Floor Statements

Madam President, 2 weeks ago, Republicans passed one of the most unpopular bills in the history of the country--one of the most unpopular bills in the history of the country. Now that it is law, we don't have to imagine anymore what might happen; we know for sure what is going to happen to tens of millions of people all across the country.

I want to focus on five things that are going to happen--five things that are going to happen because we no longer have to talk about a House version or a Senate version or what the President says he wants or if someone says ``If I don't get this, I am going to vote no''; now we have a law. We have public law, Federal law.

The first thing that is going to happen is 17 million Americans, including 9 million people on Medicaid, will lose healthcare coverage in about 18 months' time. To keep their coverage, people will have to complete hours and hours of paperwork just to prove they are working. That is in spite of the fact that the number of nondisabled adults on Medicaid who don't work is very low--about 8 percent.

How do these work requirements actually function? Well, in Arkansas, which is one of the two States that tried this and then pulled it back because it was a failure, the reporting portal was only open during the day and closed between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Let's say you work long hours as a truckdriver. If you are trying to log on at night to fill out your forms, you are out of luck. Let's say something unfortunate happens to you. Let's say you get in a car accident or have a bad case of the flu. Maybe you are not hospitalized, but you are incapacitated, at least temporarily. If you missed the reporting window, you might lose the coverage.

What is preposterous about these Medicaid work requirements is that in order to establish that you are either working or seeking work, you have to fill out a form. If you get sick and are bedridden and can't fill out the form, they say: Don't worry, there is an exception for a situation like that.

Guess how you apply for the exception. By filling out another form.

There are only a couple million people on Medicaid who even fit the description of someone who is nondisabled and on Medicaid. Yet the actual official projections, which is to say the way they save the money, is they are projecting that many, many millions of people are going to get kicked off of Medicaid even though they are eligible.

I know I am a Democrat, and I wanted this bill to fail, and I want to tell you why this is a failure of a bill, but that is literally in their projections. Without those projections, they don't have enough revenue for the biggest tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the history of the planet.

No. 2, hundreds of rural hospitals and nursing homes will close without enough funding to continue operating. More people are going to get sick because of this law, but we are going to have fewer hospitals and doctors to take care of them. Why? Because Medicaid is a big revenue stream for really all hospitals but especially rural hospitals. It can be up to about half of the payer mix.

What is a payer mix? It just means you might get paid by private insurance 30 percent, you might get paid by Medicaid 45 percent, you might have a little VA, and you might have a little private pay; it adds up to 100 percent. As you look at your revenue picture, 40, 50-- sometimes even more--percent of that money comes from Medicaid. If there is a huge $1 trillion nationwide reduction in Medicaid money, that money is reduced money for rural hospitals, and rural hospitals will definitely close--not all of them but many of them.

So even if you are not on Medicaid, if you live in a place where there is a rural hospital and that is the flagship hospital for a small town, that might not be available to you. You might have to drive 2 or 3 hours for care, even emergency care.

No. 3, starting next year, tens of millions of people are going to pay hundreds of dollars a month more for health insurance.

This is what, I think, we should linger on because now that the fight over ObamaCare is sort of in the rearview mirror, people just think they get onto the ACA portal; they sign up for their healthcare; and they pay what they pay, right? Like, Oh, I am on a family plan. I want ``this'' level of deductible. Then it spits out how much you are going to pay every month. What tens of millions of people don't actually know is that those rates on the exchange are subsidized, and without those subsidies, we are going to go back to the bad old days of pre- ObamaCare, when people would pay absurd amounts of money for their healthcare insurance even if they are employed, even if they do have insurance.

What is, I think, underrated, both politically and on policy, is all of those rates get set in the next couple of months because, in order to start paying and in order to start enrolling, you have got to notify people: Hey, your thing that was $289 a month now is $789 a month. So sometime in the fall--it depends on the State, in October, November, and some people in December--people are going to get a letter, saying: If you want to stay on the same healthcare plan, here is your new price. And those new prices are going to be astronomical.

Now, we do have a disagreement between the parties. I think there are a lot of people who just don't like the public subsidy of healthcare insurance premiums. I am sure the Presiding Officer has her reservations about that kind of thing. It is about the size and the scope of government, but there is a factual aspect to this which is, whatever one's governing philosophy is and whatever one thought about the Affordable Care Act, the plain fact of the matter is, people are going to get letters from their insurance carriers with astronomical increases that they will not be able to pay.

No. 4, 5 million people are either going to lose some or all of their nutritional assistance starting next year.

You know, this trope is almost as old as I am--like some lazy person on food stamps just collecting food stamps, loving that life, going to the store, buying fancy stuff. It is $6 a day. The average nutritional assistance amount per person per day is 6 bucks. I don't know if you know this, but we have subsidized food in the U.S. Senate, not because the government is paying for it but because all of the restaurants that operate here don't have to pay lease rent so it is a little bit cheaper than you would normally get. I can't get anything for 6 bucks downstairs in the Dirksen cafeteria, not that would feed me.

Six dollars a day is the average amount, and what the Republicans decided to do to generate savings, to find savings, is to cut nutritional assistance. Why? Because they needed to pay for the biggest tax cut in American history for the wealthiest people and corporations that has ever existed. It would be one thing if people were getting 75 bucks a day for food. It would be one thing if they were getting 25 bucks a day for food, but they are getting 6 bucks, and 5 million people will now have an enormously difficult time trying to figure out just how to survive the day--and I mean that quite literally, survive the day--to find the calories within their $6 or $8 or $12 budget.

