Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to acknowledge the visit of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople to Washington,

Mr. President, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 504, confirmation of the nomination of Edward Artau to be U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 505, confirmation of the nomination of Maria Lanahan to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 506, the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Robert Law to be Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans, Department of Homeland Security.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 507, confirmation of the nomination of Robert Law to be Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans, Department of Homeland Security.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 508, the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Kyle Dudek to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 509, confirmation of the nomination of Kyle Dudek to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 510, the motion to table the Schumer Point of Order related to S. Res. 377.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I was recovering from COVID and missed several rollcall votes. Had I been present, I would have voted no on rollcall vote No. 511, the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider S. Res. 377.

Mr. President, I think we can and certainly should all agree that the case of Jeffrey Epstein is deeply disturbing, with horrifying abuse of young women and girls.

From the lenient plea deal he received in Florida in 2008 to the end of his case with the death in prison, survivors of his abuse have been denied a full accounting of his crimes and the justice they deserve.

It is also clear that a lack of transparency and accountability and contradictory statements by the Trump administration and its officials have led to even deeper public distrust of our justice system and especially the handling of this case. After all, Trump administration officials, including Attorney General Bondi, promised transparency in this case but instead gave the American people a binder of largely already-public documents. It was a sham.

Last month, the Department of Justice released a two-page memo informing the American public that the Department had completed its exhaustive review of the Epstein files and concluded that ``no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.'' We shouldn't be taking the word of any official in any administration on face value. The public should see these documents for themselves. People ranging from the victims to the American public believe transparency is warranted, and it is.

Just 3 days after the Department of Justice memo was published, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously agreed to an amendment I proposed to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would require two things. It would require the Department to retain, preserve, and compile the Epstein files and submit a report with the files to the respective subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

I understood that earlier today, Senator Barrasso made the point that that Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill was on the floor and that I objected to moving forward on that bill, as I did for totally unrelated reasons.

We also know that appropriations bills take a very long time to wind through the U.S. congressional process. It has to go through the House. It could be months before that provision--if it continues to be in there--sees the light of day. It shouldn't take months. We should do it now, which is why, the day after the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously--Republicans and Democrats together--supported that provision to require the report and preserve the documents, Senator Durbin and I wrote to the Attorney General to say: Why wait?

And that is the question, Mr. President--why wait? The victims, the American people--they deserve to see the files and know the full truth, and they deserve it right now.

Just this morning, there was a new report in Bloomberg. The headline says ``The FBI Redacted Trump's Name in the Epstein Files.'' We have always understood that Donald Trump's name was in the files. What we are learning today, at least according to these reports, is that the FBI redacted Donald Trump's name from those files. The question is, Why? Nobody's name should be redacted from the files with respect to the perpetrators of these crimes. Clearly, in releasing files, we need to protect the names of any victims, but the perpetrators--we should

know their names. They should not be redacted.

What we have seen, of course, from the President is an effort to change the subject entirely, say that it was the Obama Administration that somehow invented this whole dispute and debate. But we know that is not true. We know that is not true because of what President Trump has previously said and, of course, what his Attorney General has said.

It is also deeply concerning that the Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America, who previously was Donald Trump's personal lawyer, skirted all the Department of Justice protocols and went down to secretly interview Ghislaine Maxwell for hours over a couple of days. I think we should have the transcript of that interview as well.

We have also heard President Trump say that he has the power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. Well, it is one thing to have the power; it is another thing to speculate publicly about using that power to pardon somebody who could testify in an incriminating way against all of the perpetrators. That reeks of a hint of the obstruction of justice, to signal to Ghislaine Maxwell that if she says the right things, the President of the United States could pardon her. That would be a corruption of the judicial process--a gross corruption of the judicial process.

