Floor Statements

Madam President, I want to start by commending my colleague, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Welch, for his strong argument as to why we should all vote no on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I come to the floor tonight to voice my strong opposition to this nomination.

You know, Mr. Kennedy says that he will always follow the evidence no matter where it leads. Well, if you look at his record, he hasn't done that. But let's apply that guidance and see where it leads when it comes to his own nomination.

First, is he qualified to do the job? That should be the basic threshold question for any nominee to a position such as this. And the short answer is no, but let's now look at the evidence and understand why.

We know that the Department of Health and Human Services manages some of our most critical health programs, like Medicaid, like Medicare.

It does health research that delivers treatments and cures at the National Institutes of Health and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

At the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, it determines whether or not the drugs we consume are safe and whether they are efficacious-- whether they will actually do what the manufacturers say they will do.

At the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, they disseminate information about pandemics and health risks, and they monitor the risk of outbreaks of disease around the world, especially those diseases that can travel across boundaries and hit the United States.

It helps treat our Nation's substance use crisis at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, known as SAMHSA.

It ensures patient safety in our healthcare systems at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

It runs lifesaving programs like the community health centers, Healthy Start, and the HIV/AIDS care at the Health Resources and Services Administration.

It does all that and more.

HHS also provides quality control for reproductive health services. It ensures that contraceptives are covered under the Affordable Care Act, and it makes sure that Americans can have access to over-the- counter options. HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, also includes early childhood development programs like Head Start and childcare, programs to help the elderly age in their communities and individuals with disabilities live independently.

But when you look at that wide range of important subjects that HHS covers, Mr. Kennedy has no experience, no qualifications, in the vast majority of that work. Now, I don't think any of us expect that one Secretary of HHS can know everything. But if you monitored the hearings and listened to Mr. Kennedy's answers, you can see that Mr. Kennedy knows virtually nothing about all those important subjects. In fact, he was stunningly unprepared to discuss even the most basic programs at his confirmation hearing.

Most of us, even those of us who are not on Medicare, have some understanding of the program from our parents or grandparents. We have a sense of the basic components of Medicare. Medicare, of course, provides healthcare coverage to 68 million Americans--seniors and people with disabilities. But when Senator Hassan of New Hampshire questioned Mr. Kennedy about those basics, he pretty much got everything wrong. He could not explain the simple components of Medicare, like what covers hospital care and what covers doctor visits?

These are not gotcha questions. These are not tough questions. These are questions that anybody who wants to be Secretary of HHS should understand, because Medicare is one of the biggest and most consequential programs within the jurisdiction of that Department. Knowing the basics, just the basics, should be easy.

So he didn't understand the basics of Medicare. How about Medicaid? Medicaid is another very important health program in our country. It covers nearly 80 million of our fellow Americans, including 37 million children. In my State of Maryland, Medicaid covers 20 percent of our residents--children and families, nursing home residents, pregnant women, and people with disabilities.

At his confirmation hearing, RFK, Jr., complained about Medicaid's ``high premiums and high deductibles,'' even though, as we know, the majority of enrollees in Medicaid don't have any premiums. Medicaid doesn't have high premiums, but what it does have is very high approval ratings.

Mr. Kennedy also erroneously said the Federal Government covers the full cost, when we know that it has been a shared responsibility between the Federal Government and the States. In fact, that has been the matter and subject of lots of debates in the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court. He didn't know that.

So what we see in RFK, Jr., is a demonstration over and over and over

again, even when our Republican colleagues on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions tried to coach him along, he still simply did not get it, did not get the basics.

Now, perhaps, some of our Republican colleagues--some of them--don't care so much about his lack of understanding of Medicaid. I have seen a lot of reports in the last couple weeks that House Republicans are planning to make deep cuts to Medicaid as part of a plan to cut taxes for the very, very rich and ask other Americans to pay for them, including Americans on Medicaid. So maybe for some, the fact that Mr. Kennedy is ignorant about Medicaid just doesn't get in the way.

You know, we are debating a budget reconciliation bill here in the U.S. Senate. I serve on the Budget Committee, and today in the Budget Committee, I offered a very simple proposal. I said that as part of this budget reconciliation process, the Senate should not consider--in fact, I made it a point of order--subject to point of order if we did consider--should not consider cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, simple amendment. Let's lay down some guardrails before we debate this reconciliation bill. Unfortunately, not a single one of my Republican colleagues voted for that bill to make sure that we protect Medicare and Medicaid as we go through this reconciliation process. All of my Democratic colleagues voted for it.

Now, it is bad enough that Mr. Kennedy is not qualified for this position--and clearly he is not qualified--but it is worse than that. I mean, there are lots of unqualified people that we might just pick out randomly and say: Let's nominate that person to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and we could just have an unqualified person there.

But with Mr. Kennedy, it is worse than that. He is not only unqualified, putting him in that position will put the public health of Americans at risk. And so that takes this to a whole different and more dangerous level.

And we have heard a lot about this vaccine question, but it really does go to the heart of why he poses a threat to the public health.

Now, he says he will believe us on vaccines ``if you show me the science.''

Well, he should look at the science, and he should talk to the scientists in this country, because in the past 50 years alone, vaccines have saved 154 million lives around the world, including the lives of 100 million infants. Vaccines eradicated polio and eradicated smallpox. They have prevented outbreaks of measles, where they are used, across the majority--great majority--of the population. They have kept recent generations from getting chicken pox, and, yes, they helped lift the world out of the lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic.

So for generations--for generations--America and our Federal health Agencies have helped fuel this progress. More than 60 years ago, an American said:

I hope that the renewed drive . . . to provide vaccinations

for all Americans, and particularly those who are young, will

have the wholehearted support of every parent in America.

Colleagues, that person was President John F. Kennedy.

Unfortunately, his nephew, RFK, Jr., has spent decades unraveling that hard-won legacy by spreading lies and conspiracy theories about vaccines. It wasn't that long ago that he spread vaccine conspiracy theories in Samoa, where his misinformation contributed to a measles outbreak that got 83 people killed, mostly infants and children.

We cannot let that happen to children here or others around the world. But, unfortunately, we are already seeing the cost of that misinformation and those conspiracy theories right here in America. Because that misinformation, the kind of misinformation spread by RFK, Jr., has contributed to lower vaccination rates. And, right now, there is a measles outbreak in West Texas that is threatening our children. And it is not the first one we have seen in recent months, and it will not be the last if these conspiracy theories continue to spread.

And we know that it doesn't take much misinformation to make us all vulnerable. Because if vaccination rates drop below 95 percent, in the cases of some diseases, those diseases can spread very rapidly through the population. In fact, for a disease like measles that infects just about everyone exposed, it is disastrous when those vaccination rates fall below 95 percent.

And yet these lies spread by RFK, Jr., are now burrowing themselves into the American consciousness like brain worms. And it will be bad enough if he doesn't become Secretary of HHS, given the damage he has already done, but if he becomes Secretary of HHS, he will have a bully pulpit on which those conspiracy theories can spread even further and even farther and put even more Americans at risk.

Now, once he was confronted with some of these statements that he had made previously, RFK, Jr., started to flip, and he started to flop. In fact, at his confirmation hearings, he insisted that he never meant much of what he said. In fact, he denied having made some statements altogether. He denied making statements that are on tape for everyone to hear them.

As we have heard already, in 2013, he compared the CDC's childhood vaccine program to Nazi death camps, saying:

To me this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these

kids.

