Floor Statements

Pursuant to section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 33 and S.J. Res. 26 relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sales to the Government of Israel of certain defense articles and services.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate debate the motions concurrently with all other provisions from yesterday's order remaining in effect.

Mr. President, let me begin by telling the American people something that they already know, and that is, as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, we now have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows billionaires to buy elections and to influence major pieces of legislation. That, I think, is not a secret to the American people.

If you are a Republican and you vote against the Trump-Musk administration in one way or another, you have got to look over your shoulder and worry that you are going to get a call from Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, and he will tell you that if you vote against what he wants, he will spend unlimited amounts of money to defeat you in the next election. That is not a great secret. That is what Musk has been saying publicly.

If you are a Democrat, you have to worry about the billionaires who fund AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If you vote against Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his horrific war in Gaza, AIPAC will punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements and other ways to see that you are defeated.

AIPAC's PAC and super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined during the 2023-2024 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. And I must confess that AIPAC has been successful. Last year, they defeated two Members of the U.S. House who opposed providing military aid to Netanyahu's extremist government.

Now, given all of that, I would hope that Democrats and Republicans who understand that they were elected to protect the interests of their constituents, not billionaire campaign contributors, would support the ending of Citizens United and would move us toward public funding of elections so billionaires could not continue to control the political and legislative process.

Further, I would hope that both parties would move to end super PAC funding in their primaries, keep the super PAC money, Musk money, AIPAC money out of the Democrat and Republican primaries.

I would hope that that would be the case so that we can, once again, become a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and not a government run by the billionaire class.

Israel

Mr. President, I trust that every American and certainly every Member of the Senate understands that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.

The International Criminal Court was correct in indicting the leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities. Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.

But most Americans also understand that while Israel had a right to wage war against Hamas, it did not and does not have the right to wage war against the entire Palestinian population, and, tragically, that is exactly what we have seen over the last year and a half.

Let us be clear: Prime Minister Netanyahu's racist and extremist government has waged an all-out, barbaric war against the Palestinian people and made life unlivable in Gaza.

Within Gaza's population of just 2.2 million people, more than 50,000 have been killed and more than 113,000 have been injured, 60 percent of whom are women, children, and elderly people. That is 7.4 percent of the population of Gaza killed or wounded--7.4 percent in a year and a half.

If those same percentages were applied to the United States, in terms of a horrible war where our people were killed or wounded, it would mean that over 25 million Americans would have been killed or wounded.

In total, since this war began, 15,000 children--children--in Gaza have been killed, and today there are some 17,000 orphans. But it is not just the dead and the wounded.

Israel's indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two- thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92 percent of the housing units--as you can see from this photo. Ain't a whole lot left. I don't know why they need any more bombs; they basically destroyed the entire area. Nothing much left to be destroyed.

Almost no part of Gaza has been left unscathed. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures. Most of the territory's hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed, leaving virtually all Gazans without basic medical care at a time when bombs are flying and people are being wounded, and think about what that means. I have met repeatedly with doctors, American doctors and others, who have served in Gaza, and they are treating hundreds of patients a day without electricity, without anesthesia, without clean water, including dozens of children arriving with gunshot wounds to the head. I have seen the photographs and the videos.

Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90 percent of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads in Gaza have been destroyed or made impassable. Gaza's educational system has been obliterated. Children are not going to school. According to the World Bank, more than 2,000 educational facilities ranging from kindergartens to universities have been destroyed. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza's 12 universities. There has been no electricity in Gaza for 17 months, no electricity.

Put simply, Netanyahu and his extremist government have killed or wounded over 7 percent of Gaza's population and has turned Gaza into a wasteland unfit for human life. That is what has been going on over the last year and a half.

In terms of where we are today, right now, the Netanyahu government broke the cease-fire 2 weeks ago, endangering the well-being of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

Further, in the last 2 weeks, they have intensified their assaults against the Palestinian people. According to UNICEF, since Netanyahu broke the cease-fire, more than a thousand people have been killed, including over 300 children, and more than 600 children have been wounded in the last short period of time.

UNICEF says that most of these children were killed while sheltering in makeshift tents or damaged homes. Just in the last 24 hours, 97 more people have been killed in Gaza.

Since Netanyahu broke the cease-fire, even more aid workers, the people whose job it is to try to help people who have been wounded or hurt, more aid workers have been killed, putting the total of over 400--400--aid workers have been killed since the war began.

Earlier this week, the United Nations announced that they have recovered the bodies of 15 emergency aid workers who were killed by Israeli forces while wearing their emergency responder uniforms and then dumped into a mass grave in southern Gaza.

They were buried alongside the destroyed emergency vehicles, clearly marked ambulances, a fire truck, and a U.N. car.

With the resumption of bombing, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are once again being forcibly displaced by bombing and evacuation orders.

This week, Israeli authorities issued displacement orders for most of Rafah, where about 150,000 people were estimated to be sheltering.

Think about what all of this means in human terms. Throughout this war, millions of desperately poor people, the people in Gaza, by and large, are extremely poor. They have been repeatedly driven from their homes. They have been forced to pick their way through a demolished landscape again and again with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

Families have been herded into so-called safe zones, only to face continued bombardment.

The children of Gaza--Mr. President, this is just one picture--have suffered a level of physical and emotional torture that is almost beyond comprehension and that will clearly stay with each and every one of them for the rest of their lives.

These children are hungry. They are thirsty. It is hard to get clean water. They have been denied healthcare. And they have witnessed the death of their parents, their family members, their homes, and virtually everything around them. And they have been picked up and moved from one place to another. All the while, drones are on top of them, shooting or photographing what they are doing.

Throughout this war, Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid have left hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children, facing malnutrition and starvation--malnutrition and starvation. Children have literally starved to death while aid just sat a few miles away, blocked by Israeli forces.

The U.N., the United States, and every aid organization working in Gaza has been clear throughout this war: Israel's unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian aid have contributed to massive death and profound suffering.

But as bad as the last year and a half has been, at least Israel let some--some, not enough, but some--aid through. But what is happening right now is unthinkable.

Today, it is 31 days and counting with absolutely no humanitarian aid getting into Gaza--nothing--no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel for over a month. That is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency.

It is a war crime. You don't starve children. And it is pushing things toward an even deeper catastrophe.

Earlier this week, 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme were forced to close because they ran out of flour and cooking gas. The U.N. is still trying to deliver its remaining stocks of food already in Gaza but says ``that the situation remains extremely critical since the cargo closure of the crossings almost a month ago.''

All of this is unconscionable. What we are talking about is a mass atrocity, and what makes it even worse, and why I am here today and why I have introduced the resolutions that we will soon be voting on, is that we, as Americans, are deeply complicit in all that is happening in Gaza.

This is not some terrible event. This is not an earthquake in Myanmar. It is not something that we had nothing to do with. We are deeply complicit in all of this death and suffering.

Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel and delivered more than 50,000 tons of military equipment. It is American bombs and American military equipment that are being used to destroy Gaza, kill 50,000 people, and injure over 110,000 people. We cannot hide from that reality.

If we condone the barbarism that is taking place in Gaza today, we will have no standing in the world to condemn the horrors and war crimes that other countries may commit. You are not going to be able to look at China or Russia or Saudi Arabia or any other country and say: Look, how terrible. Look at what they are doing to the children, to the women, to innocent people.

We will have no credibility because they will come back and say: Really? You are really concerned about what China, Russia, Saudi Arabia may be doing? Hey, take a look at what you supported in Gaza and the billions of dollars in aid you gave to Netanyahu's government.

Today is the day to stand up to barbarism in Gaza and to do our best to prevent future barbaric acts all over the world.

It is no secret to anyone how these U.S. weapons have been used. Israel has bombed indiscriminately, killing civilians, journalists--a whole lot of journalists have been killed--paramedics, children, and humanitarian workers in record numbers. They have used massive 2,000- pound bombs in densely populated Gaza, despite the fact that studies show that 90 percent of victims of explosive weapons used in a populated area are civilians. These bombs have a blast radius of more than 350 meters, yet Israel has dropped them into crowded apartment buildings, killing hundreds of civilians, to take out a handful of Hamas fighters.

All of that is illegal and immoral and against American law.

The Foreign Assistance Act, which is what we are talking about today, and the Arms Export Control Act, what we are talking about today, are very clear. The United States cannot provide weaponry to countries that violate internationally recognized human rights or block U.S. humanitarian aid.

According to the U.N., much of the international community, and every humanitarian organization on the ground in Gaza, Israel is clearly in violation of these laws. Under these circumstances, it is illegal for the U.S. Government to provide Israel with more offensive weaponry. It is simply against our laws.

Despite all of that, in the last month, the Trump administration has announced its intention to transfer some $12.5 billion more in offensive weapons--not defensive weapons, offensive weapons--to Netanyahu's government, in clear violation of U.S. law. And that is why we are here today.

Joint resolutions of disapproval--which is what we are dealing with right now--are Congress's tool to enforce American law. Today, we will vote on two resolutions to block two of the most egregious of these Trump administration offensive arms sales, which would provide almost $9 billion more in heavy bombs and other munitions to Netanyahu, including more than 35,000--35,000--massive 2,000-pound bombs that have killed so many civilians.

The first resolution, S.J. Res. 33, would block a sale of over $2 billion for 35,000 MK-84 2,000 bombs and 4,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads.

The second resolution, S.J. Res. 26, would block almost $7 billion for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 small-diameter bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits.

All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate.

And none of these systems are defensive. None of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks.

For those of my colleagues who may be ambivalent, not quite sure how they want to vote on these resolutions, let me say a word about how the Trump administration is ignoring the law in advancing these arms sales in terms of the process.

Unlike Biden, whose policies on Gaza I strongly opposed--and I stood right here, at this location, strongly opposing what Biden was doing in terms of military aid to Israel. But unlike Biden, President Trump is trying to circumvent Congress with these transfers, ignoring the Foreign Assistance Act by issuing a bogus emergency declaration--an emergency declaration to bypass congressional review.

There is no emergency to justify cutting Congress out of the process. In fact, some of the systems the Trump administration claims are part of this emergency sale have not yet been produced.

And this is also part of a broader Trump administration effort to cut Congress out of the arms sales process.

It is no great secret that Congress is way out of touch with where the American people are on issue after issue--whether it is the economy, whether it is healthcare, whether it is climate--whatever it may be. Everybody knows. Congress is way out of touch, and the billions of dollars that we are providing to the Netanyahu extremist government is just one more example of how

out of touch we are with the American people.

According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll in March, just 15 percent of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel--15 percent--while 35 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely.

To my Democratic colleagues, I would mention that in that same poll, just 8 percent of Democrats support increasing military aid to Israel. And, I think, as Democrats have held town meetings over the last year, they have heard from those people. Eight percent of Democrats support what we are doing now, more military aid for Israel. Forty-seven percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely--8 percent, increasing, Democrats; 47 percent, decreasing military aid.

Among Republicans, 9 percent are for decreasing military aid and 15 percent for stopping all--24 percent for stopping or decreasing all military aid.

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

Mr. President, according to a J Street poll of Jewish voters in November, 62 percent of American Jews support withholding ``shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for a release of Israeli hostages.'' And 71 percent of Jewish voters support increasing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

Finally, as unbelievably horrific as the situation in Gaza is and has been for the last year and a half, there is another development that could make the situation even worse. It is hard to believe. It really is, but it could. In recent months, President Trump and Israeli officials have openly talked about forcing out--forcibly expelling--the 2.2 million people who live in Gaza, pushing them out to make way for what Trump calls a riviera, some billionaire's playground.

Now, I think some people who may be watching this think: This can't be true. You must be kidding. You must be lying. This is inconceivable--pushing 2.2 million desperate people out of where they live to create a playground for billionaires.

But a few years ago, as some may recall, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner said that he felt--Jared Kushner--``Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable,'' floating the idea of redeveloping it. I think that many people at the time thought that was a weird and terrible joke. But it turns out that his father-in-law, Donald Trump, took it seriously. Here is what Trump has said repeatedly in recent months:

The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip and we will do a job

with it.

We're going to take over that piece that we're going to

develop it.

I do see a long-term ownership position. . . . Everybody

I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning

that piece of land.

I guess he didn't speak to too many Palestinians who live on that land.

On Truth Social, Trump wrote:

The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by

Israel at the conclusion of fighting.

What about the Palestinians who have lived in Gaza for their entire lives? Trump said:

I don't think people should be going back to Gaza . . .

They lived like you're living in hell. Gaza is not a place

for people to be living.

Gaza could become, again, Donald Trump:

The Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something

that could be so [valuable] this could be so magnificent.

Yes, throw 2.2 million people who have suffered incalculably; throw them out of the land in which they live in order to create a billionaire's playground.

There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ``ethnic cleansing.'' It is illegal. It is a war crime.

Mr. President, the United States must not continue to be complicit in the destruction of the Palestinian people. History will not forgive us for this. The time is long overdue for us to tell the Netanyahu government that we will not provide more weapons of destruction for them. Instead, we must demand an immediate cease-fire, surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people.

For all of these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote yes on these two resolutions which would prevent illegal and immoral arms sales to Netanyahu, would uphold congressional power and the rule of law, and would protect innocent life.

I will yield to the Senator from Maryland, Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes and Senator Risch for up to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall votes.

Mr. President, I think Senator Risch and I live in parallel universes. The universe that I live in is a universe which says, yes, of course Israel has a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023. No one debates that. But Israel did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, in violation of international and U.S. law.

It doesn't matter in one sense whether you don't care that 50,000 people in Gaza have been killed or 112,000 women--you don't care about that? Fine. But you should care about American law. What the Foreign Assistance Act says is that the United States cannot provide military assistance to a country which is in violation of U.S. and international law.

When you starve children, you are in violation of international law.

When you have a blockade that does not allow any humanitarian aid to come into a desperate situation for 31 days, you are in violation of international law.

When you kill 15,000 children and bring about malnutrition and starvation for even more, you are in violation of international law.