So I hope President Trump will immediately announce that he won't pardon this person, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the associate of Jeffrey Epstein in perpetrating these crimes against young women and girls. The President of the United States should announce today that he will not do that. That is the way the President can put an end to the understandable concern that he is signaling that if she says the right thing regarding him, she will get a ``get out of jail free'' card. That would be a gross corruption of the process and of the justice system.

This is why we should do now what the victims deserve and what the American public demands, which is to support the proposal put forward by the Senator from Oregon Senator Merkley.

As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I would.

The President of the United States, when asked if he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, said, yes, he has the power to do that pardon, to make that pardon. Her attorneys have made very clear through multiple public remarks that they would welcome that. Of course her attorneys would welcome that. She would love to get out of jail free.

This is why the President, today, should make very clear that he will not pardon Ghislaine Maxwell because she was a close associate in the crimes that she and Jeffrey Epstein committed.

Certainly. If the President of the United States is signaling to Ghislaine Maxwell and her attorneys that he would provide a pardon without any possible reason to do so other than for her to give testimony--in this case, it would be false testimony because we know about the close association between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein--that would clearly be witness tampering.

I did, indeed. This is a report that just came out. The headline is ``The FBI Redacted Trump's Name in the Epstein Files.'' It is a Bloomberg report, and it is just one more example of what appears to be an effort to cover up any role that Donald Trump may have played in these crimes. Again, we don't know, and the best way for us all to know is to support your effort here, to support our mutual efforts, which is to just release the files.

The concern, of course, is that the Trump administration would be tempted to destroy these files for the purposes of getting rid of evidence. As I indicated, reports today indicate that the FBI--and, again, I don't know if they were instructed to do so. I do not know all the circumstances. What we do know are the reports from Bloomberg that Donald Trump's name was stricken from the files.

I think that is a question for all of us to ask the FBI, and we should follow up and ask the FBI.

In the meantime, though, the best way, as you pointed out and all of us have pointed out and even Attorney General Bondi at one point pointed out, is just release the damn files. That is how we would get to the bottom of all of this. And don't redact anything from the files except--except--to protect victims. But perpetrators should not have their names redacted from the files.

Well, that is a very good point, Senator Merkley.

We had a unanimous bipartisan vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on an amendment to do exactly that--to make sure the records were preserved so nobody tried to destroy evidence--and it required an exhaustive report, detailing many of the questions that we have all raised regarding the Epstein files.

As I said, the appropriations process takes a very long time to wind through the U.S. Congress, and there is no reason to wait on this. Again, if a majority of the Appropriations Committee--not just a majority--but if a unanimous vote in the Appropriations Committee took place, we could actually get this out right away, and, hopefully, the House would pass that, and then we could send it right to the President's desk.

We, certainly, more importantly, the American people, and especially the victims deserve to know that nobody will tamper with the files between now and the moment they are released.

Again, the fastest way to address this issue, to meet the concerns, to meet the terrible, terrible abuse that was visited upon these young women and girls, is simply to release the files and do it now.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California and the Senator from Rhode Island. They have well described, I think, all the inappropriate actions that have been taken by the Justice Department, including recently with respect to the Deputy Attorney General, who had been Donald Trump's personal lawyer, conducting the secret interview with the Epstein associate Maxwell.

This is an important conversation to continue here on the Senate floor. We were here earlier this morning, where

we discussed the very, very troubling and disturbing case of Jeffrey Epstein and the horrifying abuse of young women and girls.

Those who were so terribly abused and mistreated deserve to have the full truth. They deserve to have all the facts come out, as do their loved ones, as do the American people so the American people can have some kind of confidence that the Department of Justice is presenting the American people with the truth because we need transparency in order to ensure full accountability.

It used to be the case that Donald Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi and others in this administration said they wanted to get to the bottom of this. In fact, they said they wanted to release the Epstein files. But as we got closer to actually doing that, they suddenly decided that they did not want the public to know and that they didn't want Epstein's victims to know. So now they have decided not to be forthcoming.

The obvious question is, What are they hiding? And that is why we took to the floor earlier today to say: Release the damn Epstein files.