In 2019, he compared the CDC vaccine program to the pedophile scandal in the Catholic church.

In 2023, he said that COVID-19 ``is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are [most] immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.'' He denied saying that at the hearing.

And this and that and flip and flop, he tried to backtrack the confirmation day conversion, nomination day conversion.

He also, nevertheless, could not prevent himself, could not help himself from citing a discredited study on vaccines and autism and repeatedly refused to tell the truth that peer-reviewed studies have shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism.

So he is not qualified. Worse than that, he poses a danger to the public health, given his conspiracy theories about vaccines.

But let's do what he says he does and let's continue to follow the evidence, because this Nation conducts the best biomedical research in the world. A lot of it comes out of the National Institutes of Health, and I am proud that they have their home in the State of Maryland. Just last year, the NIH research helped develop an accurate blood test for Alzheimer's, a brain-computer interface to help a man with ALS communicate, and a drug to reduce reactions to peanut allergies, all those things last year at NIH.

NIH clinical trials give people hope with novel and hard-to-treat illnesses, including childhood cancer. And yet what we are witnessing in the first 22 days of this Trump administration is an attack on much of that medical research. Right now, at the National Institutes of Health, the Trump administration is wreaking havoc. They have frozen internal meetings. They have pulled down information from data sets from HHS websites. They have denied resources to the public and clinicians.

Thankfully, a Federal court had to step in and stop their refusal to provide the public with important health information, NIH and CDC.

The administration also, early on, took this illegal action in violation of the Impoundment Control Act to stop a lot of Federal grants that had already been appropriated. That also put in jeopardy a lot of NIH research. Again, fortunately a Federal court has intervened and issued a temporary restraining order.

But just in the last 3 or 4 days, we had NIH decide to change entirely the formula for reimbursing institutions that study diseases around the country, and the overwhelming evidence and testimony from the experts said that, by changing those formulas, they will do great damage to important health research in this country.

Again, a Federal judge had to intervene to stop this. We shouldn't have to rely on the courts in order to get the job done for the American people. We certainly aren't going to be able to rely on RFK, Jr., were he to be confirmed.

He poses a threat to that important research that is going on at NIH. In fact, just this past November, he said:

We need to act fast . . . 600 people are going to walk into

offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave.

That is RFK, Jr., back in November. And if he doesn't fire you, he still doesn't want to let you do your job. He is on record saying that his plan for NIH is ``giving infectious disease a break for about eight years.''

Madam President, infectious diseases have no plans to give us a break, and we should not be giving them a break. I can say right now that we are seeing avian flu outbreaks across the United States. I am hearing a lot about it, of course, from my farmers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and it is contributing to a huge spike in the price of eggs around the country. Yet, as this headline indicates, the ``Trump administration's communication freeze restricted access to critical bird flu information.'' That is just one story about the effort to shut down information important to our health. And it is our health because if avian flu mutates, it is not just the higher egg prices we have seen; it could start jumping from person to person, and we could see another pandemic. We should never give infectious diseases a break. They will never give us one.

Finally, I want to look at one last dimension of all of this because Mr. Kennedy says to follow the evidence, and the evidence shows that he is unqualified. The evidence shows that he would be actually worse than unqualified; he would pose a risk to the public health of our country.

So it does beg the question of whether he believes all these lies and all this disinformation. Sometimes it is hard to tell because he seems to believe whatever gets him a lot of money and a lot of attention.

Here is the evidence for that. His cousin Caroline Kennedy told the Senate that he ``vaccinates his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.'' So what is good for his family he discourages other families from doing.

During his time at the misnamed Children's Health Defense, which is an anti-vaccine lobbying organization, he made millions of dollars from anti-vax lawsuits. At his hearings, when he was asked to forgo any profits he might gain from those lawsuits even as Secretary of Health and Human Services, at first he said he wouldn't, and then he said, OK, he won't take that profit for himself; he will assign it to his son. He seems to flip and flop with the winds.

When he was working to be a Democrat, he said he was ardently pro- choice. Now he says he believes whatever Donald Trump believes.

He wrote entire books about climate change, but now, with Donald Trump in the White House, he is willing to ``agree to disagree.''

What the evidence shows is that he will not stand up for our public health. We have seen this pattern, of course, with other nominees who get nominated for the positions not because of their qualifications but because of the fact that they bow down to everything that Donald Trump says. We have seen that in nominee after nominee.

While, of course, the President wants people in his Cabinet who are going to follow his guidance, we would also hope that these are people who are qualified and people who don't pose a danger to the country and people who are not just doing this to make money for themselves. And when it comes to that test, again, let's do what Mr. Kennedy says: Let's follow the evidence.

Strike 1, he is not qualified. Strike 2, he is actually a danger to the public health. No. 3, he says things, according to his own cousin, that we are not sure he believes because he doesn't apply the same standard to his own family. He says things to enrich himself even when it puts others at risk.

So I would say strike 1, strike 2, strike 3, he is out, applying his own test of following the evidence. Mr. Kennedy is simply not fit to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. President, as we gather here on the Senate floor, over at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Elon Musk--the richest person in the world, not elected by a single American--has gained access to the U.S. payment system--payments that go to about $2 trillion worth a year.

He has gained access to the personal information of millions and millions of Americans--Social Security numbers, bank accounts, and all sorts of sensitive information that we do not want to be shared. It compromises people's privacy. That kind of scenario is playing out across the Federal Government. Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE boys are in many other Departments, and every day that we wake up, we hear about another one.

One Department that we know they are in is the Department of State and, specifically, USAID. What we are witnessing here is the result of the most corrupt bargain in American history because Elon Musk spent over $280 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has handed the keys of the U.S. Government over to Elon Musk. Damage is being done every day, and it is hurting the American people and the interests of the American people.

I want to focus for now on the situation at the Agency for International Development, which has been a critical piece of our overall national security and foreign policy strategy. AID has enjoyed bipartisan support in this body for its work for decades, and I want to thank the great patriots--the men and women who work for AID--for the important work they are doing for our country as we speak.

But when President Trump turned the keys to the government over to Elon Musk, Elon Musk began dismantling the Agency for International Development.

Here is what he said in recent tweets about his plan to destroy

Mr. President, you know, we are just 17 days into the Trump-Vance and, yes, Elon Musk administration, and we are already witnessing the great betrayal of what candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail.

For the last 17 days, the Trump-Musk administration has been engaged in a reckless abuse of power that is already harming people in communities throughout our country, and one of the principle architects of this chaos is the man who is nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought.

But before I get into that nomination, let's just start with day one, day one of the Trump administration; because on day one, President Trump pardoned individuals convicted in a court of law of beating up police officers here on Capitol Hill on January 6.

They bludgeoned them, they beat them, assaulted them. As the National Fraternal Order of Police said, that pardon sent a terrible message to law enforcement all over the country. It sent the message that political violence is OK as long as it is done in the name of Donald Trump.

And since then, we have seen the Trump administration carry out retribution against FBI agents and Department of Justice officials who were part of the investigations and prosecutions of the people who beat up police officers on January 6. So if you are part of the effort to hold people accountable for assaulting police officers, they went after you. It sends a terrible message.

And then, of course, President Trump unleashed Elon Musk on the American people. I have said it before and I will say it again: We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history.

(Mr. BUDD assumed the Chair.)