What is going on right now is not some abstract horror show. We are complicit. Those are our bombs that have destroyed or damaged 92 percent of the housing in Gaza, our bombs which have destroyed hundreds and hundreds of schools in Gaza, our bombs which have attacked every single one of the 12 universities in Gaza.

What we are standing here today discussing is not just Gaza. If the United States remains complicit in this war, we are telling every other country in the world that international law and human rights are meaningless. You could do whatever you want, and no President will ever be able to condemn any other country for their inhumanity. That is what is at stake today. Do we try to maintain a shred of moral integrity in the world or do we simply say to Netanyahu: Here are some more bombs. Kill some more kids. Kill some more women. Bomb some more hospitals.

Is that what we do?

With that, I would yield to the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Van Hollen for his extraordinary efforts today and for over a long period of time standing up for justice and morality in the Middle East.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, very briefly, nobody is supporting Hamas. Hamas is a disgusting terrorist organization that began the war.

Israel had a right to defend itself against Hamas, but it did not have the right to kill 50,000 Palestinians and wound 112,000, 60 percent of whom are women, children, and the elderly. It did not have a right to bomb every university in Gaza.

As Senator Van Hollen indicated, what we are talking about here is whether or not we support U.S. law. And U.S. law is clear: We cannot supply weapons to a country which is acting in violation of international law. Starving children is a violation of international law.

With that, Mr. President, I would yield the floor and ask for a ``yea'' vote on these resolutions.

Vote on Motion to Discharge

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, in the last couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to travel in many parts of our country, and I have been able to talk to folks in Nebraska, in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona.

What I am hearing from in all of these States and, in fact, all over the country is that our Nation right now faces enormous crises-- unprecedented crises in the modern history of our country.

How--right now, at this moment--we respond to these crises will not only impact our lives, it will impact the lives of our kids and future generations, and in terms of climate change, the well-being of the entire planet.

Mr. President, what I have to tell you is that the American people are angry at what is happening here in Washington, DC, and they are prepared to stand up and fight back.

In my view, and what I have heard from many, many people is that they will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control our government; where the wealthiest person on Earth, Mr. Musk, is running all over Washington, DC, slashing the Social Security Administration so that our elderly people today are finding it extremely difficult to access the benefits that they paid into; where Mr. Musk and his friends are slashing the Veterans' Administration so that people who put their lives on the line to defend us will not be able to get the healthcare that they are entitled to or get the benefits that they are owed in a timely manner; slashing the Department of Education; slashing USAID.

And why is all of this slashing taking place? It is taking place so that the wealthiest people in this country can receive over $1 trillion in tax breaks. Now, I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. There are very few people in this country who think that you slash programs that working families desperately need in order to give tax breaks to billionaires.

I am the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and I have had the honor of meeting with veterans in my own State of Vermont--all over Vermont--but all over the country. These are the men and women who put the uniform of this country on and have been prepared to die to defend our Nation and American democracy.

These veterans and Americans all over our Nation will not accept an authoritarian form of society with a

President who undermines our Constitution every day. Every day there is something else out there where he is undermining our Constitution and threatening the very foundations of American democracy. That is not what people fought and died to allow to happen.

I am not a historian, but I do know that the Founding Fathers of this country were no dummies. They were really smart guys, and in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution and established a form of government with a separation of powers--a separation of powers--with an executive branch, the President; a legislative branch, the Congress; and a judicial branch.

These revolutionaries in the 1780s had just fought a war against the imperial rule of the King of England, who was an absolute dictator--the most powerful person on Earth--and these revolutionaries here in America forming a new government wanted to make absolutely sure that no one person in this brandnew country that they were forming would have unlimited powers.

That is why we have a separation of powers. That is why we have a judiciary, a Congress, and an executive branch. In other words, way back in the 1780s, they wrote a Constitution to prevent exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do today.

So let us be clear about what is going on: Donald Trump is attacking our First Amendment and is trying to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him in an absolutely unprecedented way. He has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register. His FCC is now threatening to investigate NPR and PBS. He has called CNN and MSNBC illegal.

In other words, the leader--or the so-called leader--of the free world is afraid of freedom. He doesn't like criticism. Well, guess what, none of us likes criticism, but you don't get elected to the Senate; you don't get elected to the House; you don't become a Governor; you don't become a President of the United States unless you are prepared to deal with that criticism. And the response to that criticism in a democracy is not to sue the media, is not to intimidate the media. It is to respond in the way that you think best.

But it is not just the media that Trump is going after. He is going after the constitutional responsibilities that this body, the U.S. Congress, has. I will say it amazes me--it really does--how easily my Republican colleagues here in the Senate and in the House are willing to surrender their constitutional responsibilities, give it over to the President.

Trump has illegally and unconstitutionally withheld funds that Congress has appropriated. You can't do that. Congress has the power of the purse. We make a decision. We argue about it here, big debates, vote-a-ramas, the whole thing, make that decision; that money goes out. The President does not have the right to withhold funds that Congress has appropriated.

Trump has illegally and unconstitutionally decimated Agencies that can only be changed or reformed by Congress. You don't like the Department of Education? You don't like USAID? Fine. Come to the Congress, and tell us what reforms you want to see. You do not have the right to unilaterally do away with these Agencies.

Trump has fired members of independent Agencies and inspectors general that he does not have the authority to do.

But it is not just the media that he is trying to intimidate. It is not just the powers of Congress that he wants. Now, in an absolutely outrageous, unconstitutional, and extraordinarily dangerous way he is going after the judiciary.

His view is that if you don't like a decision that a judge renders, you get rid of that judge. You try to impeach that judge. You intimidate judges so that you get the decisions that you want.

You know, I am thinking back now as someone who is not a supporter of the Roberts' Court, and I am thinking about one of the worst Supreme Court decisions that has ever been rendered, and that is Citizens United. I will say more about that in a moment.

I am thinking about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, taking away American women's right to control their own bodies. In my view, these were outrageous decisions, unpopular decisions, but it never occurred to me--because maybe I am old-fashioned and conservative and I believe that you live by the rule of law--to say: Hey, look at the decision Roberts made. We are going to impeach him.

No. We try to elect a new President, who is going to appoint new Supreme Court Justices. That is the system that people have fought and died to defend.

But it is not just the movement or oligarchy which is outraging millions of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, by the way, and it is not just the movement toward authoritarianism that we are seeing; the American people, especially with Mr. Musk and 13 billionaires in the Trump administration running Agency after Agency, the American people are saying as loudly as they can that they will not accept a society of massive economic and wealth inequalities where the very richest people in our country are becoming much richer while working families are struggling to put food on the table.

Having gone all over this country, I can tell you that the American people are sick and tired of these inequalities, and they want an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.

You know, we deal with a whole lot of stuff here in the Congress, and you know, virtually all of it is important in one way or another. Well, let's doing something fairly radical today. Let's try to tell the truth--the real truth--about what is going on in our society today, something that we don't talk about too much here in the Senate. We don't talk about it too much in the House. We don't talk about it too much in the corporate media. But the reality is that today we have two Americas, two very, very different Americas.

In one of those Americas, the wealthiest people have never ever had it so good. In the whole history of our country, the people on top have never ever had it so good as they have it today.

Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than there has ever been in the history of America. I know we don't discuss it. You don't see it much on TV. You don't hear it talked about here at all. But the American people do not believe that it is appropriate that three people--one, two, three; Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, and Mr. Zuckerberg--three Americans own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans in society--170 million people. Really? Three people own more wealth than 170 million people? Does anybody here think that is vaguely appropriate?

By the way, those very same three people--the three richest people in America--were right there at Trump's inaugural, standing right behind the President.

Do you want to know what oligarchy is? I know there is some confusion out there. What is oligarchy? Well, it starts off when you have the three wealthiest people in the country standing right behind the President when he gets inaugurated.

The top 1 percent of our country now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. CEOs make 300 times more than their average worker. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for wages today for the average American worker, if you can believe it, despite a massive increase in worker productivity, is lower today than it was 52 years ago. During that period, there was a $75 trillion transfer of wealth that went from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent. That is the reality of the American economy today. Do you know what? Maybe we might want to be talking about that.

In our America today, that top America, that one America, the 1 percent are completely separate and isolated from the rest of the country. Do you think they get on the subway to get to work? Do you think they sit in a traffic jam for an hour trying to get to work? Not the case. They fly around in the jets and the helicopters that they own. They live in their mansions all over the world, in their gated communities. They have nannies taking care of their babies. They don't worry about the cost of childcare. They send their kids to the best private schools and colleges. Sometimes they vacation not in a Motel 6, not in a national park, but on their very own islands that they have. On occasion, for the

very, very richest, just for a kick, to have a little bit of fun, maybe they will spend a few million dollars flying off into space in one of their own spaceships. Sounds like fun.

But it is not just massive income and wealth inequality that we are dealing with today; we have more concentration of ownership than ever before. While the profits on Wall Street and corporate America soar, a handful of giant corporations dominate sector after sector, whether it is agriculture, transportation, media, financial services, et cetera, et cetera. A small number of huge corporations, international corporations, dominate sector after sector. As a result of that concentration of ownership, they are able to charge the American people outrageously high prices for the goods and services we need.

We don't talk about it too much, and maybe we should, but there are three Wall Street firms--BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street--that, combined, are the major stockholders in 95 percent of our corporations. Got that? Three Wall Street firms--three--are the major stockholders in 95 percent of American corporations.

So that is one America--people on top doing phenomenally well. Not only do they have economic power, they have enormous political power. That is what is going on there. They live like kings.

That is one America, but there is another America. In that other America, 60 percent--6-0, 60 percent--of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of workers from one end of this country to the other are trying to survive on starvation wages.

Now, unlike Donald Trump, I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, and I know the anxieties that my mom and dad had living in a rent-controlled apartment. Can we afford to buy this? Why did you buy that? That is the story taking place all over America.

What does living paycheck to paycheck mean? It means that every single day millions of Americans worry about how they are going to pay their rent or their mortgage, all over the country. Rents are skyrocketing, and people wonder, what happens? What happens to me and my kids if rent goes up by 20 percent and I can't afford it? Where do I live? Do I have to take my kid out of school? Where do I put my kid? In a worst-case scenario, do I live in my car?

Let's be clear. There are many people who are working today who are living in the back of their cars.

How do I pay for childcare?

I talked to a guy the other day, a police officer, who spends $20,000 a year for childcare.

How do I buy decent food for my kids when the price of groceries is off the charts? What happens if I get sick or my kid gets sick or my mother gets sick and I have a $12,000 deductible and I can't afford to go to the doctor? How, at the end of the month, am I going to pay my credit card bill even though I am being charged 20 or 30 percent interest rates by the usurious credit card companies?

People are worrying about such things.

What happens if my car breaks down and the guy at the repair shop says it is going to cost a thousand dollars and I don't have a thousand dollars in the bank? If I don't have a car, how do I get to work? If I don't get to work, how do I have an income? If I don't have an income, how do I take care of my family?

Those are the crises that millions of Americans are experiencing today. But it is not just working-age Americans; today in our country, half of older workers--older workers--have nothing in the bank as they face retirement. They are watching TV, and they are seeing Mr. Musk firing Social Security workers and are actually worrying whether Social Security will be there for them.

It is not just older workers with nothing in the bank wondering what happens when they retire; 22 percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year. I dare anybody in this country, let alone somebody who is old, who needs healthcare, who needs to keep the house warm--try to survive on $15,000 a year. And there are people here, by the way, talking about cutting Social Security.

It is not just about income and wealth inequality; it is about a healthcare system which everyone in the Nation understands is broken, is dysfunctional, and is outrageously expensive.

I hear my Republican friends--you know, I don't know where they are today--wanting to destroy the ACA, and my Democratic friends say: Oh, we have to defend the ACA.

The ACA is broken. It doesn't work. In my State, the cost of healthcare is going up 10, 15 percent. In America today, you have 85 million people who are uninsured or underinsured.

The function of the healthcare system today is not to do what a sane society would do: guarantee healthcare to all people in a cost- effective way--something which, by the way, every other major nation on Earth manages to do. The function of our healthcare system, as everybody knows, is to make billions of dollars in profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies.

So I say to my Democratic friends: It is not good enough to defend the Affordable Care Act. It is a broken system. You have to have the guts to stand up and allow us to do what every other major nation does: guarantee healthcare for all people as a human right, not allow the drug companies and the insurance companies to make massive profits every year.

I want to touch on an issue that gets virtually no discussion, but I think it is enormously important, and it says a hell of a lot about what is going on in our society today. In America, according to international studies, our life expectancy--how long we live as a people--is about 4 years lower than other countries. In most European countries, people there live longer lives. In Japan, they live even longer lives than in Europe.

So question No. 1 is, Why is that happening? We spend $14,000 a year per person on healthcare--almost double what any other country spends-- and yet people around the world are living on average 4 years longer than we do.

But here is the really ugly fact, even worse than that, and that is that in this country, on average, if you are a working-class person, you will live a 7-years-shorter life than if you are in the top 1 percent. If you are a working-class person, your life will be 7 years shorter than if you are wealthy. In other words, being poor or working class in America today amounts to a death sentence.

It is not only a broken healthcare system; we have to ask ourselves a simple question--and the Biden administration began a little bit of movement in this direction--and that is, Why are we living in a nation where one out of four people can't even afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe? Why are we in some cases paying 10 times more than our neighbors in Canada or in Europe? How does that happen?

The answer, of course, has to do with the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and their power right here, all of the campaign contributions they make, which has prevented us from negotiating prices.

But it is not just healthcare or prescription drugs when we look at what is going on in America. In Vermont and throughout this country, we have a major housing crisis. Here we are, the richest country on Earth, and 800,000 people are sleeping out on the streets and 20 million people are spending more than 50 percent of their limited incomes on housing. Can you imagine that? If you are a working person spending 50 percent of your income on housing, how do you have money to do anything else? And the cost of housing is soaring.

Do not tell me that in a nation which can spend a trillion dollars on the military, a nation that can give massive tax breaks to the rich, that we cannot build the millions of units of housing we desperately need.