Finally, people are going to pay hundreds of dollars more per year in electricity because this bill throttles the cheapest and most abundant form of energy in wind and solar. And this is where you have got to stay with me for a moment.

I am very passionate about climate action. I think it is a planetary emergency. I think it is a moral obligation that we take care of our planet so it can sustain us for generations to come. But even if you don't care about that, the only energy that is ready to come online right now is solar energy--some wind energy but mostly solar energy. Why? Because nuclear, frankly, takes at least 10 years to permit and site, and, of course, anytime anyone wants to do any nuclear power generation, everybody in whatever neighborhood or State or county that is in tries to stop it. You don't just have regulatory risk; you have project risk, so 10 years is an optimistic scenario. I am a big believer in nuclear energy, but 10 years is the most realistic scenario to get a bunch of nuclear energy online. Likewise, geothermal is, maybe, 5 to 8 years in the most optimistic scenario. Again, I love geothermal energy. I think it is an untapped resource across the United States of America.

We have about a 6-year gap before any of those other technologies are ready. So a lot of fossil advocates go: Well, why don't we do more gas? There is a backlog of combined-cycle gas turbines, and that can't just be fixed by saying: ``I will take more.'' Everybody wants more. There is a backlog. You cannot get gas generation online in the next 5 years. So what does that mean? It means, over the next 5 years, solar is the stuff that is instantly pluggable into the grid, supercheap, not terribly controversial except for in this Chamber, and ready to power the AI revolution and whatever other load needs we have.

But this bill kind of punitively, kind of ideologically decides: No, we are not for ``all of the above''; you know that thing we said about whatever is cheap and plentiful and available every time we were trying to prevent clean energy from coming on the grid? Do you remember that thing we used to say? Now, really, what we meant is, we quite hate solar energy, particularly. We hate solar energy. Again, I think that is preposterous from a planetary standpoint, but even if there were no planetary crisis, this is the energy that is available to us, and we are about to face energy shortages.

The reason, for instance, Texas, of all places, has not had blackouts and brownouts is because solar can absorb wind; the Sun is high. It is 108 degrees, and everybody is pumping their air-conditioners. That also happens to be the point in time and the point of the day when all of the solar farms are running at full capacity, and they can power the grid.

So solar energy isn't something from 17 years ago when you said, you know, sometimes the Sun is shining and sometimes it is not and it is intermittent and the batteries aren't there. All of that is in the rearview mirror. All of the technical issues--not all of them. Ninety percent of the technical issues related to solar energy have been resolved.

That is the scariest thing for the fossil energy people. Do you know why? Because they can't argue that this isn't economically smarter; they just have to argue that it is woke or something, like woke electrons. Who cares where the electrons come from? If they are cheap and plentiful, we should all be for them.

So this bill is going to create shortages which will drive up the prices and, in some places, reduce power quality. What does ``power quality'' mean? It means we are going to have blackouts and brownouts across the country.

To do any of these things in the bill would be bad, but to do all of it--all of

it--in order to pay for the biggest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in history is morally and economically bankrupt. Nobody asked for any of this. Trump voters were not demanding any of this. Nobody was asking to lose their healthcare or not be able to feed their kids or to pay more to keep the lights on at home, but they raced to do it anyway, knowing full well how devastating it would be for the country and for their own home States.

One final point: We are not going to stop talking about this. We are going to talk about this until it is repealed. We are going to talk about this when the rates go up for your electricity. We are going to talk about this when kids are thrown off their nutritional assistance. We are going to talk about this when rural hospitals close. We are going to talk about this when your insurance coverage rates go up.

We are not going to stop talking about this because this document which was enacted into law is a perfect encapsulation of the difference between the political parties. My party is flawed--obviously, my party is flawed--but I have never seen my party propose a bill that transferred so much money from the poor to the rich, and I have never seen my party propose a bill that raises the price of electricity, that raises the price of food, and that raises the price of healthcare. So we are going to talk about this today, tomorrow, and for the next 18 months until this thing is repealed from the Federal lawbooks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Queen Liliuokalani Keiki Hula Competition. Since its founding in 1976 by the Kalihi-Palama Culture and Arts Society, this annual event has brought together thousands of young dancers from across Hawaii and the world to celebrate the legacy of Queen Liliuokalani through hula (dance) and oli (chant).

This year, more than 600 children ages 6 to 12 will showcase their talent, discipline, and connection to Hawaiian culture as participants in this competition. Through traditional hula kahiko and contemporary hula auana, these young dancers embody the stories, values, and spirit of Hawaii. They grow up immersed in the Native Hawaiian traditions and cultural practices that help create a sense of community and identity. The related cultural demonstrations and exhibitions from local artisans and the Hawaii State Archives help share some of that knowledge and history with both the participants and attendees.

This milestone marks not only five decades of excellence in Hawaiian dance and chant but also an enduring commitment to revitalization of the Hawaiian culture. I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Queen Liliuokalani Keiki Hula Competition and in recognizing its contribution to the preservation and celebration of Hawaiian culture.