Elon Musk spent over $280 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has handed the keys to the U.S. Government over to Elon Musk. They seized access to the Treasury's payment system. This is a $6 trillion payment system. Elon Musk's DOGE boys have gotten access to Social Security numbers of the American people, bank account numbers, and other very sensitive personal information.

Judges are trying to rein him in, but who knows what information they have already accessed and what kind of damage has already been done, not to mention what could still be done in the days ahead.

And Elon Musk has gotten into the Department of Education, the State Department, AID, Health and Human Services, NOAA, and the National Institutes of Health, just to name a few. No matter what name he gives it, Elon Musk's takeover of these Federal Agencies has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it was about government efficiency, Trump would not have illegally fired the inspectors general whose job it is to provide oversight at these Agencies and blow the whistle on corruption.

In fact, when you fire the inspectors general who are the watchdogs at these Agencies, whose job it is to look out for waste or fraud or abuse, when you fire them as one of your first acts, what you are doing is clearing the way for the kind of illegal actions we are seeing from Elon Musk and his team.

So what they are really doing here is seizing control of the government, taking over a lot of these Agencies, in the long run, to empower further the very powerful and the very wealthiest in this country. And we will be seeing more of that in the months ahead when we begin to see the Trump tax plan, the trickle-down tax plan that is being worked on, as we speak.

Because we know that although Candidate Trump campaigned on the idea that he was going to be on the lookout for working people, that he was going to shine a light on the forgotten Americans, everything he has done since then is a betrayal of that promise.

Just down the hall here, during the inauguration, the folks who were sitting behind President Trump as he gave his remarks were certainly not the forgotten Americans. They included Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, and all the billionaire tech titans.

So when President Trump in that inaugural address promised a new golden age for America, he was looking at the cameras, but he was talking to those tech titans sitting right behind him. And to provide that golden age for the billionaires and powerful in America, they are following a manual and an instruction book called Project 2025.

Now, people might remember that during the last Presidential campaign, Candidate Trump was asked repeatedly about Project 2025. People said: Is this your plan that is being put forward?

And his response was:

I have nothing to do with it.

You know why he said that on the campaign trail? Because he knew it was unpopular. If you look at the contents of Project 2025, the American people would recoil at what is in there, and Candidate Trump knew that. And so when he was asked, he said: I see nothing; I have nothing to do with that.

So, surprise, surprise, surprise, when one of the key architects--key authors--of Project 2025 Russell Vought is nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House.

So before I speak to why it will be so dangerous to put Russell Vought in that critical position, I want to say a few words about what OMB is all about because it is not a well-known Agency. People hear about the Department of Justice; they hear about other important Federal Agencies, Department of Health and Human Services. But what is

For all the patriotic Federal employees serving our country, I vote no.

Mr. President, I think that Americans following what is happening over the last 48 hours recognize that we are seeing a great deal of chaos and turmoil around the country, and it is having a harmful impact across communities, across my State of Maryland, across the country.

On Monday night, the Trump administration issued an order to all Federal Agencies to freeze the disbursement of Federal funds until there was a review period, with the threat that much of those funds would be withheld. And what that did was trigger a lot of understandable panic across the country.

In my office, we heard from firefighters in many different parts of our State. These are firefighters who receive grants to help purchase equipment that they need to run into burning buildings to help save people in emergency circumstances and to hire more staff.

We have heard from people who work in Head Start programs to try to make sure that kids get an early help and lift up in life. We heard from folks in law enforcement, including people who were involved in preventing human trafficking and sex trafficking of minors. We heard from small businesses worried about their grants. We heard from people in all different walks of life and different communities who were very worried that the important Federal initiatives that they rely on to help provide support for people in their communities were being turned off.

And I want to make something crystal clear: This was avoidable. This did not happen by accident.

I did see comments by the President's deputy policy director, Steve Miller, saying: This was a very clear directive, and there has been a lot of fake news about it.

I would just urge people to take a look at that directive. It is extremely broad, and it is very ambiguous. And it was very foreseeable that Federal Agencies would essentially put an immediate halt to funds going to everybody from firefighters to those who are fighting sex trafficking.

So how did this happen? It happened because this is an administration--this Trump administration--that believes that it has the power to cherry-pick the law, to decide what parts of the laws that have been duly enacted by this Congress they like and want to implement and which ones they want to reject.

That is an unconstitutional power grab--pure and simple--because under article I, the Congress has the power of the purse, and when we pass a law, including an appropriations bill, to provide funding for important national and local priorities, and that is signed into law, that becomes the law of the land.

And Presidents can't treat that like it is an ``a la carte'' menu. They can't say: Well, I am going to implement this priority because I like that one, and I am going to reject this provision of the law because I don't like it. That is not how it works.

The Framers created checks and balances in our system to prevent Presidents from acting like Kings and ignoring laws that they don't like and only implementing the ones that they do.

This all came to a head many, many decades ago, when President Nixon exercised what was called the line item veto.

So Congress passes legislation, the product of back and forth and negotiation and compromise, signed by the President of the United States. That makes it law. That is the law of the land.

So what President Nixon said was: Well, I am going to sign this, but there are certain provisions here that I don't like. I don't want to be spending any money on Head Start, for example, or I don't want to spend money on law enforcement and police, for example. And so I am going to veto those provisions, but I am going to accept the rest of the law, even though Congress passed all of it in totality.

And the Supreme Court said: You can't do that. Presidents are not Kings. They don't have the power to selectively implement parts of the law they like and reject the others.

And then Congress passed what is known as the Impoundment Control Act. This is legislation that says Presidents cannot impound. In other words, they can't withdraw or put aside funds that have been duly enacted by Congress, just because they don't like the purposes for which Congress passed those provisions.

But this President and this administration believe that the Impoundment Control Act doesn't apply to them. And we don't have to guess at this question. All we have to do is look at the testimony of somebody called Russ Vought.

So who is Russ Vought? Russ Vought is President Trump's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget.

What is the Office of Management and Budget? It is an office within the White House that directs the budget control over all the other Federal Agencies. They are like the central command center for all of the other Agencies, whether it is Health and Human Services or EPA. Whatever Federal Agency it is, they all feed their budget requests up to the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. And Russ Vought was nominated to head that position.

In fact, tomorrow, in the Senate Budget Committee, we will have a vote on Russ Vought. We had his hearing a little while ago. At that hearing, I asked him point-blank, as did Senator Murray, whether he and the Trump administration would comply with the Impoundment Control Act. You have to look at the videotape. He refused to confirm that he would apply the law. He wouldn't say yes. In fact, what he said was that President Trump has issues with the Impoundment Control Act; he doesn't think it is constitutional. So he refused to commit to applying the law here. He said that they may want to change that.

The obvious answer is: OK, President Trump, if you want to change the Impoundment Control Act, let's seek an amendment to it. It will go through the congressional process, and you can try to amend the law. But for now, the law is as it is written, and you can't ignore it. Yet Russ Vought said: We refuse to commit to comply to this thing.

We have actually seen this movie before in the first Trump administration because Russ Vought was in charge of OMB for part of that first Trump term. People may recall that we had quite a discussion when President Trump, in his first term, wanted to withhold military assistance from Ukraine, even though Congress--the House and the Senate--had passed that into law and it had been signed into law. But President Trump just decided he didn't want to implement that policy, so they withheld funds.