So why is all of this happening? Why do we have a healthcare system that is broken and prescription drugs that are the most expensive in the world and a housing system and education in deep trouble?

I talk to educators in Vermont and all over the country. I talked to a principal the other day in Vermont. The starting salary at a public school is $32,000 a year. But don't worry--they can't afford to even bring people in because they can't afford housing in the community.

Why have we let education sink to the level that it has?

I think the bottom line of all of this is that the American people, I think, are catching on. And Mr. Musk--I must thank him because he has made it very clear. We are living in an oligarchic form of society.

If anybody out there thinks Mr. Musk is running around out of the goodness of his heart trying to make our government more efficient, you have not a clue as to what is going on. What these guys want to do is destroy virtually every Federal program that impacts the well-being of working people--Social Security, Medicare, the Postal Service, public education, you name it--so they can get huge tax breaks for the rich and eventually make government so inefficient that they will have the ability as large corporations to come in and privatize everything that is going on.

So this is a pivotal moment in American history, and I sense that the American people have had it up to here. They are prepared to fight back. They do not want a government run by billionaires who have it all, whose greed is uncontrollable.

We have in Vermont and I think all over this country a serious problem with addiction, with drugs, people drinking too much alcohol, people smoking too many cigarettes. The worst form of addiction this country now faces is the greed of the oligarchy. You might think that if you had $10, $20 billion, it would be enough--you know, kind of enough to let your family live for the next 20 generations--but it is not. For whatever reason, for whatever compulsive reason they have, these guys want more and more and more, and they are prepared to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and nutrition programs for hungry people in order to get even more. That, to me, is disgusting.

Now we are at a pivotal moment in American history. Now, having been all over this country, many parts of this country, I am absolutely confident that the American people--and I am not just talking about Democrats, who are as complicit in the problems that we have right now as are Republicans. We have a two-party system which is basically corrupt.

You have Mr. Musk over on the Republican side saying to any Republican who dares to stand up and defy the Trump agenda: We are going to primary you. On the Democratic side, you have AIPAC and you have other super PACs saying: You stand up for working people, you are in trouble as well. We have a corrupt campaign finance system in which billionaires are able to buy elections. And that is why, all over this country, people are not happy with our two-party system, the Republicans and the Democrats.

So this is a pivotal moment in American history, but we have had difficult moments before. I am confident from the bottom of my heart that if we stand together and we do not allow some rightwing extremists to divide us up by the color of our skin or our religion or where we were born or our sexual orientation--if we stand together, we can save this country, we can defeat oligarchy, we can defeat the movement toward authoritarianism, and, in fact, we can create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the few.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me thank Senator Wyden for his outstanding work as the former chairman of the Finance Committee and now as the ranking member.

I get around Vermont a bit. I get around the country a bit. And, generally speaking, when I talk to a group of people, I ask them a simple question.

I say: What do you think about the healthcare system? Is it working well or is it broken? Is it dysfunctional?

And, overwhelmingly, the hands go up that the American healthcare system today is broken, it is dysfunctional, and it is cruel. And what people understand is the function of the American healthcare system, today, is not to provide quality healthcare to all of our people, which, in fact, goes on in every other major country on Earth. It is to make huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies.

The current healthcare system is a system in which we spend twice as much per capita on healthcare as do the people of any other nation--an astronomical sum of money. And yet despite all that money, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and the cost of healthcare keeps going up every single year. One out of four Americans cannot afford the costs of the drugs that their doctors prescribe. And, unbelievably, it is a system in which 60,000 Americans die each year because they can't get to a doctor on time.

It is a system in which we don't have enough doctors, we don't have enough nurses, we don't have enough dentists, and we don't have enough pharmacists. But the good news is the insurance companies and the drug companies are making huge profits.

The current healthcare system is a system in which our life expectancy is lower than in any other major country, and if you are working class in America, you are going to live 7 years of shorter life than if you are wealthy.

It is a system in which some 500,000 people go bankrupt each year because of medically related debt. It is a system where, in large parts of our country, rural hospitals are being shut down and where people even with decent insurance have to travel hours in order to find a doctor.

As Senator Wyden indicated, in December, after months and months of difficult negotiations--and I want to congratulate Senator Wyden, Senator Crapo, and all of the people involved in those negotiations--we made some progress on this healthcare crisis by coming together on a bipartisan and bicameral agreement on a healthcare package.

That legislation, while more modest than I would have wanted, would have provided $4.5 billion for community health centers this year and $4.6 billion next year, up 15 percent from a few years ago.

Community health centers provide primary healthcare to 32 million Americans--working-class, lower income people. They do a phenomenal job, but they are under financial stress.

That legislation would have provided $350 million a year, over 2 years, for the National Health Service Corps, so we can attract young people to go out and work--young doctors to work in underserved areas. And it would have provided $300 million a year for teaching health centers.

It would have also lowered the outrageous price of prescription drugs by taking on the greed of pharmacy benefit managers.

It was a bipartisan bill. And just before that bill was going to be passed, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, who does not have to worry about whether he and his friends can afford healthcare, he sent out a series of tweets--some of them outrageously dishonest--to kill this legislation, and he succeeded in doing so.

So, today, it is important that we take a step forward and undo the damage that Mr. Musk caused, and the legislation that we are proposing today would, in fact, begin to take us back where we were. It would increase funding for community health centers and do all of the other important work that Senator Wyden wanted.

We have a healthcare crisis in America today. The CR that we are going to be voting on in a little while will make a bad situation worse. This is an opportunity to tell the American people that we are aware of the healthcare crisis; we are at least trying to do something.

And I would yield back to Senator Wyden.

That is it?

We have a healthcare crisis--85 million uninsured or underinsured, people dying because they can't afford healthcare. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We have reached a bipartisan conclusion to go forward in a modest way, but it would have some impact in approving healthcare in America, and my Republican colleague objects. That is about it.

Well, I hope the American people are watching.

Mr. President, as people all over this country understand, we are a nation today that faces enormous crises. Sadly, the continuing resolution passed Tuesday in the U.S. House and which will come to this body very shortly not only does nothing to address these crises but, in fact, it makes a bad situation much worse.

Today, at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country, 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. What that means--I grew up in a family living paycheck to paycheck. It means that people are worried about how they are going to afford housing. What happens if their landlord raises the rent? People go to the grocery store, and they see the high prices of food and wonder how they are going to feed their kids. People are looking at the outrageous cost of childcare, but you need childcare if you are going to go to work. How can you afford childcare? Our healthcare system is dysfunctional. People worry about how they can afford healthcare if they are lucky enough to be able to find a doctor.

That is the reality of what is going on in our country today: The rich are getting richer; working people are struggling; and 800,000 Americans are sleeping out on the streets.

So, given that reality, what does this bill do--the bill written by the rightwing extremists in the House of Representatives without any bipartisan discussion at all? What does this bill do?

Well, let me count the ways. It makes the financial struggles of working people even more difficult than they are today, and it does all of that to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for Elon Musk and the billionaire class.

For a start, some 22 percent of our seniors in this country are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less, which, to me, is really quite incredible. I don't know how anybody, let alone a senior, survives on $15,000 a year or less. Half of our seniors are trying to survive on $30,000 a year or less. So what does the Trump-Musk administration do to address the terrible economic pressures on seniors all over America? Well, they have got a brilliant idea. They illegally fire thousands of workers at the Social Security Administration, with plans to cut that staff in half.

In America today, 30,000 people die each year while waiting to receive their Social Security disability benefits because of a grossly understaffed and underresourced Social Security Administration. My office--and I expect the Presiding Officer's office and I expect every other office--gets calls every day from seniors, saying: I am having a problem with Social Security. I can't make contact with the Social Security people. They are not getting back to me.

That is because, today, they are understaffed. If Musk and Trump get their way and the Social Security Administration's staff is cut in half, nobody can deny that that will be a death sentence for many thousands of seniors who desperately need their benefits.

Now, Mr. Musk, who is worth a few hundred billion, may not understand that there are millions of seniors in this country who have nothing in the bank, who worry every day as to how they are going to heat their homes or buy the food that they need, and if they can't get the benefits that they need, some of them will, in fact, die.

Let me be clear: When you have Mr. Musk calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme despite the fact that it has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the last 80-plus years, that ain't no Ponzi scheme.

When you have the President of the United States coming before Congress and lying--outrageously lying--about millions of people who are 150 or 200 years of age receiving Social Security benefits--a total lie--everybody should understand what is going on.

Trump and Musk are laying the groundwork for dismantling the most successful Federal program in history--Social Security--a program that keeps over 27 million Americans out of poverty. By the way, just to set the record straight, over 99 percent of the more than 70 million Social Security checks that go out each month are going to people who earned those benefits--over 99 percent. People 150 or 500 years of age are not getting Social Security checks.

But this continuing resolution that passed in the House is not just a vicious attack on Social Security; it is an attack on the veterans of our Nation--the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our country. While we made some progress under the Biden administration in improving veterans' healthcare, the truth is that the VA has remained significantly understaffed. In the fourth quarter of 2024, there were 36,000 vacancies at the VA. We needed 2,400 more doctors, 6,300 more registered nurses, 3,400 more schedulers, 1,800 more social workers, and 1,200 more custodians.

So what do the Trump administration and Mr. Musk do to address this very serious workforce shortage? Their answer is that they are threatening to dismantle the VA by firing 83,000 employees. In other words, you have got a shortage today, and their solution to the shortage is to fire 83,000 workers. Not only does this CR do nothing to stop that, but it cuts more than $20 billion in funding needed to provide care for veterans exposed to burn pits,

Agent Orange, and other toxic substances next year.

Pathetically, our Nation--the richest country on Earth--has the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on the planet, and that is often reflected in the crises facing many public schools today. Throughout America, children are coming into school hungry; kids are coming into school with serious mental issues; kids are coming into school from dysfunctional families and families often dealing with drug abuse.

And what is the Trump-Musk administration doing about that crisis?

Well, their response was interesting. Just the other day, they fired half of the staff at the Department of Education. That means that it will be far harder to administer the title I program that helps 26 million low-income kids get the education they need and pays the salaries of some 180,000 public school teachers throughout the country.

So how does a school in a working-class community survive if you don't get the funds to pay for teachers?

Further, it means that it will be far harder to administer the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the IDEA, that provides vital resources for 7\1/2\ million kids with disabilities. We have made progress in a bipartisan way over the last number of years to say to families: If your kid has a disability, that kid can still go to a public school. There will be services available for that kid.

But when you cut the Department of Education staff here in Washington in half, that is going to be extremely difficult to do, and it means that it will be far harder for some 7 million low-income and working- class students to get the Pell grants they need to get a higher education. In fact, just hours after the Department of Education laid off half of its staff, the website for the free application for Federal Student Aid that working families use to apply for Pell grants and other financial institutions crashed. They fired workers, and the website crashed for the people who were applying for Pell grants. This CR that we will be looking at perhaps tomorrow gives the Trump administration the green light to make these horrific cuts to education.

And it is not just education. We have a major healthcare crisis in our country.

Despite spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as the people of any other major country, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Over 500,000 of our people go bankrupt because of medically related debt; over 60,000 people die each year because they can't afford to get to a doctor on time; and our life expectancy is not only lower than in almost any other major country, it is a system wherein working-class and low-income Americans die 7 years younger than wealthier Americans.

So you have got a crisis: People can't find a doctor. People are going bankrupt because of healthcare bills. And what does this CR do? Well, at a time when, in particular, our primary healthcare system is completely broken, when we don't have enough doctors or nurses or dentists or mental health counselors, this proposal cuts--cuts-- community health center funding by 3.2 percent; it cuts the National Health Service Corps by over 5 percent; and it cuts funding for teaching health centers--a program which helps train doctors in rural and underserved areas--by almost 13 percent.

So, in the midst of a horrific primary healthcare crisis in Vermont and all over rural America, this proposal will make it that much harder for people to get the healthcare that they desperately need.

But it is not just healthcare. Everybody in this country, from Vermont to Los Angeles, understands we have a major housing crisis. It is not just all of the homelessness we are seeing. Over 20 million of our people, incredibly, spend more than 50 percent of their limited income on housing. How in God's name do you pay for anything else? How do you buy food? How do you take care of healthcare if you are spending 50 percent or more for your housing?

So how does this CR address the housing crisis? Well, it does it by cutting rental assistance for low-income families in America by $700 million, which could lead to more than 32,000 families in our country being evicted from their homes. Well, that is a heck of a solution to the housing crisis: You make it much worse.

But it is not just housing. I know that the President might disagree. He thinks that climate change is a hoax. The whole scientific community understands that it is an existential threat. They understand that the last 10 years have been the warmest ever recorded, and extreme weather disturbances and natural disasters have been taking place all over the world--from California to India, across Europe, to North Carolina.

So what does the CR do about the existential threat of climate change? It does not even specify funding levels within the Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, the administration can simply eliminate funding for climate change and environmental justice, and that would be consistent with this CR.

And on top of all of this, the administration is already indicating that they will simply ignore the provisions of the spending bill they don't like. This week, it was reported that Vice President JD Vance said to the Senate Republican caucus: I want everyone to vote yes. The President, under section II, will ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer. There is so much grift in Washington. Let's move this CR, get to reconciliation, and for Congress to pass appropriations.

In other words, what Vance is saying is: Don't worry about what is actually in the bill. If the Trump administration doesn't like it, they won't do it.

And let's be clear: The House CR that was passed in an extremely partisan vote--I think they won by 3 or 4 votes. One Democrat out of-- whatever--215 voted for it. The House CR and the Trump administration are doing everything they can to lay the groundwork for more tax breaks for billionaires, paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, housing, and education. So you are looking at a one-two punch: a very bad CR and then a reconciliation bill coming down, which will be the final kick in the teeth for the American people.

This legislation that the Republicans are working on--the reconciliation bill--would cut taxes for billionaires in the top 1 percent by over $1.1 trillion over the next decade. According to a recent study, if all of Trump's so-called ``America First'' policies are enacted, the bottom 95 percent of Americans will see their taxes go up, while the richest 5 percent will see their taxes go down--way down.