The Presiding Officer is a distinguished businessman. He understands capital flows. He understands investment. There are a lot of people in this Chamber and across the country who, on a nonidealogical basis, want a consistent tax code so that businesses can invest with certainty and predictability.

So let's look at some of the numbers here in terms of the impact of this bill. This bill will kill 300,000 jobs in wind and solar per year. We are going to lose out on $450 billion in capital as thousands of projects go under. And because of that, we are going to generate about 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade.

Now, there was a time--and I lived through it as a politician--there was a time when people who wanted to take climate action had to argue for that climate action because it is a planetary emergency, and there were tradeoffs. And people on the other side said: Look, as we try to take action to deal with this planetary crisis, we can't create shortages. We can't increase prices. We can't impede economic progress.

All of that has flipped. This bill will create shortages. This bill will impede economic progress. This bill will increase prices.

The 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade is pretty much exactly the amount of energy that we are going to need to meet rising demand. We are going to have energy shortages as a result of this legislation.

And you don't have to love clean energy or be an environmentalist-- and I love clean energy, and I am an environmentalist. But you don't have to care about the climate. I think you should. You don't have to care about the climate to understand that this is a basic question of supply and demand. Energy demand is soaring for the first time in decades largely--not exclusively but largely--because of AI data centers. And our best chance of meeting it in the next few years is through wind and solar, not oil and gas. Even nuclear and geothermal are going to take a while.

That is not just a political talking point or preference of mine. It is just a fact that gas turbines are stuck in a yearslong backlog. It is also a fact that 80 percent of the new capacity on the grid last year came from solar and storage. It is growing; it is cheap; and it works. And there are hundreds more projects that are in the pipeline waiting to be hooked up.

So the idea that we are going to kill the only energy--the only energy--that can be brought online in the short run the very same week that half the country was melting in a record heat wave which left tens of thousands of people without power is beyond absurd.

Let's talk about how this bill does all of this damage. Specifically, it creates an impossible deadline for projects to be operational in order to claim the clean energy tax credits.

Remember, these clean energy tax credits are Federal law. They are on the books. So when you have a Federal statute, it is not unreasonable as an investor to say: Look, I have got this tax credit. I am going to get x percent back from my initial investment. And you do the pro forma; you do the underwriting; and you figure out that the thing pencils out.

And now what they are saying is that you have got to be operational in 60 days. If anyone has even built a deck in their front yard or tried to do an extension, nothing gets built in 60 days, certainly not a clean energy project.

And it has to be placed in service. What does ``placed in service'' mean? It means not only do you have to have the thing built, you have to have a power purchase agreement through your public service commission or public utilities commission. You have to have a deal in place in the next 60 days after enactment or you get nothing.

So imagine you are a company investing in a solar or battery storage project. You have already put money down. You have secured land and a power purchase agreement, and you are working on permits. And when you started the project, the Tax Code said you could claim a credit to claim the upfront costs. Now, unless you are fully operational, you are out to luck.

On average, a project takes 4 years to go through the full process. So even if you have already started that progress, you now have very, very little time to get it done.

We are going to strand hundreds of billions of dollars in capital. And so the impact on price is going to be crazy. The impact on jobs is going to be crazy. But the impact on America as an investable proposition is the most dangerous part of this.

I don't know that we have ever, through Federal law, made a big subsidy, made a big bet on a certain industry, and then halfway through that process said: Never mind. We didn't mean that. You are stuck.

According to the Edison Electric Institute--and, by the way, I can guarantee you, this is the first and maybe last time I will ever, ever quote the Edison Electric Institute--that will cost people, not companies but people, ratepayers, $60 billion in this decade alone. Your electric bills are about to go up.

A representative of a solar company in Hawaii put it this way:

It is really unclear in the current version of the bill

what the renewable energy industry even looks like if it were

passed today.

An owner of a solar company in Montana worried that the credits disappearing would force him to lay off half of his workers.

He says:

Montana is deeply red, but it's also a very practical

place. And so green energy renewables became a taboo phrase

somehow.

The practical energy needs are undeniable, and so if we can

get past our disagreements about the phraseology and realize

that it's electrons, watts . . . amps. And it's all cheaper.

A representative of a wind turbine company in Colorado said:

I don't look at what we do as green or blue or red. An

electron doesn't have a color.

That is the point. Electrons don't have a color. Wanting cheap, abundant energy is not woke. Wanting a liveable planet today and for future generations is not radical. And wanting reliable power and to avoid blackouts and brownouts is not a leftist project.

But even if you set all of that aside for a minute, the States that have benefited the most from these investments are Republican States. According to estimates, nearly three-quarters of clean energy manufacturing facilities are located in Republican States.

It means that Republicans are going to pay more for energy. It means Republicans will lose jobs in clean energy because of a Republican bill. It means Republicans are going to have more blackouts in their homes and businesses.

Gutting clean energy is not somehow owning the libs.

And at least some Republicans in the Senate and House understand that, even if their votes have not manifested to say otherwise.

Here is a letter from 21 House Republicans earlier this year.

As our conference has long believed, an all-of-the-above

energy approach, combined with a robust advanced

manufacturing sector, will help support the United States'

position as a global energy leader.

Countless American companies are utilizing sector-wide

energy tax credits--many of which have enjoyed broad support

in Congress--to make major investments in domestic energy

production and infrastructure for traditional and renewable

sources alike.