I wrote to the GAO--that is Congress's watchdog--and I asked them a very simple question. I asked them whether this withholding of military assistance to Ukraine constituted an illegal withholding. In other words, could President Trump hold onto and not disburse those funds that had been enacted by Congress to help the people of Ukraine? GAO looked into it, and they sent me back a letter, crystal clear, that the Trump administration had violated the Impoundment Control Act and Russ Vought, as the head of OMB at the time, violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Now we are here today. Russ Vought is up again, nominated to be in charge of OMB. At the hearing the other day, as I said, he refused to commit to complying with the Impoundment Control Act. That is what we are seeing here in this freeze on the funds and the claim that they can look at these and decide: Congress may have passed this, it may have been signed into law, but we are not going to disburse them because we disagree with the purposes.

You can't do that.

Now, the President is going to submit the President's budget to Congress, and we will have an opportunity to look at his proposals, and we will act on it. But the President can't take a law that has already been put into effect and decide: I am only going to help the people I want and not the other people that I don't want to help.

The real concern just--what--10 days into this administration is this is part and parcel of a much larger effort and strategy. I can tell you for certain this is not about making the Federal Government more efficient. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to sit down and seriously find ways to make the Federal Government more efficient, I am all in.

But that is not what this DOGE committee headed by Elon Musk is all about, at least none of the early indications suggest that is what it is about. And the reason we know that is because one of the main initiatives being taken on by this new administration is something called Schedule F.

Schedule F, that is sort of an innocuous-sounding thing. What could that mean? Schedule F is a concerted effort to throw out the merit- based civil service structure that we have in this country, the merit- based system where people are hired based on their qualifications and their experience and their knowledge, and replace it with a political cronyism-based system.

I want to pause here for a moment just to make sure everybody understands the way things work now. Obviously, when you have a new President elected, the President can bring in lots of new people. We are debating right now advice and consent on some Cabinet officials. The President also can

hire the top echelon of people in Agencies across the Federal Government. In fact, there are about 4,000 political appointees today, people that the President puts into these positions. That is fine.

But what Schedule F would do and what President Trump and his nominee to be head of OMB want to do is to take about 50,000 to 60,000 additional Federal positions and convert them from merit-based systems to political cronyism systems.

So instead of being hired on the merits instead of being hired based on your qualifications and your experience and what you know, they want you to be hired based on who you know--a political test. And you can see, if you place about 50,000 to 60,000 political cronies across the Federal Government in these positions, you can get them to overlook the law, like the Impoundment Control Act; you can get them to overlook the Constitution. And I dare say, the American people don't want political hacks to be the people who are doing food safety inspections or are responsible for the air traffic control system or, really, any other part of our government where we rely on experience and qualifications, not a political test.

So this is a really important moment because the Trump administration is claiming this power, not only to violate the Impoundment Control Act and withhold funds from whatever they don't like and reward those who do, but they want to create a whole structure within the Federal Government to replace these merit-based civil servants with political cronies.

And what is another thing you would do if you were President to try to make sure you knocked down all the provisions we have for accountability? Hey, you would fire all the inspectors general. What are inspectors general? They are people in various Federal Departments whose job it is to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. Their job is to make sure that people in these Agencies don't ignore the law, don't waste taxpayer money. Yet President Trump fired the inspectors general in these Agencies. In other words, he fired the people who are supposed to provide accountability to protect the public against waste, fraud, and abuse.

So don't tell me you are for more government efficiency when you are firing the people whose job it is to keep a look out for fraud, waste, and abuse. What is really happening is you are firing the people who would be responsible for calling out any wrongdoing by these 60,000 additional political cronies that the President wants to put in place in these Departments to do his bidding.

I would hope colleagues on both sides of the aisle would see that this is really fraught with danger because when you open the door to this kind of political cronyism, you also open the door to corruption. And when you get rid of the inspectors general, that means more people think that they can get away with that kind of corruption.

Schedule F is not the only ongoing effort, apparently, the President has to get rid of merit-based Federal employees. They just sent out this note within the last couple of days offering ``early retirement to Federal employees.'' I think the idea is if you agree to retire in the next couple of weeks that you can continue to get your paycheck through September or something without working.

I have no idea if that is even legal.

What we do know is the memo that was sent out to these Federal employees was remarkably similar to something that Elon Musk sent out to employees in his company at one point. In fact, the title of the memo, ``Fork in the Road,'' was exactly what was on Elon Musk's memo. And, in fact, apparently, Elon Musk is bringing in some computer systems and other things to the executive office buildings over there at the White House.

I would caution Federal employees that we don't even know if this is legal, and don't count on you getting the benefit of whatever bargain the President is, apparently, promising you because what this really is is an effort just to clear out more people from the merit-based system to create vacancies to bring in political cronies. That is what this is all about.

You implement a hiring freeze, which is what they have done. Then you get current Federal employees to retire early through something that could end up being a scam. I don't know. And then you implement Schedule F and bring in 50,000 to 60,000 people.

This is a really important consequential moment for all of us who care about a merit-based civil service.

And by the way, we have had a merit-based system since the late 1800s. We adopted this merit-based system after President James Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed job seeker--someone who had worked on his campaign and didn't get a job. At that point, the American people said: This spoil system where people are getting jobs just based on who they know, not what they know, this isn't delivering quality services for the American people. So they passed the Pendleton Act. What is happening now is a direct attack on that merit-based civil service.

What is the ultimate goal here? The ultimate goal is for President Trump to put in place these political loyalists who will do his bidding.

Bidding for who? In the last campaign, I think, many people who supported Candidate Trump believed that he was there to look out for working people, to look out for the forgotten Americans. That was sort of what he said on the campaign. But on Inauguration Day, just down the hall here a little bit, I think we got a better idea of exactly who it was and who it is that President Trump is looking out for, because he gave a speech talking about the ``new golden age'' for America. And the people who had the best seats in the House, better than his Cabinet nominees, were the billionaire tech titans--Elon Musk and others. They were right there, right behind the President.

We also know that one of the President's major goals is to put in place another big tax cut. Tax cut for who? A tax cut for the very wealthiest people in the country who will get a disproportionate share of any proposed tax cuts. We can expect to see that in round 2 because we saw that in Trump administration round 1. And big tax breaks for corporations who promised they would use the proceeds, by the way, to expand plant and equipment, to raise wages of their employees--that is not what happened. They used the extra money for stock buybacks that benefited very wealthy stockholders disproportionately. And the CEOs got bonuses. We didn't see wages for other employees.

So it is not just that the tax plan will benefit the very wealthy; it is that it will do that at the expense of working Americans.

Just take a peek at some of the proposals that are being put forward in the House Budget Committee by Republican leaders on that committee. They are going after very important programs that benefit the American people, whether in healthcare or nutrition. We will have to see when it finally comes out of there, but we know that most of the cuts they are proposing are going to be harmful to working Americans, to the people Candidate Trump claimed he wanted to help.

So this is a moment when everybody needs to focus very clearly on what their expectations were because it is shaping up to be a great betrayal. It is shaping up to be a situation where this new administration wants to get rid of merit-based civil servants, bring in a lot of political cronies, and then implement these huge tax cuts for very wealthy Americans and the biggest corporations at the expense of everybody else in America. I don't think that is what the people bargained for in this last election.

So I come to the floor today because we are seeing the Trump administration put in place some of these pieces that would be necessary in achieving these big tax breaks and benefits to the very wealthy. Whenever a President decides that he gets to cherry-pick the law and just provide resources to his political benefactors and ignore the rest of the law, that is a big danger signal. When the nominee to be the head of OMB refuses to commit to following the law, that is a big danger signal.