I should also mention that that reconciliation bill which Republicans are working on right now would also cut Medicaid by $880 billion.

Tax breaks for billionaires; throwing low-income kids off of healthcare; decimating nursing homes all over America, because nursing homes receive two-thirds of their funding from Medicaid; making it harder for community health centers to survive, which provide healthcare to 32 million Americans, because 43 percent of their revenue comes from Medicaid--cut Medicaid by $880 billion, and you will significantly deteriorate the quality of healthcare all over America, at a time when the system is already broken.

Further, the reconciliation bill proposes to cut at least $230 billion from nutrition. Today, nearly one out of five kids in America rely on Federal nutrition programs to keep them from going hungry. I find it rather remarkable that the richest person on Earth, somebody worth hundreds of billions of dollars--that he and his other oligarch friends are working night and day to cut programs for the working people of this country and to actually deny food to hungry kids in America. There is no world, no universe, no religion that would not believe that that is grossly immoral and unacceptable. You don't give tax breaks to the rich and take food away from hungry children.

The House CR bill that we will be soon voting on here is a piece of legislation I cannot support. Instead, what the Senate must do is pass a 30-day CR so that all Members of Congress, not just the House Republican leadership, can come together and produce a good piece of legislation that works for all Americans and not just the few.

We have an opportunity now to serve the American people. We have an opportunity to write something that reflects what people in the Congress feel, what the people in America feel.

I go around the country, and, just a couple of weeks ago, I held a telephone townhall in Vermont. We are a small State. We only have about 650,000 people. Yet on that telephone townhall, there were 34,000 people listening in. It is a significant percentage of a small State.

I have been in many parts of the country recently. I have been in Iowa. I have been in Wisconsin. I have been in Nebraska. I have been in Michigan. And what I can tell you with absolute certainty is, whether people are conservative, whether they are Republican, whether they are progressive, whether they are moderate, whether they are Independent-- whatever they may be--there are very few people in this country who think we should give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the rich and cut back on Medicaid, education, and nutritional programs for hungry children.

So, Mr. President, what I strongly propose is that we pass a 30-day CR; that we do what has always been the case here in the Senate: have both bodies, both parties work together to come up with a good piece of legislation.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, my office and I suspect all Senate offices are getting a whole lot of calls from senior citizens who are experiencing a great deal of fear and anxiety with all of the confusion and chaos that is currently going on here in Washington.

When we have the President and my Republican colleagues talking about cutting Medicaid by some $880 billion--let us be clear--they are not just talking about throwing millions of children and others off of the health insurance they have; they are also talking about cuts to community health centers, which receive about 43 percent of their funding from Medicaid and where millions of seniors go to get their primary care. So cutting Medicaid impacts primary care.

At a time when we have a major crisis in nursing home availability--I know that is true in Vermont; I expect it is true in almost every State in the country--let us understand that Medicaid provides approximately two out of three seniors with the funding they need to live in nursing homes. Make drastic cuts in Medicaid, and it is going to be harder for your mom, your dad to get into a nursing home or to stay in a nursing home. Cuts in Medicaid would be a disaster for seniors in nursing homes.

But it is not just Medicaid cuts that worry seniors. At a time when the Social Security Administration is already understaffed--and again, for years, I have been hearing in my office--I expect other Senators have been hearing in their offices--from seniors who tell us they are calling up Social Security, they have got a problem, and they are not getting a response. And the result of that is that some 30,000 people a year die--die--waiting for their Social Security disability benefits.

And in the midst of all of that, in the midst of a crisis where Social Security is understaffed, when our response should be to significantly increase staffing so that Social Security can better respond to the needs of our constituents, we have Elon Musk and his minions at DOGE cutting some 2,500 of Social Security staff. And, incredibly, they are now threatening to cut up to half of Social Security Administration staffing.

And then, on top of all that, you have Mr. Musk claiming that Social Security, which has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for over 80 years, claiming that it is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American for over 80 years.

And then you have the President of the United States--State of the Union--lying about millions of people: Oh, millions of people, 200 years of age, 300 years of age, imagine that, getting Social Security benefits.

Seniors understand what all of that is about. They know that Musk and Trump want us to lose faith in Social Security and that, over a period of time, they want to give that indispensable program over to Wall Street.

So let us be clear: In America today, 22 percent of Americans living who are 65 years of age are trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year. Think about that: 22 percent of seniors in America trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. Half of seniors are trying to get by on $30,000 a year or less. Frankly, I don't know how any senior living on $15,000, $20,000 survives. I don't know. The high cost of prescription drugs, food, housing, keeping warm in the winter, I don't know how they can do that.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we now have the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of senior poverty compared to other wealthy nations. In America today, according to the latest OECD estimates, 23 percent of seniors are living in poverty compared to just 4 percent in Norway, 6 percent in France, and 11.5 percent in Canada.

Yes, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country; we have more billionaires than any other country, but we also have one of the highest rates of senior poverty of any country on Earth. We might want to get our priorities right.

Now, while my Republican colleagues would like to make massive cuts to Medicaid in order to provide more tax breaks to billionaires, some of us have a better idea. We think that it makes more sense to substantially improve the lives of our Nation's seniors by expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare, one of the most popular and successful government programs in our Nation's history, into law. Before the enactment--this is really quite interesting. Before the enactment of Medicare, about half of our seniors were uninsured. Today, everyone in America age 65 or older is guaranteed healthcare benefits through Medicare regardless of their income or medical condition. That is the good news.

The bad news is that, since its inception 60 years ago, Medicare has failed to cover such basic healthcare needs as hearing, dental care, and vision. The result: Millions of senior citizens have teeth that are rotting in their mouths. They are unable to hear what their children say or they are unable to read a newspaper because of failing eyesight.

This is the United States of America. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Senior citizens should not be walking around with no teeth in their mouth. They should not be unable to hear conversations. They should not be unable to afford glasses so that they can read a newspaper.

The need to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and eyeglasses is absolutely critical. Nobody--nobody--denies that oral health, hearing, and vision are essential parts of healthcare. We cannot continue to deny seniors these basic healthcare benefits. We can no longer tolerate the fact that 26 million seniors and people with disabilities in America have no dental insurance and no idea how they will be able to pay for the very expensive dental procedures that they need.

The results have been tragic. Nearly one out of five seniors in America have lost all of their natural teeth. Twenty percent of seniors in America have no natural teeth in their mouths. Disgracefully, 60 percent of our Nation's seniors have untreated gum disease, which can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Further, it is not acceptable that while nearly two-thirds of seniors over the age of 70 experience hearing loss, less than 30 percent of seniors above this age have ever used a hearing aid, primarily because hearing aids are too expensive. In my view, no senior in America should face isolation from their families and friends simply because they cannot afford the extremely high price of a hearing aid.

In addition, we cannot continue to allow seniors with poor vision to go without routine eye exams or properly prescribed glasses. Poor vision can lead to injury, cognitive impairment, and depression.

Adding dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Medicare is not just good public policy; it will not only ease human suffering and improve the health of our Nation's seniors; it is precisely what the overwhelming majority

of the American people want. Poll after poll tells us exactly that.

According to a poll conducted by Data for Progress last year, it found that 92 percent of the American people support expanding Medicare to provide dental, vision, and hearing benefits, and that is why I have introduced legislation today with Senators Warren, Booker, Welch, Markey, Duckworth, Merkley, and Blumenthal to do just that. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, in the House, has introduced similar legislation, which has more than 110 cosponsors.

Now, I am sure that some of my Republican colleagues may say: Well, you know, it is an interesting idea. It is a good idea, but how are you going to pay for it?

So let me tell you how we are going to pay for it. We are going to pay for it by requiring Medicare to pay no more for prescription drugs than the VA. Right now, we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and that means significantly increased expenses for Medicare. By making sure that Medicare pays no more than the VA, which has for years--for decades--negotiated prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we could not only cut the price of prescription drugs for our seniors in half, we will save over $800 billion over the next decade, which would more--more--than pay for this legislation. Lower the costs of prescription drugs, and get the revenue we need to cover dental, vision, and hearing for seniors.

Now, some of my Republican friends may also argue that this bill is not needed. Some Medicare Advantage plans already offer dental, vision, and hearing benefits, yes, but what my Republican friends may not tell you is, one, seniors still pay thousands of dollars out of pocket because these private Medicare Advantage benefits are totally inadequate. Further, the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has estimated that Medicare Advantage plans overcharge the Federal Government by $83 billion a year.

In other words, if we are serious about waste, fraud, and abuse--hear a lot about that--we may want to take a look at the massive waste and fraud that is taking place with private Medicare Advantage plans. Those savings would also more than fully pay for this legislation.

Therefore, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 939, which was introduced earlier today, that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I ask my colleague, my friend, the chairman of the Finance Committee a question. I hear what you are saying. Do I hear you correctly that you are prepared to discuss this legislation in committee?

Look, I understand that this bill would bring forth serious debate and discussion, but I would appreciate if we could have a starting point. This bill is pretty simple. It says--and I hear you saying that you need--am I hearing you correctly to say that the idea of covering dental, vision, and hearing is something that you entertain, you think is a good idea, or am I not hearing that?

Right. OK. Fair enough. That is fair enough. But what I would like to do--and I appreciate--you know, I think you and I can agree that we don't use the committee structure here in the Senate as effectively as we might. That is the place to have serious debate and discussion, correct?

OK. I would hope in one way or another--I would appreciate if we could start off with my bill. You could come in and tell me what you don't like about it, and we can go from there. But this is a crisis situation--I think you and I agree--that too many of our seniors are suffering because of lack of dental, hearing, and vision. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Let's debate it. But can we get this into the committee and have a serious discussion on it?

It will.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the minority leader for his comments.

I am here tonight with colleagues who have worked extremely hard to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine and to defend democracy in that country and, in fact, throughout the world. And I thank all of my colleagues for getting on the floor this evening and for the resolutions that they will be bringing forth.

I am not a historian, but I do know that, for the last 250 years, since the inception of our great country, despite our imperfections, the United States has stood in the world as a symbol of democracy. And all over the world--all over the world--people have looked to our country as an example of freedom and self-governance to which the rest of the world could aspire. People have long looked to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution as blueprints for how to establish governments of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Tragically, all of that is now changing. As President Trump moves this country toward authoritarianism, he is aligning himself with dictators and despots who share his disdain for democracy and the rule of law.

Last week--just last week--in a radical departure from longstanding U.S. policy, the Trump administration voted against a United Nations resolution which clearly stated that Russia began the horrific war in Ukraine. That U.N. resolution also called on Russia to withdraw its forces from occupied Ukraine, in line with international law.

The resolution was brought forward by our closest allies, countries that we have been aligned with for God knows how many years, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and dozens of other democratic nations. And 93 countries at the U.N. voted yes on that resolution.

Rather than side with our longstanding allies to preserve democracy and uphold international law, President Trump voted with authoritarian nations like Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Belarus to oppose the resolution. Many of the other opponents of that resolution are undemocratic nations propped up by Russian military aid.

But it wasn't just the U.N. vote. Pathetically, President Trump also told an outrageous lie, claiming that it was Ukraine that started the war, not Russia. He also called Zelenskyy a dictator, rather than the leader of a democratic nation, as he is.

As we discuss Ukraine tonight, it is terribly important that we not forget who Vladimir Putin is and why he is no friend of the United States and why we should not be in an alliance with him against Ukraine.

Putin is a man who crushed Russia's movement toward democracy after the end of the Cold War. Putin is a man who steals elections, murders political dissidents, and crushes freedom of the press. He has maintained control in Russia by offering the oligarchs there a simple deal: If they grant him absolute power and share the spoils--and he, by the way, is one of the wealthiest people in the world--he would let them steal as much as they wanted from the Russian people.

The result: While the vast majority of the Russian population struggles economically, Putin and his fellow oligarchs stash trillions of dollars in offshore tax havens.

And so today, 26 years after he took power, Putin is the absolute ruler of Russia, and I think, as everyone knows, Russia's elections are blatantly fraudulent--a sham.

And Putin is the man who sparked the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. More than 3 years ago, on February 24, 2022, Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law. Russian land, air, and naval forces have attacked and occupied territory across Ukraine.

Since that terrible day, more than a million people have been killed or injured because of Putin's war. Putin's forces have massacred civilians and kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children, bringing them back to Russian reeducation camps.

These atrocities led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 as a war criminal--a war criminal. That is who we are aligning ourselves with.

And still today, Russia continues its attacks, raining down hundreds of missiles and drones on Ukrainian citizens. Russian forces illegally occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine's sovereign territory.

This war could end today, right now. If Putin gave up his outrageous effort to conquer a neighboring country, the war could end today. The killing could stop right now if Putin gave that order, and that simply is what my resolution says to Vladimir Putin: Stop the killing. Obey international law. Withdraw your forces and cease your attacks on Ukraine. And I, honestly, just don't know how anybody in the U.S. Senate could object to that simple demand.

Now, more than at any time in recent history, it is imperative that the Senate come together in a bipartisan manner to make it clear that we stand for democracy, not authoritarianism; that we stand for international law, not conquest by force; and that we stand with Ukraine and fellow democracies throughout the world, not with the murderous dictator of Russia.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 109, which was submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Let me respond to my friend from Idaho. I think he said, to paraphrase him a bit, there is one man who can stop the war. You are right. But that man doesn't live here in Washington, DC. That man happens to live in Moscow, and his name is Vladimir Putin. He is the one who started the war. And, in my view, when we ally ourselves with Putin, when we threaten and, in fact, cut back on military support or intelligence support for Ukraine, do you know what we are telling that one man? We are saying you have got a green light. The United States is withdrawing. You do what you want. You continue the war. You continue to pummel the people of Ukraine, who have already suffered so terribly.

So I think it is true that there are many approaches to how we can end this war, and I agree with my friend that we all have the common goal of wanting to end this war. But I think the fastest way forward is in a bipartisan way. You have 100 U.S. Senators and hopefully 435 Members of the House who stand up and say: Mr. Putin, you started this terrible war. You are acting illegally. You are acting barbarically. Stop that war.