And it goes on:

As energy demand continues to skyrocket, any modifications that inhibit our ability to deploy new energy production risk sparking an energy crisis--

``[R]isks sparking an energy crisis.'' Twenty-one House Republicans are worried about an energy crisis imposed by the Republican Congress.

It goes on:

This is especially true for energy credits with direct

passthrough benefit to ratepayers, where such repeals would

increase utility bills the very next day.

``[W]ould increase utility bills the very next day.''

This is not me, progressive Senator from the State of Hawaii who has made a career out of fighting climate change. This is 21 House Republicans saying: We are going to create a crisis here. Maybe we shouldn't pass this thing. A lot of this stuff benefits us.

If we are all out here talking about ``all of the above,'' why are we cutting off our nose to spite our face? Just because someone wants a talking point? Like, people are literally going to lose their jobs immediately upon enactment. America is going to become a very challenging place to make major investments in immediately upon enactment.

The AI industry may move abroad immediately upon enactment. And prices will go up pretty much right away, as well.

A group of 175 mayors and local leaders wrote:

For the first time, State and local governments, as well as

essential nonprofit community organizations--such as houses

of worship, hospitals, and schools--can access the same clean

energy tax credits as the private sector through elective

pay. This has led to major projects in our communities, like

solar installations for town halls, alternative fueling

infrastructure, and charging stations for local government

fleets.

After one year of direct pay implementation, over 1,200

organizations, including 500 State and local governments, are

already accessing these incentives. We are excited about

these projects and the benefits that they will bring to our

communities. However, as local leaders, we are concerned that

repealing these tax credits would create economic uncertainty

in our communities, as it would prevent us from accessing

those important benefits.

You know, I grew up to understand Republicans. Look, I didn't grow up as a Republican, but I did understand Republicans were for avoiding unintended consequences. Republicans were against radical change too quickly. Republicans wanted a solid business environment that people could rely upon.

This is literally none of that. This is ideology manifesting itself as energy policy.

And what is going to happen is people are going to lose their jobs and pay tons more for electricity.

The Building Trades Unions called this bill ``the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country.'' And they go on:

Simply put, it is the equivalent of terminating more than

1,000 Keystone XL Pipeline projects.

I have been here for a while. Keystone XL was a big deal to our friends in labor. I had some very tough conversations with my friends in labor about how important that project was to them and how it was in tension with some of our climate goals. But listen to what they say:

It is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000

Keystone XL Pipeline projects.

These guys are not me or Jeff Merkley or Eddie Markey or Sheldon Whitehouse or Martin Heinrich or Representative Ocasio-Cortez or any climate advocate. This is the Building Trades Unions. They are saying this is the biggest job killer, perhaps, in American history.

We actually don't have to do this. The impetus behind this bill was essentially border spending and preventing the Trump tax cuts from expiring. And then a bunch of stuff got added on because that is what happens.

We were there for our own version of this--our own BBB, our own Build Back Better--and everybody in your party piles on with something new. Then, the thing becomes a really challenging thing to pass because everybody has their hobbyhorse. And somebody's hobbyhorse is not just to have an all-of-the-above energy strategy, but to go out of your way to kill clean energy.

It doesn't matter that it is going to raise prices. It doesn't matter that it is going to kill jobs. People at all levels in the public and private sectors, across the political spectrum, are all saying the same thing, which is: This is a bad bill for regular people, for the economy, and for the planet.

One of the great things about our climate bill was that it made what was good for the planet also good for the economy. Clean energy became imminently profitable for businesses and widely accessible to consumers. And we made a choice there because some in our party didn't like the basic premise. They were attached to the idea of personal, political, and economic sacrifice because the planet is in peril.

And I understand that instinct. I understand that instinct.

But we paved a new path, and we decided--look--there is enough technology out there. There are abundant energy sources out there that we can actually solve our planetary crisis and create jobs and lower prices. And we can do it in such a way that blue States and red States, urban, rural, suburban all benefit.

Republicans are on the verge of undoing all of that, even though it will hurt their constituents. In doing so, they will virtually guarantee China's dominance in clean energy, for decades to come, because if you are China, you

cannot believe your luck. Your biggest competitor is willingly forfeiting the fight over who controls the energy technologies of the future because Donald Trump is too busy trying to get us back to the preindustrial age.

This is the worst piece of legislation for the planet in the history of our country, and it is not even close. Republicans are effectively codifying Big Oil's wish list into law without exception. They are killing clean energy. They are subsidizing coal. They are dramatically expanding oil and gas leasing. They are purposefully jacking up energy prices and creating shortages--and creating shortages. And for what? Partially, it is to find enough savings to funnel tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars into the pockets of individual billionaires.

But even kicking more than 16 million people off of healthcare coverage, denying food to the poor, and adding almost $5 trillion to the national debt was not enough. People voted for Donald Trump for all sorts of reasons. But no one voted for higher energy bills. No one voted for more frequent blackouts and brownouts and dirtier air or water. No one, whether you are a Democrat or Republican or Independent, wants that.

I want to be clear. This fight is far from over. This fight over this bill is far from over. But even if this bill passes, it will set us back. But the fight for the planet is bigger than any one bill or vote, and that includes the big climate bill that we passed in the previous administration. And as any movement that has successfully mobilized and made changes knows, progress is not linear. Progress always has setbacks and frustrations, and progress is not assured.