We have learned just in the last 48 hours that at some point along the way, the FBI redacted Trump's name from the Epstein files. We have learned that his name was very likely in those files. We also know that the Trump administration asked the FBI to do a search of his name in the files. We now know that his name was redacted from those files at some point along the way by the FBI.

As my colleagues from Rhode Island and California were just discussing, we have also witnessed in just the last week or two the highly inappropriate action of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to conduct a secret interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein's partner in these crimes.

When he was asked at his confirmation hearing before the Senate about whether he had a continuing duty of loyalty and confidentiality to Donald Trump, his response was yes, as the former personal attorney of Donald Trump, he had an ongoing duty of loyalty and confidentiality.

Clearly, that duty of loyalty and confidentiality to Donald Trump puts him in direct conflict with the interests of the truth and the people of the United States when it comes to President Trump. So it was highly inappropriate that he held that interview.

As the Senator from California just pointed out, he excluded from that interview lawyers who had been working on this case for a long time. It is also a fact by at least many reports that he, Todd Blanche, has a very close, personal relationship with the lawyer for Ms. Maxwell.

So this thing stinks to high heaven, and one thing they should do is immediately release the transcripts of this secret interview that was just conducted. Release the transcripts.

According to all reports, they gave Ghislaine Maxwell immunity-- proffered immunity for the purpose of her testimony; nothing she said in that interview could be used against her. So release the interview transcript to the American people, because Donald Trump's personal attorney should not be the one in the room conducting an interview with somebody who might have testimony that directly incriminates Donald Trump.

We have also seen just in recent days the question floated about whether the President of the United States would pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. When President Trump was asked about that possibility, he acknowledged he had that power.

As I said on this floor this morning, President Trump should immediately, today, announce that he will not use his pardon power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for being a coconspirator in the abuse of young women and girls.

What is clearly happening in plain view is very dangerous to our system of justice.

What is clearly happening is the possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell and her lawyers are seeking a pardon in exchange for her giving the kind of testimony that would please President Trump.

One of the families of one of the victims, a family from Virginia who lost their loved one to suicide in April, has said: President Trump, do not pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.

And my understanding is that is clearly the sentiment of the other victims and their families. So the President should, today, announce that he will never do that.

Now, earlier this morning, Senator Merkley offered a resolution and asked unanimous consent on it to release the Epstein files. And we should do that immediately. That should be done immediately.

Senator Durbin and I wrote to the Attorney General last week urging her to do what she said she was going to do, which is release the files. But that was objected to on the Republican side.

And I see Senator Barrasso on the floor. And when he objected to Senator Merkley this morning, this is what he said. He said:

Senate Republicans included a provision to address this

very issue in an appropriation bill that Democrats blocked

earlier this week. This issue would have been addressed here

on the U.S. Senate Floor, yet Senate Democrats came to the

floor and objected to what was in this bill.

Well, first of all, I should clarify the fact that it was not Senate Republicans who included that provision in the appropriations bill to require that the Justice Department retain all the records with regard to the Epstein files and that they answer certain questions regarding those files and provide those responses to Congress. It wasn't Senate Republicans. In fact, it was my amendment in the Senate Appropriations Committee on that very issue.

I am glad it did pass unanimously, and momentarily I am going to ask for unanimous consent on the exact same provision that was adopted unanimously by the Senate Appropriations Committee, word for word.

Now, it is true that that bill did not move forward here in the Senate. And I am not going to go on for the hours that would be required to talk about the provisions in the Commerce-Science-Justice bill. Suffice it to say that there was another issue that we discussed for about an hour the other night regarding the fact that the Trump administration decided to seize, rescind, steal--whatever you want to call it--$1.4 billion that had been set aside for a secure FBI Headquarters, and they decided to snatch that money away from the selected site and put it to another site. And my view is that, wherever the FBI builds that new headquarters, it should be a secure site.