That, in my mind, would be a major step forward to ending the atrocities we are currently seeing.

One brief remark because I strongly disagree on this issue with my friend.

You think it takes Trump to end the war. You think that Putin alone can't end the war. Well, who do you think started the war? Who do you think runs Russia with an iron fist? If, tomorrow, Putin thought it was to his advantage to end this war, he would do it, and as a dictator, he can do it.

So, with that, Mr. President, I would--I don't want to yield the floor.

Could I ask my friend--I mean this sincerely--Senator Risch, would you agree with me that he is a dictator who runs Russia?

All right. The point is, he is a dictator, and he can end the war unilaterally, in my view.

I yield the floor.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 110

Mr. President, I speak with senior citizens all over Vermont and, in fact, in many parts of the country. Just last night, we held a telephone townhall in Vermont, and in our small State, 34,000 people were on the line. I think the reason for that is there is a great deal of anxiety among people in general and seniors in particular regarding the Republican budget proposal that was passed the other day in the House. Seniors and Americans all over this country have reason to be concerned.

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the Republican budget would give over $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1 percent-- that is billionaires and the wealthiest people in our country. In Vermont and all over this country, seniors are asking: Well, how are they going to pay for that trillion-dollar gift to the 1 percent? The answer is not complicated. They have made it clear. Republicans will be making massive cuts in healthcare, nutrition assistance, affordable housing, and education. These are precisely the programs that working families and kids and the elderly and the sick and the poor most depend upon. The Republican budget would cut Medicaid by $880 billion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that if these cuts are implemented, up to 36 million Americans, including millions of children, would have their health insurance taken away from them.

Let's be clear. When we have Republicans in the House passing a budget to make massive cuts to Medicaid, we are not just talking about throwing millions of kids off of the healthcare they need; we are also talking about massive cuts to community health centers, where some 32 million Americans receive the primary healthcare they need and where community health centers receive 43 percent of their funding from Medicaid. So a massive cut to Medicaid is a cut to community health centers and is a cut to the services that 32 million Americans receive, including many, many seniors.

At a time when we have a major crisis in nursing home availability in Vermont and all over this country, let us understand that Medicaid provides for two out of every three seniors who live in nursing homes. A massive cut to Medicaid is a massive cut to nursing homes and the people who utilize those homes. How many seniors would be thrown out of nursing homes if the Republicans cut Medicaid by $880 billion? Nobody knows, but it would be a disaster for working families and their parents. That is for sure.

But it is not just Medicaid cuts that seniors are worried about. Today, nearly 22 percent of people over 65 years of age are trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year. That is an unbelievable and horrific reality. Imagine anyone in America, in any part of this country--let alone a senior citizen--trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. I don't know how anybody can possibly do that, especially seniors who have healthcare needs and need prescription drugs and who need to heat their homes more than the general public. And it is not just seniors trying to get by on $15,000; half of our Nation's seniors are trying to get by on less than $30,000 a year.

The bottom line is that in the richest country in the history of the world, you have millions and millions of seniors today--people who helped build this country, people who raised us--who are barely getting by in the year 2025.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, the United States now has the dubious distinction of not only having one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the industrialized

world, we also have one of the highest rates of senior poverty--senior poverty--compared to other wealthy nations.

In America today, according to the latest OECD estimates, 23 percent of seniors are living in poverty compared to just 4.1 percent in Norway, 6.1 percent in France, 9.5 percent in Ireland, and 14.9 percent in the United Kingdom. That is a dubious distinction. That is something we should not be proud of. That is a crisis we should be addressing.

In addition to the poverty that millions of seniors in America are experiencing today, about half of older workers--these are people in the workforce right now, people between the ages of 55 and 64--have no retirement savings at all. You are 60 years old. You have worked your entire life. Half of the people in that situation--from 55 to 64--have no retirement savings at all.

As bad as all of that is, many of my Republican colleagues have proposed making a bad situation--a tragic situation--even worse by cutting Social Security. Some want to cut benefits. Others want to raise the retirement age. Then there are some who simply want to privatize Social Security and give it over to Wall Street.

Well, I strongly disagree. At a time when millions of seniors are struggling to keep their heads above water, I don't believe that now is the time--in fact, never is the time--to cut Social Security benefits. Instead of cutting Social Security and giving tax breaks to billionaires, Congress must expand Social Security so that every senior in America can retire with the dignity and the respect that he or she deserves. Further and importantly to the younger generation, we must also make Social Security solvent for generations to come.

So that is the goal. The goal is to say to seniors all over this country, in the richest country on Earth: We are going to address the fact that many of you can't quite figure out how to buy the food you need, heat your homes, get the prescription drugs you need. You are struggling. You helped build this country. You are our parents and our grandparents. We stand with you.

That is why I have introduced legislation today with 10 of my colleagues--Senators Warren, Merkley, Welch, Padilla, Smith, Van Hollen, Markey, Booker, Gillibrand, and Whitehouse--to accomplish both of those goals. This legislation would make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. It would lift millions of seniors out of poverty, and it would expand benefits for seniors and people with disabilities by $2,400 a year.

Now, I know that in the world here in Washington where the government is now run by billionaires, $2,400 doesn't seem like a whole lot of money, but if you are trying to get by on $15,000 a year and can't afford to heat your house and can't afford to buy a prescription drug that you need, $2,400 is something that will help.

How do we do this? What does this legislation do? Well, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than the average worker, this legislation demands that the wealthiest people in America, the billionaires and others, start paying their fair share of taxes.

Today, absurdly and unfairly, a billionaire pays the same amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes $176,000 a year. A billionaire pays the same amount into Social Security as somebody who makes $176,000 a year. That is because there is a cap on the Social Security payroll tax.

What does that mean? It means, if you make up to $176,000 a year, you pay 6.2 percent of your income in Social Security taxes, but if you make 10 times more--$1.7 million a year--you pay just 0.62 percent of your income in Social Security taxes. If you make $1 billion a year, you pay nothing more into the Social Security fund than someone making $176,000.

Now, that may make sense to somebody--probably to the billionaire class--but it does not make sense to me. This legislation applies the Social Security payroll tax to all income--including capital gains and dividends--for those who make over $250,000 a year. Under this bill, 91 percent of households in our country would not see their taxes go up by one single penny--not one penny for the bottom 91 percent.

Not only is this legislation good public policy, it also happens to be precisely what the American people want. According to a Data for Progress poll, 81 percent of the American people, including 79 percent of Independents and 75 percent of Republicans, support expanding Social Security benefits. So in passing this legislation, it is not only good policy, it is precisely what Democrats, Republicans, and Independents want.

Therefore, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 770, which was introduced earlier today; that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, since 2010, I have sponsored a State of the Union essay contest for Vermont high school students. This contest gives students in my State the opportunity to articulate what issues they would prioritize if they were President of the United States.

This is the contest's 15th year, and I would like to congratulate the nine volunteer judges who helped choose the contest winners and finalists. The contest relies on its committed team of judges. The judges take time to review each essay and evaluate the diversity in writing that engages students and will benefit them for years to come. The judges' willingness to participate in this project reflects their dedication to both the students and our State, and for that, I graciously thank them.

The judges include:

Andrew Chobanian of Oxbow High School--participant for 3

years

Jason Gorczyk of Milton High School--participant for 12

years

Krista Huling of South Burlington High School--participant

for 12 years

Robert Jackson Randolph Technical Career Center--

participant for their first year

Krystal Melendez of North Country Union High School--

participant for their first year

Mary Schell of White River Valley School--participant for 3

years

Terri Vest of Twinfield Union School--participant for 15

years

Robert Walls-Thumma of North Country Union High School--

participant for their first year

Caroline Zeilenga of Randolph Technical Career Center--

participant for their first year

I am very proud to enter the State of the Union Essay Contest judges into the Congressional Record to recognize their contributions.

Mr. President, since 2010, I have sponsored a State of the Union essay contest for Vermont high school students. This contest gives students in my State the opportunity to articulate what issues they would prioritize if they were President of the United States.

This is the contest's 15th year, and I would like to congratulate the 475 students who participated. It is truly heartening to see so many young people engaged in finding solutions for the problems that face our country. To my mind, this is what democracy is all about.

A volunteer panel of Vermont educators reviewed the essays and chose Justason Lahue as this year's winner. Justason, a junior at Burr and Burton Academy, wrote about the impact of social media on youth mental health. Ari Glasser, a junior at Essex High School, was the second- place winner. Ari wrote about the influence of billionaires on American politics. Ely White, a senior at Leland & Gray Union Middle and High School, was the third-place winner, with an essay on political polarization.

I am very proud to enter into the Congressional Record the essays submitted by Justason, Ari and Ely.

The material follows:

Winner, Justason LaHue, Burr and Burton Academy, Junior

Social media is deteriorating adolescent mental health, yet

the United States' government is treating the situation like

a social experiment; our government is waiting to see what

will happen despite the mounting evidence that social media

has dangerous effects. Until we apply evidence-based

regulations to limit social media use, adolescent well-being

is in jeopardy.

The current evidence of harm is compelling. A 2023 Gallup

survey found that teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours on

social media daily. Alarmingly, a longitudinal study

involving 6,595 adolescents revealed that spending over 3

hours daily on social media doubled the risk of poor mental

health outcomes, such as anxiety and depression. These are

not studies in isolation: a systematic review of 13 studies

also found that unhealthy engagement of social media was

correlated with depression, anxiety, and psychological

distress.

While these studies demonstrate correlation, there are also

indicators of causality. Numerous studies highlight how

limiting social media use can improve mental health. A

randomized controlled trial reported that reducing social

media use by just 30 minutes daily lessened depressive

symptoms in college students. Another study involving

adolescents showed that ceasing social media use for 4 weeks

resulted in a 25-40% improvement in subjective well-being

(e.g., life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety) when

compared to psychological interventions such as therapy.

Social media use can worsen adolescent mental health, while

lessening use demonstrates the opposite effect. Adolescent

brain development is most active from ages 10 to 14. However,

the arbitrary and rarely enforced `internet age' currently

set at 13 exposes immature brains to a world of

entertainment, inappropriate content, and harassment. Given

these biological factors and the evidence of potential harm,

a more appropriate age for adolescents to access the internet

is 16 years of age.

I propose a bill called the Youth Mental Health Protection

Act. This act would target a root cause of social media-

related youth mental health issues by changing the legal age

of `internet adulthood' (i.e., when one can sign up for most

online platforms, consent to terms of service, and share

personal data). This act would make 16 the legally required

age to access social media, similar to obtaining a driver's

license in most states, another privilege requiring complex

thinking and decision-making. Finally, the Youth Mental

Health Protection Act would hold social media companies

liable by requiring age verification prior to account

creation.

Requiring age checks would likely lessen the negative

effects of social media on adolescent mental health, however,

this is just

one step the United States government needs to take to solve

this crisis. To counteract the harms introduced by this

ongoing social experiment, policy-makers need to act now.

Enacting the Youth Mental Health Protection Act and

prioritizing further research on the effects of social media

is imperative to safeguard the mental health of our nation's

youth.

Second Place, Ari Glasser, Essex High School, Junior

President-elect Donald Trump has so far nominated over a

dozen billionaires to his cabinet, with a combined net worth

of over $400 billion-more than ten times the GDP of the state

of Vermont. In addition, Elon Musk, the richest man in the

world, was one of Trump's strongest supporters during the

election campaign: He donated a staggering $277 million to

Trump and other Republican candidates, according to CBS News.

It is clear that the ultra-wealthy control a growing share of

both political and economic power in the United States,

holding disproportionate sway that erodes the power of the

American people. The expanding influence of the billionaire

class is one of the greatest challenges facing America today.

The recent trend of billionaire influence is reminiscent of

the Gilded Age, a time when an incredibly wealthy group of

industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller presided over vast

monopolies while the government struggled to break them up.

Meanwhile, the urban masses worked long hours with deplorable

conditions and little pay. It was a kind of oligarchic

society, one where these ``Captains of Industry'' wielded

immense political and economic influence. Today, America is

in a sort of Second Gilded Age-complete with drastic wealth

inequality and a dangerous level of influence by the ultra-

wealthy that is becoming ever nearer to oligarchy. Just 735

billionaires hold more wealth than the bottom half of all

American households.

In order to reduce the concerning level of billionaire

influence, many reforms must be enacted, but perhaps most

important is a wealth tax. This could raise trillions of

dollars for the government while also reducing the wealth and

influence of billionaires over time. One such proposal would

be Senator Bernie Sanders' plan, which would implement a

progressive wealth tax, starting at one percent on net worth

over $32 million, up to eight percent on net worth over $10

billion. According to Sanders, this plan would cut in half

the wealth of billionaires over just 15 years, greatly

reducing wealth inequality and the power of the top 0.1

percent.

In addition to reducing the economic power of billionaires,

their political influence must be reduced through the use of

campaign finance reform-most importantly, overturning the

2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. This

case eviscerated campaign finance regulations and essentially

allowed unlimited contributions to political groups known as

super PACs, such as the one Elon Musk donated to. While it

may be difficult, passing a proposal such as the We the

People Amendment would reverse the Citizens United decision

by putting an end to the antidemocratic concepts that money

equals political speech, and that corporations are people.

While there is no simple solution to ending the dangerous

influence of billionaires in American politics and the

economy, through important legislative action such as a

wealth tax and campaign finance reform, America can stop the

encroachment of oligarchy on its society.

Third Place, Ely White, Leland and Gray Union Middle High School

Abraham Lincoln once said, ``a house divided against itself

cannot stand.'' Speaking solemnly of the dire state of

division in the United States leading up to the Civil War, it

is now over a century later that his words resonate once

more.

Political polarization has grown in the past decade in the

United States, transforming healthy debates of ideas into an

endless battle of ``us'' against ``them.'' Division has

infiltrated into all facets of American life, a political

landscape where compromise is rare and partisan loyalty is

prioritized. This deepening division threatens the ideals of

our democracy, making it nearly impossible to address the

critical issues that face our country today.