States like Hawaii will continue to do everything that they can to protect our environment, and the rest of the world will move on without us because doing nothing in the face of this worsening crisis is simply not an option.

Make no mistake, what Congress is doing today will cost all of us in the years and decades to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, more than 16 million people are going to lose their healthcare, and tens of millions of Americans are going to pay more for healthcare every month. Hundreds of rural hospitals are going to be forced to close, and we are going to plunge the

country into trillions of dollars of new debt.

Now, what is this all for? Is it to improve our schools and roads? Is it to make housing and childcare more affordable? Is it because we are in the middle of a crisis that just has to be paid for or we are going to pay down the national debt? No. It is none of those things. It is because they want to cut taxes for the richest people to ever exist. And if that means you can't see your doctor or you have to pay hundreds of dollars more every month to pay for your healthcare, tough luck.

Now, here is the thing: Republicans actually know what they are walking into because people in their own States are telling them what is about to happen.

``We can't sustain serving our community the way we are with these cuts,'' one hospital leader in Kansas said.

A health executive in Texas wrote:

Cutting billions of dollars from [Medicaid] would have

widespread and devastating consequences for Texans. Beyond

the obvious impacts to people enrolled in the program, the

collateral damage of program cuts will be felt across the

board. Hospitals will do everything they can to weather the

storm, but some may not survive. Others will have to increase

their reliance on state or local support or reduce services.

Access to care will decrease, especially for high-cost

service lines like maternal [health] care and behavioral

health. Jobs will be lost. The impact on communities--which

rely on their hospitals for employment and growth--will be

profound.

A Utah father who credited Medicaid with saving his own son's life said:

Without Medicaid, these life-saving treatments would have

been financially impossible. There is absolutely no way we

would have covered the cost on our own. . . . And in this

way, our story is not unique. So many families insured by

Medicaid could have to make difficult, life-altering

decisions if Congress slashes funding.

A former Republican elected official in Georgia warned:

Cuts to Medicaid are not only fiscally irresponsible, but

they could threaten the livelihoods of our fellow Georgians

and the economic opportunities that consistently make our

great state a top state for business.

So the stakes are clear: It is people's health. It is people's hard- earned money. It is people's lives. And whether you are in a red or a blue State, you will absolutely feel the weight of this terrible piece of legislation.

More than a quarter of nursing homes may close. Hundreds of rural hospitals will shutter. And for what? To pay down the debt because we are a nation at war, because we want to invest in infrastructure or schools or healthcare? No. The reason they are making these cuts to food assistance, the reason they are making these cuts to rural hospitals, the reason they are making these cuts so that people are going to have to pay several hundred dollars more per month for their own healthcare is to create enough revenue for the biggest tax cut, the biggest wealth transfer from working people to wealthy people in the history of the United States of America.

Even if you are not on Medicaid yourself, you likely know someone who is--a friend, a neighbor, a relative, a coworker. And, more than that, kicking tons of people in your community off of healthcare will drive up costs for everybody else and make high-quality care hard to find. You are going to pay more for less care--all for the biggest tax cut in American history for the people who need it the least.

I have no problem with the people who need it the least. But the truth is, they need it the least. If you are financially successful and you make $4 million a year, God bless. That is the American dream. It does not mean you need a tax cut, and it does not mean you need a tax cut paid for by reducing services, especially in rural communities.

The good news is this: We actually don't have to do this. There is no rush to do this. There is no clamoring among constituents in red or blue States to do this. This is an add-on.

What they want to do is extend the original tax cuts. I opposed those tax cuts, but I can understand that Republicans, as an article of faith, want to extend the tax cuts that their President enacted two terms ago--fair enough--good, solid, old-fashioned policy disagreements.

But then they just larded it up with stuff--giveaways to special interests, and cuts and cuts and cuts to things that people care about--left, right, and center.

We don't actually have to do it this way. You are going to pay more for less care, all so that billionaires have a little more money sitting in their accounts.

It is going to require four Republicans saying: Enough is enough.

I have heard a number of my Republican colleagues talk about how essential Medicaid is to their rural communities.

And it is not just the people who are on Medicaid. Obviously, those are the people you have to be primarily concerned with. But a lot of us go home and visit both urban and rural hospitals, and they all say the same thing, which is that, if you blow out 30 percent of your revenue, you can't function as an institution.

So it is not just a question of whether you personally are on Medicaid or you personally care about Medicaid. It is about: Does your rural hospital even survive after this bill is enacted?

Nobody wants this, and there is still time to kill this bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have given a lot of speeches on this floor, and this is the least prepared but the most clear I ever will be: This is the stuff of dictatorships. It is actually happening.

A U.S. Senator was manhandled, shoved to the ground, and cuffed. He identified himself:

I am Senator Alex Padilla.

That should be enough. That should be enough. A U.S. Senator who is, by the way, protected by the speech and debate clause of the Constitution of the United States and a specific statute that allows him to oversee immigration facilities, and he says: I am a Senator, and I have a question.

To Chris Murphy's point, they said, well, he was being disrespectful. Being disrespectful is legal. Being disrespectful is American. Being disruptive is OK if it is just using your words and not your body. This is the stuff of dictatorships. And the thing that is making me most terrified is I see zero Republicans, except for the Presiding Officer, in this Chamber. And I understand, if it is not a member of your own party, you want some context.