So that was a disagreement that led to the fact that that bill did not proceed at this time. We also know--and Senator Barrasso knows as well--that the appropriations bills take a very long time to wind their way through the Senate and the House, go through conference. And so, really, there is no reason to delay the provision in that bill that was unanimously adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee and which Senator Barrasso said this morning Republicans included.

Well, if it was included in that bill, we should do it right now. We should get it done right now. And I am just going to, in closing, read this resolution because it is pretty straightforward. It says:

IN GENERAL.--The Attorney General shall retain, preserve,

and compile any records or evidence related to--(1) any

investigation, prosecution, or incarceration of Jeffrey

Epstein; and (2) any service provided to victims identified

in such an investigation.

Pretty straightforward. Retain the records. Don't destroy any evidence.

It also called for a report.

Not later than 60 days after the date of enactment of this

Act, the Attorney General shall submit to the Subcommittee on

Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies of the

Committee on Appropriations of the Senate a report that

includes information on the history of the Jeffrey Epstein

case, which shall include--(1) information regarding the 2008

non-prosecution agreement between Jeffrey Epstein and the

Department of Justice; (2) information on victims and

testimony by victims, including notification of victims under

section 3771 of title 18, United States Code . . . the

``Crime Victims Rights Act''; (3) information on any

investigation of a coconspirator; (4) information on any

internal review or misconduct findings by the Department of

Justice related to any investigation related to Jeffrey

Epstein; (5) the current status of any investigation into the

financial and trafficking networks of Jeffrey Epstein; (6) an

intelligence assessment of the financial ties and clients of

Jeffrey Epstein and any connections between Jeffrey Epstein

and the United States Government or foreign governments; and

(7) information on oversight failures at the Metropolitan

Correctional Center in New York, New York.

Finally--

(c) PRIVACY PROTECTION.--The Attorney General may redact

the names and personally identifiable information of any

victim from the report submitted to Congress under subsection

(b), as necessary to protect privacy.

That is it. I wanted to read it to all the Members of the Senate so everyone knows exactly what they are voting for. It is straightforward: President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, do not destroy the evidence of the Epstein files, and within 60 days present this Senate with answers to questions regarding the case.

That is what this amendment does. It is exactly the same as the amendment that passed unanimously, with Republican and Democratic support, out of the Appropriations Committee, the same provision that Senator Barrasso this morning said was a Republican proposal. So I hope all the Republicans will join us in supporting this measure.

And with that, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, just briefly because, as I made clear, this was the very provision that Senator Barrasso this morning said that Republicans have supported, and he indicated that this was something that they wanted to see move forward.

Well, that was this morning, and now it is 6 this evening, and I don't know what changed. But the language is the same as what Senator Barrasso talked about this morning. It is the same as what the Senate Appropriations Committee passed on a bipartisan basis.

All of a sudden, when it comes time to actually get it done on the Senate floor--not just as part of an appropriations bill that is going to wind its way through this place for weeks or months--when it is time to actually get it done, Republicans are opposing the idea of transparency. I find that quite shameful.

I understand my colleague from Oregon Senator Merkley is interested in making some points and maybe asking some questions.

I yield the floor.

I will.

Yes, that is exactly right.

Well, Senator Merkley, I didn't hear an explanation. I heard the objection. I have not heard the explanation for the objection, and I think it may be difficult to provide an explanation given the fact that the Senator from Wyoming was here on the floor of the Senate earlier, as you and I have both pointed out, extolling the virtues of this amendment and, in fact, partially taking credit for it, saying Republicans supported this and wanted it.

But, apparently, that was this morning, and now is now. And I suspect it is because when it was included in the appropriations bill, it was included in a vehicle that, as we have said, will wind its way through a long road to this process. Who knows how many people will try to take it out behind closed doors in conference.

That is why we have an opportunity right now, in the light of day, here in the U.S. Senate, to actually pass this and send it off to the House immediately. And if they passed it, it could go to the President's desk.