A 2022 NBC News survey revealed that 80% of Americans

believe the opposing party ``poses a threat that, if not

stopped, will destroy America.'' This growing divide is

evident in the 2018-19 government shutdown, when a standoff

between Democrats and Republicans over border wall funding

caused a 35-day gridlock. With neither side willing to

compromise, 800,000 government workers went unpaid, and

federal services became disrupted. Heightened polarization

has normalized the prioritization of party loyalty over

national needs, a theme of officials refusing to seek bi-

partisan solutions even with critical federal services,

workers, and decisions at stake.

Beyond our boardrooms and capitals, division based on

political views has become synonymous with what it means to

be American. Pew Research Center's 2022 report on

polarization shows that 72% of Republicans view Democrats as

more immoral than other Americans, and 62% of Democrats say

the same about Republicans. Political identity has become

tribal in nature, a defining characteristic of one's morality

and values. Political polarization strains relationships in

families, communities, and workplaces, the American

Psychological Association reporting that 38% of adults

avoided conversations with people of opposing political

views.

Addressing solutions to America's political division is

complex. Specific systemic reforms, however, can help reduce

polarization by shifting the incentives that drive division.

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a system that allows voters to

rank candidates in order of preference, the votes for the

lowest-ranking candidate then redistributed to voters' next

choice until a majority is achieved. RCV would encourage

candidates to appeal to broader ranges of voters rather than

just their base, incentivizing politicians to take moderate

stances rather than extreme party-driven positions. Reforming

the closed primary system by adopting open or top-two systems

would force candidates to appeal to a broader electorate,

reducing the influence of extreme partisanship and

encouraging more moderation. Integrating civic education and

media literacy into our schools and communities could also

work as a grassroots solution in helping individuals evaluate

information and recognize bias in misinformation and

ideological chambers.

The future of our democracy depends on our ability to

bridge divides and prioritize unity over partisanship. We

must rebuild trust, restore faith in our institutions, and

create a government that serves all Americans. Change begins

with us- and we call and act for a system that brings us

together, not tears us apart.

Mr. President, I ask to have entered into the Record some of the finalists' essays written by Vermont High School students as part of the 15th Annual State of the Union Essay contest conducted by my office.

The material follows:

Finalists

Mr. President, we live in difficult times, in times where people throughout our country are experiencing a great deal of anxiety for a number of reasons. And in the midst of all of that, it is important that we not forget what is taking place not only in Ukraine but back home here in the United States.

And back home, right now, tens of millions of Americans are struggling economically to keep their heads above water. Mr. President, 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, 85 million are uninsured or underinsured, and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on Earth.

And as someone who has visited senior centers throughout the State of Vermont and has spoken to seniors throughout our country, I can tell you that there is a significant level of fear and anxiety among the older people in this country with regard to what is happening right here in DC. When we have a President of the United States and Republicans who are talking about massive cuts to Medicaid, let's understand--and seniors do understand--that we are not just talking about throwing millions of kids off the healthcare that they have at a time when we are the only major country not to provide healthcare to all people--not just kids off their healthcare, we are talking about massive cuts to community health centers, which receive over 40 percent of their funding from Medicaid and where millions of seniors go to get the primary care they need.

And at a time when we already have a major crisis in nursing home availability, let us understand that Medicaid provides funding for two out of every three seniors who live in nursing homes. In other words, massive cuts to Medicaid would be a disaster for senior citizens throughout this country.

But it is not just Medicaid cuts that worry our seniors. Today, quite unbelievably--and we don't talk about this anywhere near enough--25 percent of people in our country who are 65 years of age or older are trying to survive on incomes of $15,000 a year or less. I myself do not know how anybody, let alone a senior with healthcare needs, can survive on $15,000 a year, but that is what 25 percent of our seniors are trying to do.

Mr. President, this issue of so many seniors struggling to get by, struggling to heat their homes, struggling to buy the food or the prescription drugs they need, this is an issue we must address, and it is a crisis that is unacceptable in the richest country in the history of the world.

That is why I am proud to tell you that within the next several weeks, I, along with a number of cosponsors, will be introducing legislation that expands Social Security benefits and extends the solvency of Social Security for decades.

We are hearing a lot of talk about cutting Social Security. We should not be talking about cutting Social Security; we must be talking about expanding Social Security benefits. And the legislation that I will introduce would do just that. It would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year, and it would not raise taxes by one penny on the bottom 93 percent of Americans, those who make less than $250,000 a year.

And how do we do that? By lifting the cap at applying the Social Security payroll tax on all income above $250,000. Unbelievably, under current law, a billionaire pays the same amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes $176,000 a year. Elon Musk, worth $400 billion, pays the same amount into Social Security as somebody who makes $176,000. That is because, under Social Security, there is an absurd cap on taxable income. If we lifted that cap and made sure that millionaires and billionaires paid the same percentage of their income into Social Security as the working class of this country, we could extend the life of Social Security for generations to come and lift millions of seniors out of poverty.

Further, when we talk about the needs of senior citizens in this country, I want to mention that I will also be introducing legislation to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing. It is unacceptable that millions of seniors are unable to read a newspaper because they cannot afford eyeglasses, can't have conversations with their grandchildren because they can't afford hearing aids, and have trouble eating because they cannot afford dentures. That should not be happening in the United States of America in the year 2025.

Expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing is an extremely popular concept. Poll after poll shows that 80 percent of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--support doing just that.

Mr. President, when we talk about the anxieties that the American people are now experiencing, it is not just, to say the least, senior citizens. All across this country, there is a growing fear that the Trump administration is undermining the Constitution of our country, a Constitution which has kept us a free nation, an example, a model for the rest of the world for the last 250 years.

During the last month alone, President Trump has attempted to usurp the powers of Congress, illegally and unconstitutionally refusing to fund programs passed by Congress. He has illegally destroyed agencies like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that were created by Congress. And under the leadership of Mr. Musk, they have illegally and inappropriately gained access to tax data and Social Security data of millions of Americans, et cetera, et cetera. Every day, they are acting in an illegal and unconstitutional manner.

And I would say this--and I don't know if people take it seriously or not; I do--just this week, President Trump tweeted:

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.

Wow. In other words, Mr. Trump sees himself, the President of the United States, as above the law and immune from the basic rules of the Constitution and the separation of powers that have governed this country since the founding.

Hey, anything I want to do--I am President--I can do it. It doesn't matter what Congress says. It doesn't matter what the Constitution says. It doesn't matter what the rule of law is about. Hey, I am the President. I am trying to save the country. I don't need to hear from anybody else.

That is not what Americans fought and died to preserve. That is not what this country is about.

And with regard to the movement toward authoritarianism, let me say a few words about an area that I think has not gotten much attention at all, and that is Trump's attack on the free press, which is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers of this country considered freedom of speech and free

press to be enormously important. That was the First Amendment.

Mr. Trump has sued CBS and its parent company, Paramount, for $20 billion because he didn't like how they edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The company is now reportedly considering settling the lawsuit--and I certainly hope they do not do that--out of fear of retaliation from Trump's FCC.

He did not like a television program on CBS. Well, many of us don't like television programs on CBS or NBC or FOX or ABC, but you don't sue somebody for $20 billion because you didn't like the program. And, obviously, the intention of that lawsuit is clear, and that is that CBS and every other network and media outlet will now have to look over their shoulder: Oh, my goodness, we are saying something critical of Donald Trump. Is he going to sue us for 5 billion, for 10 billion? Is he going to drive us out of business? Maybe we should not run that program. Maybe we should not do that investigative report.

Not just CBS. In recent times, he has sued ABC. He has sued Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. He has sued the Des Moines Register. What crime did a little newspaper in Iowa make? What was their crime? They ran a poll which turned out, in retrospect, to be inaccurate.

So pollsters all over America, be careful. There was a poll coming out just today--I saw it--that Trump's unfavorables are going up. Hey, you may be sued. Pull that poll.

I mean, how absurd is that? And what kind of threat is it to freedom of speech and expression in this country?

And when we talk about the Trump administration's movement toward authoritarianism, we should take note of another remarkable and troubling set of events that happened just this week, and my colleague from Colorado spoke at length on that. We saw the President of the United States openly aligning himself with the dictator of Russia--the dictator of Russia--Vladimir Putin, to undermine the independence of Ukraine and abandon our closest democratic allies in Europe.

Trump made it clear that he sees one of the world's most brutal dictators as his pal and our longtime democratic allies as his enemies. It appears that Mr. Trump wants a world that is safe for authoritarians and oligarchs but dangerous and unstable for democracies.

And when we talk about authoritarianism, we have got to mention the growing phenomenon in this country of the Big Lie. The Big Lie.

Say something that is blatantly untrue, repeat it over and over again, and then blast that lie out on social media until people actually believe it.

Let me mention one of the very big lies that Trump said recently regarding the war in Ukraine earlier this week. The President said that Ukraine started the war. Trump said that Ukraine started the war. Really? That is, as I hope every Member of the Senate knows, an absolute lie.

Russia invaded Ukraine twice; first, in 2014 and then again on February 24, 2022. And on that date, February 24, 2022, Putin's tanks and troops rolled into Ukraine. And on that day, Russian aircraft began bombing targets all over Ukraine. Russia started the war. Period. End of discussion. Trump is lying.

Since Putin's invasion, over 1 million people have been killed or injured every single day. Russia continues to rain down hundreds of missiles and drones on Ukrainian cities. Putin's forces have massacred civilians and kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children, bringing them back to Russian reeducation camps. These atrocities led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in 2023 as a war criminal.

Further, Trump called Ukrainian President Zelenskyy--not Putin, but Zelenskyy--a dictator, and that obviously is not true either. Zelenskyy won 75 percent of the vote in free elections, and in the midst of a brutal war, Ukraine's Parliament continues to function and open and unfettered political debate takes place.

Trump recently claimed that our European allies have done little to support Ukraine in its fight against Putin's invasion. He said the United States has contributed three times more than Europe. Well, that is another lie. In fact, Europe has provided more aid to Ukraine than the United States.

But it is not just that Trump is lying again. That is not new. It is what this all reveals about where we want to take our country and where we want the world to be moving--what direction.

Trump is cozying up to Vladimir Putin. So who is Putin, and what kind of world does Putin want to build? Putin is a dictator who crushed Russia's movement toward democracy after the end of the Cold War. Russia now holds sham elections where Putin wins 90 percent of the vote, and authorities there do not even try to hide their ballot stuffing.

There is no freedom of speech or free media in Putin's Russia. Protests are violently suppressed. Tens of thousands of people are imprisoned for protesting Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Political dissidents are harassed or thrown into jail. The bravest people like Alexei Navalny are killed outright. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled Putin's Russia since his invasion of Ukraine.

That is the Russian leader that Donald Trump admires. But my Republican colleagues know all of this. And what is particularly disturbing to me--and I believe the American people--is my colleagues, my Republican colleagues, understand and know that Trump is lying; they know that Russia started the war, not Ukraine; they know that Putin is a dictator, not Zelenskyy, but their silence has been overwhelming on this issue.

I cannot tell you how many times I have sat here on the floor and I have listened to my Republican colleagues come to the Senate to condemn Vladimir Putin and his brutal invasion of Ukraine. Many of their remarks were right on the money. They were perceptive, and they were right.

And my simple question to my Republican colleagues right now is: Where are you now? Last I heard, this is still a democracy. Last I heard, we are still allowed to disagree with the President of the United States, even if he is a member of your own party.

Last I heard, we are allowed to call out the President when he lies-- blatantly lies--even if he is a member of our own party. And what really bothers me is I know that many of my Republican colleagues understand all of this.

I just want to give you an example of what is going on right now. Let me just quote a few of my Republican colleagues in statements they have made since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

These are Republican Members of the U.S. Senate, and I am not going to mention names right now. I don't want to embarrass anyone, put anybody on the spot. These are quotes.

One leading Republican said:

We must remember that the instigator of this war was

Russia. It was President Putin who launched an unprovoked

attack on Ukraine.

That Republican colleague was obviously right.

Another Republican said:

I think Vladimir Putin started the war. I also believe,

through bitter experience, that Vladimir Putin is a gangster.

That is a Republican colleague.

A third Republican colleague:

There is no equivalency between Vladimir Putin and

President Zelenskyy. President Putin is evil, and he has to

be stopped.

Fourth Republican--and this is just a few of the quotes. I could probably come up with dozens of quotes. Fourth Republican said when the war began:

Today's invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a premeditated and

flagrant act of war. Putin has violated the border of a

sovereign country.

That Senator later said:

Anyone who is surprised by Putin's deadly attack on a

sovereign nation has not been paying attention. These are the

actions of a madman.

Just recently that very same Senator said:

Putin is not going to stop with Ukraine. If we abandon

Ukraine and throw in the towel--as some would like us to do--

that is going to drastically change how people view the

United States, and how people rely on the United States, and

there will be major consequences.

A fifth Republican--fifth Republican colleague here in the Senate called Putin a thug and compared him to Hitler. He said:

Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate leader. He is a war

criminal that needs to be dealt with.

That is what my Republican colleagues have said time and time again.

The question is, Now do you have the courage to continue telling the truth when the President of the United States is lying?

This is an extraordinarily pivotal moment in American history, and all of us must have the courage to stand up for truth, to stand up for democracy, to oppose authoritarianism. This is the moment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are living in an extremely dangerous time. Future generations will look back at this moment--what we do right now--and remember whether we had the courage to defend our democracy against the growing threats of oligarchy and authoritarianism. They will remember whether we stood with President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg who, in 1863, looking out over a battlefield where thousands of people had died--thousands of soldiers died in the fight against slavery--and he stated that ``this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that a government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.''

Do we stand with Lincoln's vision of America, or do we sit idly by and allow this country to move into a new vision, and that is a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class?

But it is not just oligarchy that we should be concerned about, not just the reality that today three people own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 170 million--three people, more wealth than the bottom 17 million Americans. It is not just that the gap between the very, very rich and everyone else is growing wider. And it is not just that we have more income and wealth inequality today than we have ever had.