There is no context that justifies this action.

Alex Padilla is not required to be impeccable in every single way in order

to exercise his responsibilities as an American and as one of the two that represents California in the U.S. Senate. This is the stuff of dictatorships.

One of the officers who throws him to the ground as he is clearly complying, cuffs him face down on the carpet, and they say: There is no recording in here.

It is a damn press conference. It is for recording. They didn't want to hear his speaking.

And if the internet has got it accurately, the Secretary was there and delivering her remarks within earshot the whole time. She has command authority over those agents who are arresting a leader in the legislative branch.

This is not something on the internet for us to argue about. We all know what we saw. We all know what we saw. I remain hopeful that Leader Thune and other Republicans can walk us back from the brink, but I am not so sure anymore.

So as Trump's Department of Homeland Security raises the stakes and continues with a series of provocations to justify increasingly authoritarian actions, we have two obligations. One is to establish that as a legislative branch, we are not going to stand for this. And the other is those people who are peacefully protesting: Be very disciplined this weekend. Be very peaceful this weekend.

If we are going to win, we need to maintain the high ground. And I don't mean we blue; we Democrats. I mean we Americans who believe in this system of government. I have never, ever--other than January 6-- been so outraged at the conduct of an administration.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, if you heard the leader of a foreign country was sending armed soldiers into his own cities, you would correctly call it authoritarian behavior. If you heard them say that the bar for unleashing troops on their own civilians is ``What I think it is,'' you would put them in a long line of dictators throughout history and the world. The fact that this is happening right here in the United States against fellow citizens at the direction of the President does not make it less dangerous.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, no one asked for this. No one asked for the biggest wealth transfer in American history from the poorest people in the country to the richest people to ever exist. No one asked for the biggest ever cuts to Medicaid, to kick 14 million people off of health insurance, and raise out-of-pocket costs for 20 million people. No one asked for food assistance to be slashed for millions of children and low-income families. No one asked for higher prices at the pump or on their electricity bills. No one asked for students across the country to lose Federal financial aid.

No one asked for any of this--and I really mean that. That is not just a rhetorical flourish. I don't think Trump voters asked for this. I know Harris voters did not ask for this. I don't think anybody really wants this.

I think the reason that all of these crazy, harmful policies are about to be enacted is for one simple reason, and that is to generate enough revenue to satisfy the insatiable desire for tax cuts for people who make more than $4 million a year. They are literally taking money out of food assistance and Medicaid and Affordable Care Act monthly subsidies.

By the way, you don't know if you get a subsidy or not. You just go on the exchange, and you pay the thing. The thing is, that thing is probably $400 or $500 or $600 a month less than it used to be because of the subsidies.

It is one thing to say 14 million people are going to get kicked off of Medicaid--and they will. It is another thing to say, because of those Medicaid cuts, a bunch of clinics and hospitals in rural communities are going to shut down--and they will.

I think what is a little underrated is many, many more millions of people are going to pay not $50 more a year, not $100 more per month, but many hundreds of dollars more per month. Why? Because when you yank that money out of the system, it is what is called a pay-for. It means it generates a ton of revenue.

How does it generate that revenue? By screwing regular people.

They are racing to pass a bill that does all of these things and that raises the debt by many trillions of dollars.

I think the problem some of us have--and I really appreciate the Presiding Officer. And when we agree, we work really well together, and when we disagree, we are at least able to stay civil. So I am trying to take the edge off of this. But one of the reasons that it sounds like I am frothing at the mouth and saying a bunch of partisan talking points is that it is kind of hard to believe that any political party would actually do this on purpose.

It is quite hard to believe that you would cut food assistance and cut healthcare and cut help for regular working people in order to shovel money to people making more than $4 million a year. But that is exactly what they are doing.

It is as if they designed this bill in a lab to make the maximum number of people angry. It is unpopular. It is unnecessary. And they are doing it anyway.

Hospitals serving rural and low-income communities will be forced to shutter because they won't be adequately compensated for their services--by the way, again, not a talking point. Go and visit any rural clinic or hospital. Ask them what percentage of their payer mix comes from Medicaid and what would happen if they lost a big chunk of that. A lot of them say--the big ones--big is relative. But in the State of Hawaii, our big institutions say: We could stay afloat. We just have to deliver a lot less care. And then everybody would end up in the ER, right?

The Queen's Medical Center, the sort of No. 1 trauma center in the middle of Honolulu, is already bursting at the seams. You have multiple people in the hallways. All of the rooms, all of the beds are taken. It was just a couple of months ago that they finally figured out a way not to release the psychiatric emergencies right onto Punchbowl Street in their hospital gowns.

That is before they do this to the hospitals.

After the ACA passed, you would go on the exchange, select a plan, and pay a fraction of what you used to pay. I think one of the things is that ObamaCare is now so old that people forgot how horrible it was before then--really horrible. So now you just go on, and you are kind of irritated because it is still money, and still feels like too much, and it feels like your HMO or provider nitpicks you and doesn't cover a bunch of care, and copays are too high. But it is way, way, way better than it used to be.

So this whole enterprise is for one single purpose, and that is to generate enough money to cut taxes for billionaire corporations and people who make $4 million or more in revenue. It is very, very few people benefiting and tens of millions of people being screwed.