So I would just ask all of our colleagues to do our jobs as Members of Congress in the article I branch and make sure that we don't see this flagrant attack on the Constitution be successful.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, yesterday afternoon I voted to advance Sean Duffy's nomination to be Secretary of Transportation. I support qualified Cabinet nominees even when I have deep policy and political differences, unless they are so extreme as to pose a threat to the mission of their Agency. I have voted for qualified nominees from both parties for this position, and, while I have deep political and policy difference with Mr. Duffy, I believe that his experience in the House of Representatives has prepared him to do this job and support the overall mission of the Department of Transportation. I also appreciated his commitment in his hearings to funding Federal transportation projects without partisan influence.

However, last night, the administration put out an unprecedented and illegal directive to Agencies to hold vast amounts of Federal funding, including grants and loans to states and organizations working in our communities. My office is hearing from counties and community groups across Maryland who are losing access to funds to support firefighters, prevent homelessness, and keep transportation projects on track. Mr. Duffy, and every nominee, will be responsible for executing this unlawful withholding of funding as passed by Congress. We cannot continue with business as usual when the administration abuses its power and ignores spending laws as passed by Congress, so I voted against Mr. Duffy's nomination today.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the memory of the late Elwynda Kowan Patterson Chapman of Mitchellville,

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak to some of the actions that President Trump has taken just in his first 3 to 4 days and speak to the nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

President Trump was sworn in at noon on Monday just down the hall a bit. As a candidate, he ran promising to help working men and women throughout the country. He talked about addressing their kitchen table issues. So let's take a quick look at some of the big actions that have been taken just in the last 4 days.

One very serious action taken was pardoning the men and women who were convicted of bludgeoning and assaulting police officers in this Capitol on January 6, 2021. For those of us who were here that day, we will never forget, because after losing that election, Donald Trump unleashed rioters on Capitol Hill, rampaging throughout the ``citadel of democracy,'' clubbing police officers with baseball bats, and crushing them between doors.

Mr. President, 140 law enforcement officers from the Capitol Police and the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police were injured that day. I remember their heroism, and I remember those who died in the days following those attacks.

To pardon people who were convicted of assaulting and bloodying and bludgeoning police officers demonstrates contempt for the men and women who help protect us every day--not just here in the Capitol but men and women in law enforcement throughout the country.

As the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Police Chiefs have said, ``Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.'' They go on to say that this leniency ``sends a dangerous message that the consequences of attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence.''

The simple result of this is to send a terrible message that if you assault police officers in the name of Donald Trump, he will be there to pardon you.

Let's look at some of the other actions he has taken just in these first days back in the White House.

He issued an Executive order that rolls back initiatives to help reduce the costs of prescription drugs for more Americans.

He has been laying the groundwork here on Capitol Hill for a huge new tax cut that will disproportionately benefit the superwealthy and the biggest corporations at the expense of other Americans.

We heard him speak at that podium during his swearing-in of the golden age, and sitting right behind him were the billionaire titans from the tech industry. He is going to deliver a golden age--an even more golden age for those who are already very wealthy and for the biggest corporations, but it is not going to trickle down and help others. We know that because we have seen this movie before.

We saw Trump tax cuts 1.0. They promised that investments in businesses would go up, the idea being that if you provide tax cuts to big corporations, they will take the additional savings and they will invest it in their businesses. Well, that has been looked at, and that didn't happen. What did go up were stock buybacks engaged in by the corporations to further benefit their shareholders, many of them already very wealthy people.

They promised that those savings would be used by corporations to increase wages. In fact, they said that on average, it would be $4,000 a worker. It just didn't happen. What went up were CEO bonuses.

What else went up was the deficit and the debt. The claim that these would somehow pay for themselves was just once again a pure falsehood disproved by reality.

So here we are embarking on 2.0, Trump tax cuts 2.0--same story unfolding, although now we already hear our colleagues talking about how everybody else in America and many other millions of Americans are going to have to pay for the tax cuts for the folks at the very top.

Just take a look at some of the proposals made by the chairman of the House Budget Committee, a Republican Member of Congress, talking about trillions of cuts in things like Medicaid--a very important health program that helps kids with disabilities, helps lower income individuals, helps seniors in nursing homes; talking about cutting programs in--food and nutrition programs.

So everyone seems to be all in with President Trump on the idea of another round of tax cuts for the very rich, but they are going to ask everybody else in the country to pay for it.

Let's look at something else the President did in his first 3 or 4 days. He issued an executive order called schedule F. What is schedule F? In a nutshell, schedule F is an attempt to convert our merit-based civil service into a political cronyism-based civil service.

Since the late 1800s and the Pendleton Act, we have had a civil service based on merit. Civil servants--people who work for the Federal Government in regular, ongoing positions--have to pass a test, show that they are qualified, that they are experienced, that they have the know-how. It is what you know, not who you know.

What President Trump and his team are proposing in schedule F is to convert that merit-based system into a politics-based system where you have a political litmus test not for competence but for your politics.

I should point out that of course Presidents are entitled to lots of people in their administration as political appointments. In fact, there are about 4,000 political appointments in our current system. Obviously, you have the Secretaries of various Departments--I am going to talk about one of those in a minute--but you have the Deputy Secretaries, and you have many Assistant Secretaries.

So you have 4,000 political appointments already available to be made by President Trump, but that is not enough, apparently. They are talking about converting approximately another about 16,000 additional positions that are currently merit-based systems, based on your qualifications, to political cronyism-based systems.

That is a recipe for corruption. It is a recipe for reducing the quality of services to the American people from coast to coast. You do not want somebody who is chosen just because of who they know and what their politics are to be the people doing your food inspection or working on policy on all sorts of important things that impact the American people.

A lot of those positions will be at the Department of Defense, so I want to turn now to the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. President, I appreciate that we are beginning an amendment process on S. 5 in the Senate. I hope we continue with that process, as there are still significant improvements to be made to this bill. We must keep our communities safe and prioritize detention of violent offenders, and our focus must be on the most effective path to achieve that goal.

I have introduced, along with Senator Kaine, an amendment that directly addresses the circumstances that led to the tragic murder of Laken Riley without creating a system that diverts resources away from the detention and deportation of violent offenders. I have also offered an amendment that makes clear that the apprehension and deportation of convicted violent offenders should be our highest enforcement priority.

Yesterday, I voted against the Cornyn amendment, which would expand the category of offenses under which individuals are detained following an arrest only, not a conviction or even an indictment. While I appreciate the seriousness of those crimes, this would continue to take resources from detention and deportation of those who pose the greatest threat to our communities and who are actually convicted.

I also voted for an amendment proposed by Senator Coons that would strike the section of the underlying bill that allows States attorneys general to sue the Federal Government when they disagree with any of the thousands of complex immigration enforcement decisions ICE and CBP make every day. Conflicting lawsuits in State courts around the country would paralyze our immigration enforcement system, ultimately jeopardizing public safety. I am disappointed that this amendment failed to pass.

I urge my colleagues to work in a bipartisan way to improve this bill to keep our communities safe while ensuring that our immigration enforcement officials can focus on the greatest public safety risks.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) on its 40th anniversary.