Yes.

Well, that is the heart of the amendment.

Again, I will read just the first sentence:

The Attorney General shall retain, preserve, and compile

any records or evidence related to any investigation,

prosecution, or incarceration of Jeffrey Epstein; and any

service provided to victims identified in such an

investigation.

It could not be clearer. The amendment does ask for a report on other very relevant information regarding the Epstein case.

But to your fundamental point here, this is simply a directive not to destroy evidence that could be in the Epstein files.

As I said, we just learned, at least within the last 48 hours, that somewhere along the road, the FBI had redacted Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files. So we know it is in there, and we know that at some point in time, it was redacted. We want to make sure these records are not destroyed.

Yes.

Yes, it was. It was adopted by a voice vote.

Again, I cannot, Senator, read the mind of any of our colleagues. It was a voice vote, but of course the objection we are seeing here on the floor of the Senate today indicates that our Republican colleagues do not want to go on record and vote, when it comes right down to it, on this proposal, making sure the records are not destroyed.

It would have passed immediately if he had not objected to it.

That is right. It would have gone directly to the House of Representatives.

Correct.

It is a very fair question. And as I indicated, we didn't get an explanation for the objection. We had the objection made and no further comment from our colleagues on the Republican side.

I do think it is important that we underscore the fact for our colleagues and anybody listening that this amendment is very straightforward: Don't destroy evidence. It does also require, within 60 days, that a report be provided that provides certain relevant information regarding the Epstein case, and I am not sure why anybody would not want that information to be presented either.

I mean, this is like--oppose an effort to save the records and don't void the evidence and also voting against the idea of the Attorney General providing the U.S. Senate with answers to some fundamental questions.

Again, as we discussed this morning, the fastest and most complete way of doing it would have been to support the Senator from Oregon's motion this morning--UC request this morning. Just release all the files, right? That is what should be done. We should release the files, and we should do it now.

You don't even have to have a vote in the House to do that. The Attorney General could do what she said she was going to do and just release them on her own. That is what many of us have called for. That is what the Senator's motion this morning was all about.

But my goodness, you should be releasing them. But for goodness' sake, why not at least send a directive saying, ``Don't destroy the evidence''?

Mr. President, I could not agree more. Our message is simple: Release the damn Epstein files, and for God's sake, don't try to destroy the evidence while we wait for those files to be released.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from New Mexico for that.

I call up my amendment No. 3115 that I offer on behalf of myself and Senators Alsobrooks, Kaine, and Warner and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, USDA has proposed a massive reorganization plan having done absolutely no due diligence. They have not talked to families or to farmers or to rural communities about it. They have not backed up their estimates of cost savings, and they have not provided the information needed to assure that this reorganization will not harm the critical work that USDA does.

This amendment directs USDA to take a step back and provide a transparent, informed, carefully considered plan for any such reorganization before implementing it. In other words, look and aim before you shoot.

It requires a vetted benefit-cost analysis and review of how this reorganization would impact USDA's staff expertise and ability to provide customer service. It requires a public comment process so our constituents and stakeholders can weigh in. Once USDA takes those steps, Congress can assess the need for that reorganization in fiscal year 2027.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor J. Thomas Manger, the former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police. Chief Manger has served our country honorably in law enforcement for nearly 50 years. Throughout his career, he has strived to ensure the safety of our communities, including as chief of the Montgomery County Police in my home State. In July of 2021, Chief Manger stepped up with strength, courage, and grace on behalf of our Nation following the attack on our Capitol on January 6.

As chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, Manger has demonstrated principled leadership, unwavering service, and a commitment to safeguarding members of Congress, staffers, and visitors. Following January 6, he reviewed over 100 safety recommendations, implementing many of them in an effort to improve security to protect the Capitol, the American people, and our democratic process. During his tenure, Chief Manger also worked to grow the Capitol Police force by hiring new officers, retaining current officers, and implementing policies to meet the changing demands on Capitol security.