There is little in this bill that will help regular people who are already struggling to meet their monthly obligations. But there are plenty of rewards for the ultrawealthy. Millionaires stand to gain roughly $70,000 in tax cuts, while billionaires in the top 1 percent receive close to $300,000 in benefits.

And how did they find that money to shovel to the millionaires and billionaires?

I don't mind a millionaire or a billionaire. I know, like, two billionaires. We are not close, but I have met them. I am sure I know many millionaires. There are a number of colleagues in the Senate who are in that category. So it is not like--I am not trying to demonize anybody.

I am saying: Do they need $300,000? I know people who need $300. I know people who actually won't be able to stay on any healthcare at all if these subsidies go away.

This is not the closing of loopholes. This is not fiscal discipline. I want to make this point as clearly as I can. We would be in a harder position to argue against this bill if it were actually deficit-neutral because, traditionally, the accusation against Democrats is they want to bust the budget, and Republicans want to be responsible.

But this one is weird because this is under the guise of ``We have got to do austerity; we have got to do tough stuff; we have got to cut.'' Then they come up with a bill that actually increases the deficit over baseline, even when they do their kind of nonsensical accounting where they basically have stopped counting the tax cuts that are in place because, you know, that is the baseline.

And so the whole enterprise--and everybody needs to understand this. They are making everything more expensive. That is food. That is medicine. That is groceries. That is gasoline. That is electricity. And the reason they are making it more expensive is because they are either indifferent to the suffering or, more importantly, they just need the money.

And they don't need the money to--you know, we raised taxes in the past, as a country, to fight a war, to beat Nazism; or we raised taxes in the past to shrink the deficit; or we raised taxes and raised costs for people to invest in something important. That is not what we are doing here. We are blowing up the budget, and we are harming regular people in order to provide tax cuts for people who literally didn't ask for it.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, there is a sort of general rule in politics, which is that if you start your meeting at 1 a.m., you are probably not proud of what you are doing. Now, there are some instances in which you start the meeting at 7 p.m. and it goes long and then you have to vote at whatever hour you finish. But to convene at 1 a.m. is an intentional thing. It is to say: I would very much like if nobody saw what we were up to. And that is exactly what happened at 1 a.m. today, Wednesday morning.

Republicans in the House know that the bill that they are considering is super unpopular, but they have been ordered to pass it anyway. That is what is happening on the other side of the Capitol right now. House Republicans have convened the Rules Committee at 1 a.m. to advance their tax bill, and it is because they know this bill stinks.

For starters, it is the largest wealth transfer in American history. Think about that. There have been a lot of wealth transfers in American history, but this is the biggest one in terms of the Tax Code. It is not like they were redistributing wealth among the wealthy. They are literally taking from the poor--people who don't have enough money--and shoveling it straight into the pockets of people who already have more than enough.

This bill is about making the richest people ever to walk the Earth even richer. How do they plan to do that? By kicking 14 million Americans off of health insurance and denying food assistance to millions more. People will be turned away at hospitals and go to bed hungry, all so that billionaires have a bit more.

You do not need fancy polling to tell you that this is super unpopular. And so Republicans have decided to fix that problem by convening the hearing in the middle of the night, hoping that people will not notice.

The plain facts of the bill are so egregious. And as I started to write these remarks, I had a problem, which is, How do you describe this thing accurately and not sound like you are frothing at the mouth like a partisan and sort of overstating the case? Because this really is kicking 14 million people off of Medicaid, kicking millions more off of food assistance, and then that is the savings that is generated in order to fund these tax cuts for billionaire corporations and the wealthiest people in the United States.

And what happens if something is both true and sounds like a partisan accusation? But that is where we are at. This is actually what they are trying to do.

Here is the thing, even the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history are still not enough to cover the cost of these enormous giveaways. So the Republicans have turned to one of their favorite punching bags: solving the climate crisis.

Never mind that hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in clean energy across the country, mostly in Republican States and districts; never mind that those investments are creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs; never mind that even if you don't care about any of that, there is a basic principle in running a smart economy and running an investable economy--and that is that when the private sector makes an investment on the basis of the Tax Code and they are in the middle of that investment, you can't pull the rug out from under them.

The reason is very simple. Besides fairness and besides the fact that we are undermining progress towards actually addressing an existential crisis for the planet, it also makes the United States very hard to invest in because if you were a business and you are looking at the Federal Tax Code and you are saying: I am going to make a 5-, maybe 10- year investment--capital investment--in chips, manufacturing, climate, agriculture, hospitality, real estate, transportation, infrastructure, whatever it may be--you are doing it on the basis of what the Federal Tax Code says.

And then your investment committee, board of directors, whomever it may be, will say: How do we know these things are going to stay on the books?

The normal answer is: Come on, the Federal Government is not going to pull out a tax incentive structure in the middle of your investment and construction cycle.

And the truth is, yes, they are.

So this doesn't have just climate implications or economic implications in terms of the specific projects. It actually has to do with how stable of an investment climate we establish in the United States of America. We are no longer doing ``all of the above.'' The argument that we used to have between the political parties was Democrats would say we have to transition to clean energy; Republicans would say, no, let's do clean energy, but let's also do these other things.

But now the Republican position is picking winners and losers and, basically, riding the losers into the ground.