Since its founding four decades ago by members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, EESI has steadfastly pursued its vision of a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world--a vision I share. EESI's work is a reminder that there is considerable common ground if we work together to find it. For the sake of our planet, our economy, our health, and our children's future, I hope we have the strength to do just that.

EESI plays a key role as it informs Congress of developments in the energy, environmental, and climate space. Every year, EESI convenes dozens of congressional briefings, publishes white papers, releases newsletters, and hosts a podcast. All of this science-based, nonpartisan information--clearly explained and synthesized--helps us develop good policy.

EESI has also been one of the driving forces behind the annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency EXPO and Policy Forum. I have the privilege of serving as a deputy cochair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, which showcases, on a bipartisan basis, the many benefits of clean energy and helps cohost the EXPO. I am very proud to have participated in almost every EXPO since 2003. At these EXPOs, clean energy leaders convene and share what their organizations are doing to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency. They describe how clean energy and energy efficiency are creating good-paying jobs in their communities, expanding economic development in rural areas, helping families and businesses become more resilient to extreme weather and climate impacts, contributing to national security, and ensuring that all communities have access to clean air and water.

I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the many accomplishments of former Representative Richard L. ``Dick'' Ottinger. He cofounded the Environmental and Energy Study Conference when he represented New York in Congress in the 1970s. Under Mr. Ottinger's leadership, the conference later evolved into the independent nonprofit we are celebrating today, EESI.

We are in the middle of a decisive decade for climate action. What we choose to do now--or fatefully, choose not to do--will affect future generations in profound ways. As we seek bipartisan agreement to achieve our climate goals, I know we can count on EESI and its remarkable resources to help guide the way.

Congratulations again to EESI and its 40 years of advancing climate solutions on Capitol Hill. I look forward to working with EESI for many years to come as we strive together to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world.

Mr. President, I was scheduled a couple days ago to come here to the Senate floor to talk about what measures the United States could be taking now to help relieve the suffering in Sudan, and I plan to get to that topic. But since I planned to come talk about that, we have seen this disaster unfolding on Capitol Hill, where an agreement that had been reached in a bipartisan manner between Democrats and Republicans, between the House and the Senate, to prevent a government shutdown and to support critical priorities around the country, how that bipartisan agreement got blown up because of a tweet from Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.

And we don't know if he has just decided that he is going to be sort of the kingmaker on Capitol Hill. All I do know is that that was shortly followed by tweets from the President-elect and other members of the Trump family. Who is leading whom here, we don't know. All we know is that the end result is very bad for the American people because Federal employees provide all sorts of vital services, from air traffic controllers to nurses and doctors in veterans hospitals, to the people who look out for the safety of our food. Some of them will be prevented from coming to work. Others will be asked to go to work without their salary during that period of time. All of that will disrupt the country, and all of that was avoidable. In fact, if the Speaker of the House had just stuck to the agreement that he had reached over a period of weeks, we would not be in this situation, sort of heading toward a government shutdown, with last-minute demands made by tweet.

In my State of Maryland, we had a provision to deal with the disaster of the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore City. We all know the story there: A big ship hit the pylon and brought down the bridge. We lost a number of souls who had been working on that bridge.

We worked to get the debris out of the bottom of the river so that we could reopen the port, but the next step is to replace the Key Bridge. And just as the country came together to support the people in Minnesota after the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge, the Maryland delegation is asking the same of our colleagues. And we were heartened by the fact that Republicans and Democrats did come together in the spirit of ``all for one and one for all'' to help Maryland, just as we are helping other States--red States, blue States, purple States. And the bottom line--the important thing--is they are red, white, and blue States, and we are helping the people in all those States in their hour of hurt after disasters hit their States.

I heard our colleague from North Carolina, Senator Tillis, who has worked very hard to get relief for the people of North Carolina, talking about how he doesn't plan to support any continuing resolution that doesn't include relief for the people of North Carolina. And that is the sentiment we should all share, not only because it is the right thing to do but because we recognized it was the right thing to do when we negotiated that bipartisan agreement.

So this moment should be a wake-up call to everybody as we look to the next 4 years because this Republic will be on very shaky grounds if one or two tweets can throw the whole place into disarray and lead us toward a government shutdown.

I will also point out that the fact that the President-elect asked for an early increase in the Nation's debt ceiling sent a very clear signal as to what his priority is. His priority is to cut taxes for very rich people and very big corporations. And to make that easier, they want to raise the debt ceiling now, rather than take responsibility for it themselves down the road. So this is a preview of what the priorities of the incoming administration are and the lengths that they are prepared to go to bring this place to a halt to achieve their goals.

And, by the way, I am sure that the richest guy in the world will just get even richer with those tax cuts that will be coming down the line.

So I really urge our Republican colleagues in the House to keep their word and stick with the agreement that we reached. It is a compromise agreement. It has things in it that I would not have put in it, if I were to draft this myself, and it leaves things out that I would like to see included. That is the nature of compromise in divided government, which we have right now.

So I really hope that smarter, cooler heads will prevail and not, when they get a tweet that says, ``Jump,'' say, ``How high should I jump?'' but to really think about whether that is the way to govern in the years ahead.

Sudan

Mr. President, now I do want to turn to the matter that I had planned to talk about before this latest disruption, and that is the terrible, ongoing killings, starvation, and humanitarian disaster in Sudan.

Two weeks ago, I came to this Senate floor to discuss this same issue and to explain why I had filed what is known as a joint resolution of disapproval, or a JRD, to block the Biden administration's request to send offensive weapons, including advanced rockets and missiles worth $1.2 billion, to the United Arab Emirates.

I was joined in filing the joint resolution of disapproval by my House colleague Congresswoman Sara Jacobs. She filed that on the House side.

And as I said when I introduced that joint resolution of disapproval, it was based on credible reports and investigations, including by the United Nations, that found that the UAE has been transferring arms to a group called the Rapid Support Forces, in Sudan, further fueling this terrible conflict that has already claimed thousands and thousands of lives and created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

And it is my view that the United States should use all of our leverage to help bring peace and stability to the people of Sudan. It is the right thing to do from a humanitarian point of view. It is also in America's interest to stop the fighting. And, certainly, the United States should not be rewarding any country--any country--that is fueling the conflict.

That is why Congresswoman Jacobs and I filed that JRD, because we want to use our influence to prevent the United Arab Emirates from sending weapons to the murderous RSF. And after we filed the joint resolution of disapproval, we wrote a letter to President Biden, dated December 2, 2024, outlining our goals--and, again, stressing the fact that the objective was not to end arms transfers forever to the UAE. The objective was to use our leverage to get the UAE to stop sending weapons to the RSF, which the United States has charged with war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Sudan.

So I am here on the floor, 2 weeks later, to say that, yesterday, we received a letter from the Biden administration--specifically, from the White House Coordinator for the Middle East

and North Africa, Brett McGurk--stating--and I am going to quote here from the letter:

[T]he UAE has informed the Administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward.

The letter goes on to say:

The administration will work with relevant departments and

agencies to monitor for indicators of the credibility and

reliability of these assurances provided by the UAE. By

January 17, I commit to providing you with the executive

branch's up-to-date assessment in that regard.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to put this letter in the Record.

Mr. President, because we have achieved our objective, which is to get the UAE to provide those assurances to the Biden administration and to get the Biden administration to assure us that they will monitor compliance with those assurances, we will not be insisting on a vote on the JRD at this time, which is our right, because it is a privilege motion that can be brought up at any time.