On top of all of that, the reality is that today we are moving rapidly under President Trump toward authoritarianism, more and more power resting in fewer and fewer hands.

Mr. President, as we speak, right now, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, is attempting to dismantle major Agencies of the Federal Government which are designed to protect the needs of working families and the disadvantaged. These Agencies were created by the U.S. Congress, and it is Congress's responsibility to maintain them, to reform them, or to end them. It is not Mr. Musk's responsibility. What Mr. Musk is doing is patently illegal and unconstitutional and must be ended.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, President Trump attempted to suspend all Federal grants and loans, an outrageous and clearly unconstitutional act. As I hope every sixth grader--every kid in the sixth grade--in this country knows, under the Constitution and our form of government, the President can recommend legislation, he can support legislation, he can veto legislation, but he does not have the power to unilaterally terminate funding passed by the Congress. It is Congress--the House and the Senate--that controls the purse strings.

But in this move toward authoritarianism, it is not just the Congress that is being attacked; it is our judiciary.

This weekend, the Vice President of the United States--a graduate of Yale Law School who clerked for a Supreme Court Justice--said:

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

power.

Really? I thought that one of the major functions of the Federal courts was to interpret our Constitution and, when appropriate, serve as a check on the unconstitutional power of the Executive. That is not just what I believe; that is what I suspect every legal scholar and lawyer in America understands to be the case.

Further, Mr. Musk, meanwhile, has proposed that the ``worst 1 percent of appointed judges be fired every year,'' and he demanded the impeachment of judges who have blocked him from accessing sensitive Treasury Department files. No doubt, under Mr. Musk's rule, it will be him and his billionaire friends who determine who the worst judges are.

And no, Mr. Musk, I must tell you: You don't impeach judges who rule against you here in the United States. You may or may not know this, Mr. Musk, but under the U.S. Constitution, we have a separation of powers, brilliantly crafted by the Founding Fathers of this country in the 1770s, and it has worked pretty well throughout our country's history. We have an executive branch, we have a legislative branch, and we have a judiciary.

What we are seeing now is not just an organized attack on the power of the Congress and the responsibility of the judiciary; Mr. Trump and his friends are not just trying to undermine two of the three pillars of our constitutional government--the Congress and the courts; they are also going after the media in a way that we have never seen in the modern history of this country.

Trust me that every Member of Congress will tell you that the people working in the media and media organizations are not perfect. We have all had our experiences with the media. Media, like everything else, makes mistakes every day. But I do hope that every Member of Congress understands that you cannot have a functioning democracy, that you cannot have a free-flow of information, that you cannot have the pursuit of truth without an independent press--a press not intimidated by Presidents of the United States but a press who writes it and sees it the way they understand it to be.

In that regard, I want to mention to my colleagues what President Trump has done just in recent months.

Mr. Trump has sued ABC and received a $15 million settlement. He has sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and received a $25 million settlement. He has sued CBS and its parent company, Paramount, and is right now in negotiations over a settlement. He has sued the Des Moines Register for poll results that he didn't like, and his FCC is now threatening to investigate PBS and

NPR--major news outlets in our country.

In other words, we have a President of the United States who is using his incredible power and the power of his Agencies to go after media in this country that are saying and doing things he does not like. How are we going to have an independent media if journalists are looking over their shoulders, fearful that their reporting will trigger a lawsuit from the most powerful Executive in the world?

In the midst of all of this, I think that now is the time to ask a very, very simple question, something, I think, that is on the minds of millions of Americans: What do Mr. Musk, Mr. Trump, and their fellow billionaires really want? It is not really taking over Greenland or the Panama Canal and all of that stuff. The real question is, What is their endgame? What is their goal? What are they striving for?

In my view, the answer really is not complicated. It is not novel. It is not new. It is, in fact, exactly what ruling classes throughout history have always wanted and have always believed to be their right-- their right--and that is more power for themselves, more control for themselves, and more wealth for themselves, and in their pursuit of more power, more control, and more wealth, they are determined to not allow democracy and the rule of law to get in their way.

For Mr. Musk and his fellow oligarchs, the needs, the concerns, the pain, the ideas, the dreams of ordinary people are simply an impediment to what they, the oligarchs, are entitled to, and that is really what they believe. They are entitled to all of the wealth and the power they have, and they are determined to stop anyone who gets in their way.

This process--this phenomenon--that is going on right now is not the first time that we have seen this in our country's history. As I think many Americans understand, in pre-revolutionary America--before the 1770s, before the creation of the United States and the writing of our Constitution--the ruling class of that time governed through a doctrine called the divine right of Kings--the belief that the King of England was an agent of God, that God appointed him, and that he was not to be questioned by mere mortal human beings. He was appointed by God.

In modern times, we no longer have the divine right of Kings. What we now have is an ideology being pushed by the oligarchs which says that, as a very, very wealthy group of people--often self-made, often the masters of revolutionary new technology--and as high IQ individuals, it is their absolute right to rule. In other words, the oligarchs of today are our modern-day Kings.

It is not just power that they want. Despite the incredible wealth they currently have, they want more and more and more. Their greed has no end. Today, Mr. Musk is worth $402 billion, Mr. Zuckerberg is worth $252 billion, and Mr. Bezos is worth $249 billion. With a combined wealth of $903 billion, these three people own more wealth than the bottom half of American society--170 million Americans--and, not surprisingly, since Trump was elected, their wealth has soared. Musk has become $138 billion richer, Zuckerberg has become $49 billion richer, and Bezos has become $28 billion richer since election day in November.

Meanwhile, while the very rich become much richer, 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured in terms of healthcare, 25 percent of our seniors in this country are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less, 800,000 Americans are homeless, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and real inflation-adjusted wages for the average American worker has not gone up in 50 years.

Does anyone really think that the oligarchs give a damn about ordinary Americans? Trust me, they don't. Musk's decision to dismember USAID means that tens of thousands of the poorest people in this world will either go hungry or die of preventable diseases--tens of thousands of people. But it is not just USAID and what is happening abroad. Here in the United States--mark my words--if we do not stop them, they will soon be going after the healthcare, nutrition, housing, and educational programs that protect the most vulnerable people in our country--all so that they can raise the money they need to provide huge tax breaks for themselves and for other billionaires.

As modern-day Kings who believe they have the absolute right to rule, they will sacrifice without hesitation the well-being of working people in order to protect their power and their privileges.

Further, they will use the enormous media operations they own to deflect attention away from the impact of their policies while they entertain us to death. Mr. Musk owns Twitter. Mr. Zuckerberg owns Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram. Mr. Bezos owns the Washington Post and Twitch.

Further, they and their fellow oligarchs will continue within our corrupt campaign finance system to spend huge amounts of money to buy politicians in both major political parties.

The bottom line: The oligarchs, with their unlimited amounts of money, are waging a war on the working class of our country, and it is a war they are intent on winning.

Now, I am not going to kid anybody. The problems that our country faces right now are enormously serious, and they are not easy to solve. Our economy is rigged--the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class struggles. Our campaign finance system is totally corrupt. Billionaires can now pour as much money as they want into both political parties. And climate change is ravaging our country and the world with unprecedented levels of extreme weather disturbances, among many other crises our country faces.

In the midst of all of these crises, this is what I do know, and this is what I do believe, and that is that the worst fear of the ruling class of our country is that the American people, whether they are Black or White or Latino, whether they are urban or rural, whether they are young or old, gay or straight--whatever--the fear of the ruling class is that the American people will come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the people on top.

Their oligarchs' nightmare is that we will not allow ourselves to be divided up by race, religion, sexual orientation, or country of origin and will come together and have the courage to take them on.

Will this struggle be easy? No, it will not, and one of the reasons that it will not be easy is that the ruling class of this country will constantly remind us that they have the power. They control the government. They own the media.

But our job right now, in these difficult times, is to go back and remember the great struggles and sacrifices that millions of Americans have waged over the centuries in difficult times to create a more democratic, just, and humane society. Think about all of the sacrifices and the struggles that Americans went through to create a more democratic, just, humane society, and think about trying to put yourselves where they were in those times of crisis.

Think about what was being said at those times. Think about the 1770s. Overthrowing the King of England--the most powerful person on Earth--the British Empire, to create a new nation and have self-rule here in the Colonies--impossible. So many people thought it could not be done.

Establishing universal suffrage, the right of all people, whether they were wealthy or not, to vote--imagine that. What a radical idea: extending the right to vote to poor people--impossible. It couldn't be done. But it was done.

Ending slavery and segregation, taking on all of the power of the slaveholders--impossible. But it was done.

Granting workers the right to form unions and ending child labor, taking on the power of big business--impossible. But it was done.

Giving women control over their own bodies, taking on sexism, taking on the powers that be--it couldn't be done--impossible. But it was done.

Passing legislation to establish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a minimum wage, clean air and water standards--impossible. It couldn't be done. But it was done.

In other words, I think back to what Nelson Mandela told us, and he said: Everything is impossible until it is done.

So in these difficult days, when we find ourselves arrayed against the wealthiest people in the world, the most powerful people in the world, people who want to expand the power of the oligarchy, people who want to move us toward authoritarianism--I know. I know that people get discouraged that we can't take them on; that we cannot create a government that works for all and not just the few; that we cannot do what every other major country on Earth does--guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right--that we cannot raise the minimum wage to a living wage so that tens of millions of people do not earn starvation wages; that we cannot make sure that all of our kids get the quality education that they deserve; that we can't expand Social Security or lower the poverty rate among seniors. I know that, in this moment, people say: Well, that is an impossible dream; it can't be done.

But I think, if you look back on American history, you will find that, in very difficult and dark days, when people came together, they did the impossible.

This ain't going to be easy. We are taking on enormously powerful people who really do not believe in democracy or the rule of law. But if we stand together, we are going to win this fight. And not only will we save American democracy; we are going to create the kind of Nation that I think most of us know we should become.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, how am I recorded?

I vote no.

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

Mr. President, today, we find ourselves in a pivotal moment in American history, and millions of Americans, by their actions or lack of action, will determine the future of our country for decades.

In my view, the Trump administration is moving this country very aggressively into an oligarchic form of society where extraordinary power rests in the hands of a small number of unelected multibillionaires. The Trump administration is moving this country very aggressively into an authoritarian society, where the rule of law and our Constitution are being ignored and undermined in order to give more power to the White House and the billionaires who now control our government. The Trump administration is moving this country very rapidly toward a kleptocracy, where the function of government is not to serve the needs of ordinary people but to enrich those who are in power.

Mr. President, I think that today is a very good day to recall what one of our great Presidents said at Gettysburg in November of 1863. Looking out at a battlefield where thousands of Union soldiers had just sacrificed their lives in the defense of freedom and the ending of slavery, Abraham Lincoln famously stated:

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say

here, but it can never forget what they did--

The soldiers did--

here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here

to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus

far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here

dedicated to the great task remaining before us--

The great task remaining before us.

--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion

to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of

devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall

not have died in vain--

And this is how he concluded--

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of

freedom--and that government of the people, by the people,

for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

``Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth''--I fear very much that under President Trump we are not seeing a ``government of the people, by the people, for the people,'' but rather a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class.

And what is really interesting is that none of this is happening behind closed doors. It is not being done in secret. It is right out there for everybody to see.

Several weeks ago, Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term as President. Standing right behind him were the three richest men in America: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Combined, these three men are worth $920 billion. These three men own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 170 million people--three guys, 170 million people. And I should point out--and this should tell you exactly where we are going as a nation--these three men, the wealthiest three in America, have become some $232 billion richer since Trump was elected, a few weeks ago--three guys, $232 billion richer since Trump was elected.

This is how an oligarchic system works. Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world and now a key part of the Trump administration, spent over $277 million to get Trump elected. In other words, within a corrupt campaign finance system, which allows billionaires to spend as much as they want, he helped buy the election for Mr. Trump.

Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, the second and third wealthiest people in our country, both kicked a million dollars each into Trump's inauguration fund. And let us remember that Mr. Bezos who, among other things, owns the Washington Post, rescinded the endorsement of that paper for Kamala Harris just before the election.

Mr. Bezos was showing early on that he was willing to bend the knee for Donald Trump. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to settle a lawsuit with Trump for $25 million.

These three multibillionaires are working with Trump for one very simple reason: They understand that Trump's policies are designed to make the very wealthiest people in this country even richer.

Since Trump's election, Mr. Musk has become $154 billion richer--not bad in a couple of weeks' time. He earned a great investment. He only spent a couple of hundred million on the election, and now he is $154 billion richer.

Mr. Bezos has become $35 billion richer, and Mr. Zuckerberg has become $43 billion richer.

I am concerned not only about the growing movement toward oligarchy in this country, but I am deeply worried that, under the leadership of President Trump, we are moving rapidly toward authoritarianism.

All over this country, people are alarmed and shocked by what they have seen in the last several weeks.

Just a few examples--just a few: Last week, President Trump attempted to suspend all Federal grants and loans, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and Federal law.

As every third grader in America knows--or I hope knows--the power of the purse in the United States belongs to Congress, not the President. Yes, the President can recommend legislation to Congress. The President can veto legislation Congress has passed. But he does not have the power to unilaterally terminate funding and legislation that has been passed by the U.S. Congress. That is a dangerous and blatantly unconstitutional act.

And I should add that Trump's blocking of Federal funding would have had a horrific impact on millions of Americans who utilize programs like Medicaid, Head Start, community health centers, Meals on Wheels, homeless veterans programs, and many, many other initiatives. Tens of millions of Americans, including some of the most vulnerable in our country, were impacted by that decision.

But that is not all.

A few days ago, Trump fired 17 inspectors general, independent government watchdogs that were created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal to prevent the abuse of power by the executive branch.

Last week, President Trump fired a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and in so doing, effectively neutered the only Federal Agency in America with the authority to hold corporations accountable for illegal union busting and to protect the constitutional right of millions of workers who want to join unions in order to earn better wages, working conditions, and benefits. Not only is that move blatantly illegal, it is exactly what Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, have been fighting for months. They don't like unions, and what Mr. Trump has given them is the opportunity to make it much, much harder for workers to organize in their companies.