Chief Manger's storied career in law enforcement began long before his decision to come out of retirement to protect our Nation's Capital. He started with the Fairfax County Police Department as an officer and rose through the ranks. He earned the Silver Medal of Valor in 1993 and served as police chief in Fairfax from 1998 to 2004. In 2004, he began his 15-year tenure as chief of police in Montgomery County. During his term, he proposed requiring body cameras for all officers, implemented de-escalation training for officers, and received several national awards. His numerous accolades include the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's 2007 Law Enforcement Award, the Anti-Defamation League's 2016 Gorowitz Institute Service Award, the National

Immigration Forum's 2017 Keeper of the Dream Award, and the 2018 FBI National Executive Institute Penrith Award.

I commend Chief Manger for his many years of service, his dedication to the safety of the public and the stability of our democratic institutions. I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking him for his extraordinary service to this institution and wishing him a well- earned, enjoyable, and fulfilling retirement.

Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I object to the end request, but I want to begin on a point of agreement, which is, other than the final request made by the good Senator from Kansas, I agree with everything he said.

As he said, we have four appropriations bills bundled together here-- proposed to be bundled together here: Military Construction and Veterans; Agriculture; Leg Branch; and the Commerce, Justice, Science bill. And I have the privilege of working with Chairman Moran on what we call the CJS bill, and it makes very important targeted investments in a whole range of areas that he described.

And, of course, one of the areas of jurisdiction of this subcommittee is the Department of Justice and the FBI.

And, in my view, we absolutely have an obligation to make sure we address the needs and the mission of the men and women of the FBI, that we provide the resources to carry out that mission, and that we make sure that they are safe in conducting that mission.

And I am here on the floor objecting to this request today because, just a short time ago, the Trump administration took $1.4 billion that this Congress had set aside on a bipartisan basis and proposed that, instead of going to a site for a new headquarters that had met the security requirements and that had gone through a competition, the administration proposed to effectively rescind those funds and use them for a different purpose, without presenting a plan as to how their alternative would meet the security requirements for the men and women of the FBI.

I am not going to repeat the whole history over many, many years that this Senate has gone through with respect to ensuring that the men and women of the FBI have a new headquarters that is fit for the purpose and meets the security requirements. I will only point out that the FBI, in making the determination with respect to where they had planned to go before the Trump administration's intervention said this:

Because of the symbolic nature of the client mission and

performance of functions critical to the security of the

United States, a Facility Security Level 5 designation was

selected for this campus.

In all the work that this Senate has done and all the work to date at the FBI, it has been determined that, wherever the FBI makes its new home and new headquarters, it has to meet the level 5 security requirements because of the special mission of those men and women and because, I think, all of us want to make sure that they are protected in the greatest degree that we can make sure their security is protected.

So in the Appropriations Committee, I worked on an amendment that would have said that the FBI has to move its new headquarters to the place that had already won the competition, that had already been selected, and one of the reasons is the level 5 security requirement.

I am not asking that in the amendment that I proposed for the floor today. I asked for something very straightforward. I proposed an amendment that simply says that wherever the FBI chooses to make its new headquarters, it has to meet the level 5 security requirements that it, itself, has laid out as necessary to defend the safety of the men and women who do that important work.

That is an amendment that we should include in this bill, and that is why I am here right now objecting to the proposal that is being put forward, because while we put an even stronger version of that amendment at one point in our bill in the Appropriations Committee, that action was then reversed. And so now I am proposing that we just put the other alternative forward.

And, again, based on the consistent position taken by the FBI, taken by Members of the Senate, that level 5 security requirement is important, and wherever they go, they should be able to do a study. They should be able to conduct a study before they move people into a new headquarters, before they put people at risk, to show that that new place--wherever it may be--is fit for purpose and meets those security requirements.

That is a simple request that I would have thought all of us could stand behind: making sure that the new headquarters of the men and women of the FBI meets the security requirements that we and they have set out.