Here is the very tough truth: Coal is on the way out, whether you like it or not. But Trump and Republicans would rather revive it for a few more years just to squeeze a couple more years of profitability out of it because, after all, their capital investments are fully amortized. So a couple more years of profitability means no more investment, but a couple more years of revenue.

So that is what they are doing. This is going to raise costs for Americans. Let's be clear. This is going to raise costs for Americans.

There was a time--and I was part of these debates in the State of Hawaii--there was a time when there was a tradeoff between how much consumers had to pay and our climate objectives. But those trends have changed. Now wind is the cheapest form of energy. Nuclear is among the cheapest forms of energy. Solar is among the cheapest forms of energy. For me, in the State of Hawaii, to bring in low sulfur fuel oil on a fuel tanker and then light it on fire for electron is the dumbest thing to do, even if you don't care about climate.

It is simply cheaper. It is simply cheaper for consumers and businesses and for the climate crisis and, therefore, our ability to fiscally manage the climate crisis as we see increasing disasters, both in their severity and how often they happen. And then every--what?-- year, year and a half we do $150 million emergency supplemental because there are now wildfires where there have never been wildfires, floods where there have never been floods, tornadoes where there have never been

tornadoes? This is not made up. Nobody gets to deny this anymore.

So there is a reason they convened at 1 a.m., and it is not because that is prime time in Hawaii. They didn't convene at 1 a.m. because they like to see each other past midnight. They convened at 1 a.m. because they are about to pass one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation that has ever been passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives.

I just wonder why--if I am a House Member and I am being told ``We are going to make all these changes. All these things that you are voting for are going to be excised from the Senate version. Don't worry,'' well, my view would be ``If you are going to fix all that stuff, why are you making me vote on it now? Why are you making me vote on it now?''

The answer is very simple: Donald Trump showed up in the caucus and used a couple of expletives. They implied that voting no is a betrayal, that standing up for your constituents is a betrayal, and I think they are all going to fall in line.

So it is up to the U.S. Senate to fix this bill or kill this bill. That is the task in front of us.

I am hoping that cooler heads prevail. I know there are a number of Republicans who hate these Medicaid cuts. I know there are a number of Republicans who have a ton of clean energy investment in their States.

There is plenty of political room to criticize the Biden administration or say ``I am against the Green New Deal'' and still be for wind and solar and nuclear and geothermal and agriculture that is done in a more climate-friendly way. All of that is available to us. We don't have to do things in the maximally unpopular way, but the Speaker apparently wants to do it that way.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 2:15 vote start now.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would like to explain what I am doing here.

I have a hold on nominees coming out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because it has been almost 4 months since Donald Trump and Marco Rubio illegally and unilaterally shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development under the guise of a so-called review, which should be done by now. This is in violation of the appropriations law, the Foreign Assistance Act, and probably the Impoundment Control Act.

Here is the thing: As a direct result--and it is not so common that you can say ``as a direct result''--of something that was done by the Secretary of State and the Administrator of USAID, people are dying. Children are dying. Mothers are passing HIV-AIDS to their children. Disaster survivors are being stranded with nowhere to turn. All of this suffering is because of what the United States is doing, in contravention of their own laws.

So I will not expedite confirmation of State Department nominees until and unless this administration starts complying with the law and being accountable to Congress.

I want to make two other points here. I will stipulate that it would be a very nice time to send our Ambassador to the Holy See. It would be an auspicious time to do so. But let's understand how hard it would be to do this in the normal course of business.

You file cloture. It is a cloture petition. The majority leader is in charge of it. You put it at the desk. You wait a day. You take a procedural vote. Two hours later, you take the final passage vote. You have your Ambassador. Why do I know this? Because we are doing this on nine other nominees this week.

So it was the choice of the Senate majority to prioritize the Chief of Protocol; the Legal Adviser for the Department of State; the Secretary of the Air Force; the Deputy Secretary of Energy; the Deputy Secretary of the Interior; the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources; the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; the Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget; and the Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

If this is a very important and time-sensitive confirmation, all we need to do is have the majority leader file a cloture petition, we wait 1 day, and then we vote. It is perfectly available to us, if that is an urgent matter, to just do this in the normal course of business.

As I was talking to the Senator from Missouri, with whom I have a pretty solid working relationship, I was explaining that when I was in the majority and we were trying to get confirmations through, I spent a fair amount of time talking to people who had holds. I would always go to their offices, sometimes catch them on the floor, sometimes go to the cloakroom, and say: Hey, what would it take to release this hold?

To this moment, not a single Member has walked up to me and said: What would it take to release the hold? Not the majority leader, not the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, not the Senator from Missouri, not anybody.

The normal way that the minority flexes its authority is to slow things down, even if it is slightly. And this is all this is--like a day, plus 2 hours. So if this is important, we can get it done this week. If it is important for me to release those holds, then somebody should come and talk to me. I remain ready and willing to talk to Leader Thune or any Republican colleague as we continue consideration of these nominees going forward.

Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I am just a little bit taken aback by the personal--the tone here. But I do enjoy working with the Senator on the Commerce Committee, so I am not going to respond in kind, except to say something very simple, which is: It is Tuesday. If we file a cloture petition--which is not my authority--tonight, there will be one intervening day, and then we vote on Thursday.

So if this is important to the majority leader, all he has to do is file a cloture petition.