President Trump also illegally fired members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the only independent Commission in our country that protects workers against discrimination in the workforce.

Further, and what should upset every American--no matter whether you are conservative, moderate, or progressive--is that, in direct violation of the Constitution and Federal law, Trump is intimidating the media, with lawsuits against ABC, CBS, Meta, and the Des Moines Register. His FCC is now threatening to investigate PBS and NPR. What Trump is essentially saying to every media outlet in America: If you say or do anything that is critical of me, that displeases me, you may be subject to a lawsuit or a Federal investigation.

If that is not a direct attack on the First Amendment, on the U.S. Constitution, and on free speech in our country, I don't know what is.

But that is not all.

Elon Musk and his unelected minions at DOGE have forced out officials at the Treasury Department and illegally shut down USAID, a program which, among other things, helps feed and provide medical help to starving and desperate children all over the world.

Presidents, much less unelected billionaires, do not have the unilateral right to shut down Federal Agencies established by Congress.

And when we talk about the very dangerous movement toward authoritarianism that we are seeing in this country now, let us not forget Trump's pardoning of the January 6 insurrectionists who injured 174 police officers right here, right outside this floor. Even worse, not only did he pardon those people, but Trump is undermining the FBI by actually investigating the agents there who helped bring these violent criminals to justice. Imagine that, pardoning the people who broke the law and investigating the people who upheld the law. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

And under Trump we are rapidly moving toward a kleptocracy as well. Just before the President was inaugurated, he and his wife launched their own cryptocurrency coins, giving them the potential to earn many billions of dollars.

If Wall Street CEOs tried to bribe the President with a bag full of money, that would be illegal; that is against the law. But now they don't have to do that. Today, if a multibillionaire or the head of a foreign country wants to curry favor with the President, all they have to do is buy his cryptocurrency coins; and when they do that, they are directly enriching Mr. Trump.

So the question that millions of Americans are asking is, given the move toward oligarchy, given the move toward authoritarianism, given the movement toward kleptocracy, where do we go from here? What should we, as Americans, be doing?

Let me tell you what I think and what most Americans think; and that is, instead of moving toward an economy which is designed to benefit the very richest people in our country, we have got to create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just for Mr. Musk or Mr. Bezos or Mr. Zuckerberg.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we have never had more income and wealth inequality than we have had right now. It is beyond stupidity to provide more tax breaks to the very richest people in our country and then to pay for those tax breaks by cutting back on Medicaid and other programs desperately needed by working families all across this country. That is what we should not be doing.

But let me take a moment to tell you what we should be doing. At a time when 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured in our broken healthcare system, we have got to do what every other major country on Earth does, and that is guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right, not a privilege. That is what we have got to do.

At a time when one out of four Americans cannot afford the outrageously high prices that the pharmaceutical industry charges, we have got to end the absurdity of the American people paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We have got to cut the cost of medicine in this country in half, making it comparable with what the rest of the world is paying.

The Federal minimum wage today is $7.25 an hour. That is a starvation wage. While 60 percent of our people--60 percent of Americans--live paycheck to paycheck, we must raise that minimum wage to a living wage, at least $17 an hour. If you work 40 hours a week in the richest country on Earth, you should not be living in poverty.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos want to make it harder for workers to join unions. Well, we have got to do exactly the opposite: Make it easier for workers to join unions by passing the PRO Act.

At a time when we need the best educated workforce in the world, we need to have the best public schools in the world, and, among other things, that means we need to substantially raise teachers' salaries. We need to attract the best and the brightest young people into education, and we do that, among other things, by making sure that no teacher in America earns less than $60,000 a year. We also radically reform our broken childcare system so the little kids in this country get the quality care they need and the workers there are adequately compensated.

All over this country, from Vermont to L.A., we have a major housing crisis, and it is not just the 800,000 Americans who are homeless; it is millions of working families who are spending 40, 50, or 60 percent of their limited incomes on housing.

Instead of spending almost $1 trillion a year on a wasteful and bloated Pentagon budget, we have to build millions of units of low- income and affordable housing. When we do that, we put large numbers of American workers to work at good-paying, union jobs.

I have heard time and again from Mr. Trump's supporters that the President won the election and he has been given this huge mandate-- just an overwhelming mandate--to do whatever he wants. Well, no President has the right to move us to oligarchy or authoritarianism or kleptocracy. But more important, let's not forget that while Trump did win this election, he actually received 4 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020 when Biden won the election.

So here we are. Where do we go? What do we do? I think now is the time for the American people to come together, to not allow those who want to divide us up by the color of our skin or our sexual orientation or where we were born--that is what they want to do. They want to divide us up. Now is the time for us to come together like never before and make certain we do not move toward oligarchy, make certain we do not move toward authoritarianism or a kleptocracy.

Most important, in the richest country in the history of the world, we must understand that we have the capability of providing a decent life for all of our people. We can do that when we stand together and we don't let folks divide us.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, as we go forward in this new session of Congress, I would hope very much that there will be a serious focus on the crises facing the working families of our country. We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. In fact, we are the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. Yet, today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had. Sixty percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck. The life expectancy of working people is far below that in other wealthy countries. Eighty-five million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. Some 800,000 Americans are homeless. Twenty-five percent of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on Earth. Further, we remain, shamefully, the only wealthy country not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.

Meanwhile, while working families struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills, the wealthiest people in our country have never, ever had it so good. We are now in the absurd situation, the grossly unjust situation, where the 3 wealthiest people on top own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, some 170 million people. The 3 people on top have more wealth than 170 million on the bottom. That is not what America is supposed to be about.

In truth, there are a number of reasons why we are living in a nation today where the wealth of the billionaire class is exploding while the working class of our country struggles to keep their heads above water. There are many causes as to why, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, real weekly wages for the average American worker are less today than they were 50 years ago--real weekly wages are less than they were 50 years ago--and why, during that period, there was a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent.

Now, a lot of the reasons as to why the very rich are becoming richer and working-class families are struggling have to do with disastrous trade policies which have resulted in the loss of millions of good- paying jobs. The failure of Congress to raise the minimum wage to a living wage is another reason why millions and millions of workers today are forced to try to survive on starvation wages. Furthermore, we are seeing and have seen aggressive and often illegal union-busting activities on the part of major employers. All of those reasons, and more, are issues that we have to deal with.

Today, I want to focus on one more reason as to why the working class of this country is struggling, and that has to do with the H-1B guest worker program.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, with a net worth of nearly $430 billion, and other multibillionaires in the high-tech industry claim that the H-1B Federal guest worker program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled engineers and other technology workers in the United States. In other words, what they say is that they are trying desperately to find highly skilled American workers to do their jobs; just can't find them; just not there.

In my view, Musk and the other billionaires who are strongly supporting the H-1B Program are dead wrong. American workers are there; they are just not looking for them.

In my view, the main function of the H-1B Program is not to hire the best and the brightest. That is the theory--we have to bring in the best and the brightest to help our companies function and grow wealth in America. That is the theory, but in truth, the reality of what the H-1B Program is, is to replace good-paying American jobs with hundreds of thousands of lower paid guest workers from abroad who are often treated as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers, the more money the multibillionaire owners of large corporations make. In other words, this program is not only grossly unfair to American workers; in many ways, it is unfair to foreign workers as well.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2022 and 2023, the top 30 companies using the H-1B Program laid off 85,000 American workers while simultaneously bringing in over 34,000 guest workers from abroad.

In 2019 and 2020, 85 percent of H-1B visas were awarded to entry level and junior guest workers, who are paid between 20 to 40 percent less than American workers in similar occupations.

So, No. 1, it is simply not true that the H-1B Program focuses on the very rare and highly skilled workers that American companies cannot find. Eighty-five percent, to repeat, of H-1B visas were awarded to entry level and junior guest workers, and they are paid 20 to 40 percent less than American workers in similar occupations.

Let me just give you a few examples as to how unfair the H-1B Program is. In Dallas, TX, H-1B software developers are making $44,000 less than American workers doing the exact same job. This is information from the U.S. Department of Labor.

In Houston, TX, H-1B accountants--I did not know, to be honest with you, that we had a scarcity in accountants, but be that as it may, H-1B accountants are paid nearly $40,000 less than American accountants doing the exact same work.

In Santa Barbara, CA, H-1B workers who are hired as computer system engineers make just $45,000 a year. Does that sound like the kind of salary that would bring forth some extremely, highly skilled people for jobs that American workers cannot fill? Madam President, you tell me. Why would a corporation hire an American computer systems engineer at a salary of $110,000 a year when it is $65,000 cheaper to hire an H-1B worker for that same exact position?

That is basically what this whole debate is about, and that is that large corporations are paying foreign workers substantially lower salaries than they are paying American workers. Madam President, if you want to know why multibillionaire owners of high-tech companies love the H-1B Program so much, that is the reason why. They are using this program to substantially undercut the wages of American workers.

Moreover, there are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new information technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers. According to the Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions. In other words, we tell kids ``Go out and get involved in STEM work. Become a scientist. Become an engineer. Become a mathematician,'' whatever, and then we bring in people from abroad to fill the jobs they were educated to do.

Adding insult to injury, half of the top 30 H-1B employers are companies whose major function in life is to outsource jobs, known in the industry as body shops. In other words, the same companies that are involved with supplying American companies with cheap foreign labor at home are the same exact companies that provide even cheaper labor to corporations when they move abroad. They are two sides of the same coin.

Madam President, if there is truly a major shortage of skilled tech workers in this country, as Elon Musk and others have argued, why did Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers last year, including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, TX, while, at the same time, applying to hire thousands of H-1B guest workers? If these jobs are only going to the ``best and the brightest,'' why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000 a year, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?

I will admit, I am not a rocket scientist. But, to my mind, those occupations don't sound like highly specialized jobs that are primarily for the top 0.1 percent, as Mr. Musk claimed last month.

If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as fashion models, lawyers, dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers? One might think that, in the United States of America, we could find English teachers and not need to bring in people from abroad. Further, does anyone really believe that in America we do not have enough lawyers and need to bring in more attorneys from abroad?

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies. We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one small but very important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms to the H-1B Program in order to benefit American workers.

That is why I have filed an amendment to the Laken Riley bill that we are debating this week that will do just that. I hope very much that the leaders agree on allowing that amendment to be debated and voted upon. Let me very briefly describe what this amendment does in terms of reforming the H-1B Program.

First, this amendment would double the major H-1B fee that corporations pay before they can hire guest workers from abroad. This provision would generate over $370 million in revenue each year. And what would we use that revenue for? Well, it would be used to provide nearly 20,000 scholarships each and every year for American students pursuing advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, math, and other fields vital to the competitiveness of our Nation.

If the Members of this body truly believe we need H-1B visas in order to compensate for a shortage of skilled American professionals, this amendment will attract tens of thousands of America's best and brightest young people into those fields.

Second, this amendment requires corporations to substantially increase wages for the jobs they need before they would be allowed to hire H-1B guest workers. Specifically, this amendment would raise the prevailing wage for the H-1B Program to at least the median local wage. In other words, if the H-1B Program is truly meant for ``the best and the brightest,'' it should not be used as a tool to undercut the wages of highly skilled American workers. And that is what this amendment would prevent.

Third, this amendment would prohibit corporations from replacing laid-off American workers with H-1B guest workers from overseas. Corporations that are engaged in mass layoffs should not be allowed to replace American workers with guest workers.

Finally, this amendment would prevent corporations from treating H-1B guest workers, for all intents and purposes, as indentured servants.

Under current law, H-1B guest workers are often locked into lower paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair, or illegal working conditions. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change. This amendment would make H-1B visas portable and give guest workers the ability to easily change jobs.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy and others have argued that we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce. I agree. But the answer is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad through the H-1B Program. The answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future.

The bottom line: It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker at home. And that is what this amendment is all about.

Let's be clear. Thirty years ago, the leaders of corporate America, the political establishment in both major parties, and the editorial boards of the most influential papers in our country told us not to worry about the loss of millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of unfettered free-trade agreements like NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China: Don't worry about the loss of those jobs.

And the reason they told us not to worry is that that job loss would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States.

Yes, they said, you lose blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but not to worry. We will create zillions of good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs.

I, personally, was a Member of Congress at that time and never believed that. And I helped lead the effort against NAFTA and PNTR with China. Unfortunately, I and the many others who opposed those trade agreements were proven correct. NAFTA and PNTR cost us millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs as large corporations shut down here in America and fled to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries in search of cheap labor.

And what about all of those great high-tech jobs that supposedly were going to be created? Well, that didn't quite happen either.

As a result of the H-1B guest worker program and other guest worker programs, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of lower paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are currently available.

In other words, heads, billionaires wins; tails, American workers lose.

In my view, we can and must change that reality. A good place to start

would be to pass this amendment and put American workers first. Multibillionaires and Big Tech should not be allowed to hire guest workers to fill entry-level and mid-level information technology jobs. Those jobs should be going to American workers who have, among other things, the constitutional right to form unions and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Madam President, I will be asking for a rollcall vote on this amendment, and I hope very much we can get it to the floor. In my view, the time has come for the American people to know which side their Senators stand on this issue.

In order to accomplish that goal, I very much appreciated the statement Majority Leader Thune gave on the floor of the Senate last November about the need for more amendment votes in the Senate. Here is what the majority leader said on November 14 with respect to the amendment process:

[A]ll Members of the Senate--and not just the Members of a

particular committee--should have a voice in final

legislation through amendments on the floor. Members should

assume that amendment votes will be the norm. That will mean

taking tough votes at times, but that is part of our jobs.

I would very much agree with Majority Leader Thune. The truth is that, in the past, whether it has been Republican leaders or Democratic leaders, no one debates that the amendment process has been thwarted. I hope we will see a new opening here where people will be allowed to offer amendments and take up votes. That is what we were elected to do.

I yield the floor.