And so that is why I reserve the right to object, and I will now ask the Senator to modify his request so that my amendment No. 3126 be included in the list of amendments in the managers' package to be adopted en bloc.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

I just want to take a few moments to respond to the Senator from Kansas.

First of all, I do think it is the business of the subcommittee that oversees the Department of Justice and the FBI to ensure that the men and women of the FBI have a headquarters--wherever it is--that meets the security standards that they have set out for themselves for their own protection.

I also agree with the Senator from Kansas in that we should and do work together on a bipartisan basis on the Appropriations Committee and that we should do that as a separate branch of government than the executive branch.

The only reason we are here is that the President of the United States decided to seize funds that had been set aside by this committee on a bipartisan basis and others and use them for another purpose.

This is a moment, actually, where, if the Senate were adhering to its traditions of bipartisanship, it would stand up together against the President of the United States. But that is not what we are witnessing on so many of these appropriations bills.

What happened in this case was the President of the United States interfered with the process. I did offer an amendment in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It was actually adopted on a majority basis. It was an amendment not only to ensure that the FBI would go to a level 5 security facility, but it was an amendment that said it should go to the one that was selected after a long process.

After that was adopted on a bipartisan basis, our Republican colleagues on the committee said that all of the work that we had done on the bill--all of the work the Senator from Kansas is talking about when it comes to the NSF, when it comes to NASA, when it comes to NOAA--that we were not going to let all of that good work go forward if that amendment to ensure the security of the FBI facility at the selected site were attached.

I have never seen anything like it in Congress. Even before I got here, I, too, was a student of Congress and loved the process. What happened was, after that amendment got on in the Appropriations Committee on a bipartisan basis, our Republican colleagues said: We don't want that so badly that we are now going to undo that entire process.

That is not bipartisanship--and we know why that happened too. It didn't happen because members of the Senate Appropriations Committee-- Republicans and Democrats--didn't think that it was the right thing to do to preserve what we had set out before and make sure that the men and women had a level 5 security headquarters. We did it because the President of the United States was going to throw a fit if that provision stayed on. That is why people reversed the position.

So I say to my friend from Kansas: We should do our work on a bipartisan basis, and we shouldn't make our decisions out of fear about what somebody in the White House is going to do, because that--that-- distorts the entire process here in the U.S. Senate.

I believe that, if we set this aside for now, we will, I hope, be able to get it back on track in September. I hope we will return to what has been that bipartisan tradition and not allow the executive to come in and undo work that has been done on a bipartisan basis. This is not about picking the location in this amendment. This is simply about making sure that the men and women of the FBI have a building that is secure.

I will just end with this: The last time the Trump administration was in the White House, they also played with this whole issue. They said they wanted to construct a new headquarters on the site of the current FBI building, the Hoover building. Then they submitted to Congress a 25-page prospectus that they said would meet the security requirements of the men and women of the FBI. Guess what. The inspector general of the Department of Justice and the inspector general of GSA said that the work they showed did not meet those security requirements. It did not meet those security requirements.

We should make sure wherever they go--Maryland, Virginia, Washington--that the congressional directive, that FBI directive, for the purposes that I set out at the beginning because of the kind of work the FBI does--we need to honor that. That is what this amendment does. That is what it did when it was first adopted by the Appropriations Committee on a bipartisan basis before everyone ran the other way because they were going to make the White House mad.

So I object.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking the chair of the Appropriations Committee. And I see the vice chair of the Appropriations Committee is here on the Senate floor, Senator Murray. I want to thank them for the work that we did together.

The Senator from Maine described very well the important initiatives and funding that are contained in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, CJS bill. For all those important purposes, I agree.

I would ask why our Republican colleagues are saying that they won't let this package go through if it includes a provision that requires that wherever the FBI moves its new headquarters, that it meets the security requirements that we have set out for the men and women of the

Mr. President, I will be very brief because we have covered a lot of territory here.