But I want to thank the Biden administration, I want to thank the White House, and the National Security Council for working with us to achieve what I know are our mutual objectives, which is to prevent the RSD from getting arms from any party.

If you look at what is happening there, you will find the situation getting worse and worse. Since the brutal conflict in Sudan began between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces back in April 2023, a staggering 11.8 million people have been displaced within Sudan or fled to neighboring countries.

More than half the population--that is 25 million people--face acute food insecurity. And while the total casualty numbers have been difficult to determine, a study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Sudan Research Group estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in the Khartoum region alone between April 2023 and June 2024.

And in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--a committee on which I serve--the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, suggested that the total death toll could be as high as 150,000 people.

Both the RSF and the SAF have worsened this crisis, with both parties credibly accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by intentionally blocking humanitarian aid by reaching those most in need.

The United States has determined that both the RSF and the SAF have committed war crimes. The State Department has also concluded that the Rapid Support Forces have committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

I want to remind my colleagues that this organization--the Rapid Support Forces--traces its roots to the Janjaweed militias and is led by a man known as Hemedti, who, along with others in the RSF, participated in the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s.

So these are bad people, and we should not be helping any country or sending arms to any country that is aiding and abetting their actions in Sudan.

And yet, that is what credible reports have shown. In January, a U.N. Panel of Experts documented credible allegations that the UAE was violating a Darfur arms embargo, which was first established back in 2005 to stop the genocide in Darfur. These findings have been corroborated by credible human rights organizations and an independent investigation by the New York Times, which found that the UAE smuggled weapons to the RSF under the guise of humanitarian aid.

That is why it was important that we act. The United States is trying to reach an end to the conflict. We should not be sending any weapons to any country that is helping fuel that conflict.

So I appreciate the administration's willingness to work with us to obtain such assurances from the UAE and to create an accountability mechanism to monitor its compliance with those commitments.

And I want to thank and remember my colleagues here, Senator Cardin, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, my colleague from Maryland; Senator Schumer, the leader, and their teams for working with us and the administration to get those assurances from the UAE and to create that accountability structure to monitor compliance with those assurances.

And while I will not be seeking a vote on the JRD today, if, in January, the administration determines that the UAE has not been compliant with those promises, commitments, and assurances, then, of course, we retain the right to refile the joint resolution of disapproval in the new Congress to block arms sales from the United States to the UAE--that $1.3 billion sale.

As President Biden said in September of this year, ``The United States will not abandon our commitment to the people of Sudan, who deserve freedom, peace, and justice. We call on all parties to this conflict to end the violence and refrain from fueling it, for the future of Sudan and for all the Sudanese people.''

And that is why our message has been that any country that is supplying any actor in this brutal civil war must stop doing so. That is why Congressman Jacobs and I filed the joint resolution of disapproval against the proposed arms sales to the UAE because they have, based on credible allegations, been sending weapons to the murderous RSF. That is also why we will not seek a vote now on that JRD--because the Biden administration received those assurances that I just read out loud on the Senate floor from the UAE and has committed to monitoring them.

So let's hope this puts an end to the chapter of the UAE sending weapons to this murderous organization, where so many were responsible for the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago and who, today, according to the U.S. Government, are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

We should do everything in our power as a country to end that suffering. That is why we took the measure we did. That is why I am grateful that the administration worked with us to reach this point, and it is why we will continue to monitor this situation--to make sure that those arms shipments do not happen in the future.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the National Defense Authorization Act under consideration by the Senate today provides crucial resources to our Armed Forces and our national defense. This year's defense bill invests directly in the men and women in uniform through a significant pay raise for junior enlisted members along with improvements in housing, healthcare, and support for all servicemembers and their families. The bill also provides funding authorization for the many Federal Agencies in Maryland whose missions support our national defense, including resources for critical projects taking place at Fort Meade and Aberdeen Providing Ground, as well as the construction of a contained burn facility at Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head, protecting air quality in our local communities. I also worked with my colleagues to expand the scope of the SERVE Act, which I helped pass into law in the FY22 NDAA, by ensuring that high school students applying to attend the Merchant Marine Academy do not lose the opportunity to be nominated because of a vacancy in the office of one of their U.S. Senators or Representative in the U.S. House. The bill also includes the State Department Authorization Act and takes meaningful steps to improve the quality of life for our diplomatic corps and their family members, such as greater flexibility for foreign service families' housing arrangements and fairer pay for locally hired foreign service staff.

There are many important provisions in this legislation, and I support funding a robust national defense that meets the challenges of emerging threats and an increasingly unstable world. Maryland is the proud home of tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians working in the defense sector, as well as critical military installations, and I am glad that this legislation invests over $200 million in our State's critical assets to address the security challenges of today and tomorrow. Maryland's bases are innovating in fields from cybersecurity to energetics and are conducting critical research to protect our military.

Protecting our national security goes hand-in-hand with advancing U.S. innovation and competitiveness. Maryland has a key role to play in developing the technologies of the future that will keep our Nation at the cutting-edge. Today's bill authorizes the Department of Commerce to utilize up to $500 million from spectrum auction proceeds for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (``Tech Hubs'') program, which was established in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, to fund designated Tech Hubs and to expand the program. In 2023, the Baltimore Region Tech Hub was designated as one of the 31 inaugural Tech Hubs, and this funding could further its efforts to become a global leader in advancing biotech and equitable artificial intelligence to improve national health outcomes.

While I support important investments in our national defense, I remain concerned about the continued growth in defense spending, especially when the Pentagon as a whole continues to fail independent audits, with only half of the Department's 28 Agencies passing their own individual audits. While I do not believe that across-the-board cuts are the best way to reduce spending, I do believe we need to put our defense dollars to much more strategic use and make the hard choices necessary to right-size our defense spending. As we discuss ways to achieve greater government efficiency, we must apply the same standard to the Department of Defense, which represents over half of total Federal discretionary spending.

Today's bill also includes harmful language unfairly targeting transgender youth and their families. It is not Congress's place to decide what health decisions our military families make; these decisions should be left to servicemembers, their families, and their doctors. It is especially galling that this bill restricts some healthcare and fails to expand access to IVF to help military members struggling with infertility. We should be supporting our military families, not limiting their access to care. Given these concerns, I supported Senator Baldwin's amendment to remove section 708 entirely, and I am disappointed this language remains in the final bill.

In addition, despite promises to the contrary, the new definition for what is considered an ``electronic communications service provider'' that was included in the April 2024 reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was not amended in this bill. This new definition, while intended to clarify the term to account for changing technology, broadly includes ``any other service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.'' This overly broad definition, among other reasons, is why I voted against the reauthorization of section 702 of FISA. While I accept the representations from proponents that this language is not intended to open the door to requiring a slew of service providers to comply with government demands to intercept communications, its plain language is very broad. I, along with other Members who were concerned with this provision, were told by our colleagues that this language would be altered in the final bill. I appreciated that the Senate's version of the Intelligence Authorization Act included revised language addressing this concern, but that provision unfortunately wasn't included in the final NDAA, and I am deeply disappointed with this outcome.

Ensuring that our men and women in uniform have the tools they need to defend the United States is critical. Like any bill, this package isn't perfect, but overall, I believe it will meaningfully advance our national security goals, support our defense workforce, and invest in crucial priorities for Maryland. That being said, I have serious concerns with several important issues within this legislation. We must right-size our defense spending. We must protect our military families and their access to healthcare. And we must protect Americans from the possible misuse of surveillance authorities. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the next Congress to address these serious concerns.

