Oregon?

It was Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, and Mr. Zuckerberg. And right behind them were some 14 or 15 other billionaires.

There is Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Musk, and a couple other billionaires there as well.

I was at the inauguration, kind of up front, and as I listened and I saw what was going on and heard Trump's speech, I was thinking about Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War to end the abomination of slavery. Lincoln gets up a few days, I think, after that terrible war, blood still on the ground, and he says to the American people a few days after that battle:

These brave soldiers--in so many words--did not die in vain because they died in order to maintain a government of the people, by the people, and for the people--not as Trump would have us: a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class.

Senator Blunt Rochester asked the question, what is the connection between authoritarianism and healthcare? I will tell you what the connection is. Right now, under the Trump administration, the billionaire class has never ever had it so good. These guys sitting right behind Trump at his inauguration are now a combined hundreds of billions of dollars richer. They donated to Trump's campaign. They have given him gifts since. They are doing phenomenally well, while, at the same time, 60 percent of our people--working-class people, low-income people--are struggling to put food on the table, pay for childcare, send their kids to college, pay for the basic necessities of life, pay for housing, et cetera. The billionaire class, under Trump, never ever had it so good, and then we have a working class in America struggling to survive.

In particular, let us never forget--and I know the Senator from Oregon has mentioned it many times--that the reason Trump and his Republican friends made $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid to throw 15 million people off the healthcare they currently have--and studies, by the way, suggest that when you throw 15 million low-income and working- class people off of their healthcare, some 50,000 people a year will die unnecessarily.

So why did Trump and his friends do that? Well, the answer is obvious. In that same terrible bill, they gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to the 1 percent, to the people sitting right behind the President when he was inaugurated.

Does anybody in America really believe that it makes sense to give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the richest people in America and at the same time throw 15 million working-class people off of their healthcare?

As the Senator from Oregon indicated, right now in Vermont and all over this country, people are receiving notices from their insurance companies. In my State, a few days ago--the southern part of the State--it wasn't a doubling of their premiums; it was a quadrupling of their premiums.

So at a time when we are already paying the highest prices in the world for healthcare by far, people are going to look at these bills and think it is insane. And, again, in Vermont, we are seeing now families are going to be paying 45, 50 percent.

I say to my friend from Oregon, 50 percent of their income on healthcare--how do you survive when you are spending 50 percent of your income on healthcare? What do you have left for food or for anything else?

What the connection is between authoritarianism and oligarchy is that these billionaires not only don't want to pay their fair share of taxes, they want tax breaks. Not only do they want to, with impunity, be able to break unions and throw workers out on the street, but they want in many ways what existed in the 1700s, what our forefathers fought against: They want the divine right to rule.

The King of England thought that they had a God-given, divine right to rule. These guys think that as multibillionaires, they have the right to do anything--no accountability. They are bringing forth hundreds of billions of dollars right now, investing in AI and robotics, which will, if we don't deal with it, have a devastating impact on the working class of this country. They are going to have more factories in America. But do you know what? Ain't going to be human beings working in those factories.

Elon Musk--I don't agree with Musk on anything. But just the other day, Musk made it clear--he said: Hey, AI and robotics are going to do away with jobs. There are not going to be any jobs. They don't need jobs in America.

Well, that is great if you are worth a couple hundred billion dollars. But if you don't have a job and you are a working-class person, how do you feed your family? how do you afford healthcare?

Do you think anybody at the White House will stay up nights worrying about you when you lose your job? I don't think so.

So we are in an unprecedented and difficult moment in American history. And I want to thank the 7 million people just this Saturday, all over this country, who came out and said loudly and clearly: No more Kings. And we are going to keep that movement going. And I don't care if you are a conservative, a progressive, a socialist, a Democrat, whatever you may be, we understand that what makes our country great is, in fact, freedom, the right to dissent, the right to argue, and I don't care what your politics are, that is what we have to maintain.

I want to conclude simply by expressing a very great deal of disappointment in my Republican colleagues, with few exceptions. The vast majority of Republicans in the Senate and the House are not authoritarians. They believe in the Constitution. They believe in the rule of law. But they, at this moment, at least, with very few exceptions, simply do not have the courage to stand up to this authoritarian President.

How many times have the Senator from Oregon and I heard that our Republican friends believe in small government, in federalism, in the right of the local government. They don't want that big, bad Federal Government overruling the needs of cities and towns in the States. And now you have a President of the United States sending Federal troops into Portland, OR, and Chicago, IL, usurping the rights of Congress, threatening to impeach judges who rule against them.

So this is a very difficult, unprecedented moment in our history, but I have every confidence that when the American people stand together and they do not let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation; when we stand together, defend the Constitution, and defend American democracy, we will prevail, and we will defeat authoritarianism, and we will defeat oligarchy.

I would simply ask my friend from Oregon a profound question: Do you agree with me?

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 3853 and ask that it be reported by number.

Madam President, amendment No. 3853 is very simple. It would cut 10 percent from this Defense bill, excluding military personnel and the Defense Health Program, and it would use those funds to provide direct dental care to all veterans eligible for healthcare from the VA.

We are now spending over $1 trillion a year on the military--more than the next nine nations combined.

While Congress has cut funding for housing, education, nutrition, this bill increases military spending by over 8 percent.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is the only major Federal Agency not capable of passing an independent audit, and nobody denies that there is not massive waste, fraud, and abuse within the DOD.

As the former chair of the Veterans' Committee, I agree with all of the major veterans organizations, that we have got to strengthen VA healthcare, and one of the gaps in that system is a lack of dental care. We have got veterans whose teeth are rotting in their mouth. They cannot get dental care.

I think we should get our priorities right. Let's cut a very large military budget, spending much too much. Let's protect our veterans. Let's pass this amendment.