Madam President, we all have State and local governments that have control over their own judicial systems. For example, in my State of Maryland, we have the Maryland Court of Appeals. We have the lower courts in the State of Maryland. Then, of course, we have the Federal court system.

What I am talking about today has nothing to do with the Federal court system. What I am talking about today has to do with judges appointed to the District of Columbia, and because of current law, this Congress oversees those judicial actions.

I think we would all agree that, if we were here in the U.S. Senate blocking decisions, nominations made for judges back in our States or our local jurisdictions, that would be a kind of bizarre thing to do. So I want to make it clear that today we are not talking about the Supreme Court of the United States or the U.S. courts of appeals or Federal district court judges. We are talking about the local judges for the people of the District of Columbia, and in that local court system, they have a commission that determines who the nominees are. But the President then nominates the local judges because of the statutes governing the District of Columbia within the U.S. Congress.

I have heard on the floor of the Senate, many times, legitimate concerns expressed about crime in the District of Columbia and a backlogged court system in the District of Columbia. And yet some, until today--and I hope today will be different--have blocked consideration or votes on the judges for the people of the District of Columbia. Because of that, Washington, DC's court system has been plagued by vacancies for years. They currently have 11 vacancies--9 on the superior court that handles civil, criminal, and small claims cases; and 2 on the court of appeals. And because of these vacancies, fewer judges are having to take on significantly more case, leading to long delays. In some cases, these proceedings take years.

Judges in the civil division are handling things like landlord and tenant disputes, medical malpractice, and discrimination, and they are handling double the casework that they used to, an average of 473 cases a year.

Without the appointment of a new judge--in other words, if we don't allow the appointment of a new judge here--there will be only one judge handling all of the criminal domestic violence misdemeanors--30 to 60 cases per day. I want to say that again. Unless we take this action, you are going to have only one judge overseeing criminal domestic violence misdemeanors--30 to 60 cases a day--with longer waits for litigants and significant delays in resolving domestic violence cases.

Judges are double- and triple-booking trial dates. One hundred to 200 cases every year are delayed in the court of appeals. Again, not the U.S. court of appeals. I want to make it clear: This is the District of Columbia system and their court of appeals.

The judges before us today are all nonpartisan. In fact, two of them were previously nominated by President Trump. It gives you an idea how long they have been waiting. They are not interpreting Federal law. They are overseeing local criminal and civil cases, just like judges in our State and local courts, as I said.

So I just want to be really clear for our colleagues who are going to delay these judges. They are going to make it even more difficult for the people of DC to deal with criminal justice issues and with their civil litigation.

I really hope, given the fact that we are not talking about Federal judges, we will be able to proceed with these nominations and support them.

With that, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that, as if in executive session, the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Kenechukwu Onyemacchi Okocha, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that any statements related to the nomination be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, would it be in order if I ask what the basis of the objection is, given the fact that these are nonpartisan judges for the District of Columbia? Would that question be in order if I were to yield to the gentleman?

I am just wondering if my colleague from Kansas would like to explain the basis for objecting to a judge--this particular judge--in the DC court system.

I gather not, OK.

I ask that it be in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 767, Sherri Malloy Beatty-Arthur, to be an associate judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 768, Erin Camille Johnston, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 769, Ray D. McKenzie, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 770, Rahkel Bouchet, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 771, John Cuong Truong, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 838, James Graham Lake, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 839, Nicholas George Miranda, to be an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia

Madam President, I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 774, Carmen G. Iguina Gonzalez, to be an associate judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Madam President, I am going to try one more time. I ask that it be made in order to make the same request with respect to Calendar No. 775, Joseph Russell Palmore to be an associate judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Madam President, I would just say that based on what I said in my earlier remarks, I have not heard and the body has not heard of any good reason to be blocking these judges for the District of Columbia, have not heard one substantive objection to any of these individuals, have not heard any other rationale for why we are not going to act on these judges right away.

As I indicated, the result of inaction in blocking these judges is just to back up the entire court system of the District of Columbia-- criminal cases, civil cases. It makes no sense.

If someone was looking out on the Senate right now, they would see this as one of the many examples of complete dysfunction because of the kind of obstruction based on who knows what rationale for doing the right thing for the District of Columbia.

This is just one reason why many of us support statehood for the people of the District of Columbia. They shouldn't have to have the U.S. Senate sign off on their judicial nominations, just as we don't sign off on judicial nominations for State courts, whether it be the State of Wisconsin or my State of Maryland. We don't sign off on nominations for local courts in our States, but we do have that power for now and responsibility for now in the U.S. Senate, and this is just an example of total failure to live up to our responsibility to make sure there is a functioning court system in the District of Columbia.

So it is another bad day as we come to the close of this Congress, another unnecessary obstruction that just makes it more difficult for people to get justice in civil cases or in criminal cases and for people to be held accountable in criminal cases, including, as I mentioned, the many domestic violence cases.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, let me start by thanking my friend and colleague, the Senator from Mississippi, for working on these two pieces of important legislation. One which the Senator from Mississippi will talk about in a moment in greater depth is the Vicksburg National Military Park Boundary Modification Act. And coupled with that is the Chesapeake National Recreation Area Act, as amended, and unanimously passed by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources just last month.

I introduced the Chesapeake National Recreation Area Act in July of 2023, after years of engagement with communities around the Chesapeake Bay and with the support of Senator Cardin, Senator Warner, Senator Kaine. And it has also been introduced in the House on a bipartisan basis by Congressman Sarbanes and Congressman Wittman.

The idea for a Chesapeake National Recreation Area Act was born four decades ago. This has been a long time coming, and I am glad we arrived at this moment. It was motivated by a desire to formally recognize the Chesapeake Bay as the national treasure that it is and to provide all Americans with a greater opportunity to experience it.

The Chesapeake National Recreation Act would unite voluntarily contributed sites and iconic Chesapeake Bay properties under the operation of the National Park Service in what we call a string of pearls that will help to tie together key areas of the Bay.

The establishment of the Chesapeake National Recreation Area would improve public access to the Bay, allowing visitors to experience it firsthand, strengthening the culture of environmental stewardship, and providing visitors with an opportunity to learn about the region's rich history and culture.

The National Chesapeake National Recreation Area would also create jobs and support economic growth throughout the region, promoting responsible tourism, and boosting the outdoor recreation and tourist economies.

This bipartisan initiative has been driven by local leaders since the beginning, and it was developed through exhaustive public outreach and meaningful collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders.

I want just, for a moment, to describe to my colleagues the outreach effort that brought us to this moment because it included the formation of a working group composed of a bicameral group of lawmakers, State government representatives, and more than 30 regional organizations to help develop the legislation.

It included a public comment period which we used to gather input and compile over 1,300 comments, which we integrated the feedback into the bill.

When we introduced the bill, it was accompanied by over 70 letters of support and 100 endorsements from local elected officials, environmental and historical preservation organizations, seafood and outdoor recreation businesses, and many more. We also worked closely with the National Park Service on technical assistance to guide the bill.

So it has been a great pleasure to work with Senator Wicker on his Vicksburg National Military Park Boundary Modification Act as we also work on this Chesapeake National Recreation Area Act. This is collaboration for the public good, for people in both of our States and people throughout the United States of America.

I yield the floor.