I hope we can get to the place where we make decisions in this Senate, in this Congress, on their own merits, among ourselves, without direct intrusion by the President of the United States.

That, unfortunately, is what we witnessed in the Appropriations Committee process.

We would be in a very different place here on the floor today if we hadn't seen the effort to overturn a decision the committee had made on a majority vote with respect to the security of the men and women of the FBI. It would have been a very different situation.

So, again, let's dedicate ourselves to making sure that as we move forward, we do so as Senators--Republican and Democratic Senators--and not essentially take direction from the President of the United States who is trying very hard to interfere with this process.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on this day 60 years ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the law that created Medicare and Medicaid, protecting the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of American families.

Those were our predecessors here on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and they passed that bill by the overwhelming vote--at least by today's standards--of 68 to 21, with support from Senators of both parties. And they did that because

they understood how vital access to affordable healthcare is for all Americans.

It was 15 years ago that Democrats and President Obama built on that legacy with the Affordable Care Act, which expanded Medicaid and delivered affordable healthcare to 45 million more Americans.

Taken together, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act are three parts of one promise, a promise of health and a measure of economic security for seniors, for people with disabilities, for the most vulnerable Americans, and for Americans working hard paycheck to paycheck.

So 60 years ago, one Senator explained that the promise of Medicare and Medicaid meant this:

We do not intend to kick you out on the street. We are

going to see you through. You are not going to become

forgotten people.

That is how one Senator explained his vote to make sure we provided coverage under Medicare and Medicaid.

Well, 3 weeks ago on the Senate floor, President Trump, with allies among the Republican Senators, forgot about those people, those people for whom that law was passed 60 years ago today. Because 3 weeks ago, right here on the Senate floor, Republicans passed what Donald Trump calls the Big Beautiful Bill.

It certainly is beautiful if you are a billionaire or a very wealthy person. For everybody else, it is an ugly betrayal. Because that bill, passed about 3 weeks ago, here on the Senate floor, slashed Medicaid. It cut into the Affordable Care Act and, combined, cut over a trillion dollars in healthcare to fund tax breaks for billionaires and very wealthy people, taking healthcare coverage away from 10 million people--even more if you count the failure to extend the tax credits from the Affordable Care Act which will expire at the end of this year--but 10 million on the terms of that bill alone, including nearly 246,000 of my fellow Marylanders.

And as others have said, this will increase the cost of healthcare for everybody else because it has a ripple effect throughout the insurance markets. When you start denying affordable healthcare to people on Medicaid, it puts upward pressure on premiums for everybody else as people go to get emergency care in hospitals and other places.

Now, one of our Republican colleagues reportedly said to members of the Republican caucus:

I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about

Medicaid, but they'll get over it.

That was the quote from a Republican Senator. I can tell you, from talking to my constituents and hearing from my colleagues all over the country, the American people are not going to get over it.

Because of this bill that was passed 3 weeks ago, millions of Americans are going to lose their coverage, not because they are ineligible but because Republicans purposefully put up all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles to assess accessing those healthcare needs. That is increasing the costs and making it harder for people to access healthcare.

And because of the failure to extend the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, a big part of those tax credits which will expire at the end of this year, another 20 million Americans will see their premiums jump an average of $700 starting in January. And in my home State of Maryland, I mentioned that about 246,000 Marylanders are going to lose access to healthcare because of the bill passed 3 weeks ago. And if we don't fix the issue of the expiring ACA tax credits by the end of the year, 70,000 Marylanders could lose their healthcare coverage altogether, and they will see their premiums increase 68 percent.

As others have discussed, rural hospitals were already in a very, very tough position across the country, and now hundreds could close.

We are also seeing seniors put at greater risk in nursing homes because of cutbacks on the number of nursing staff we normally require to make sure that people's elderly loved ones get the care they need and deserve, and these cuts will make families face impossible choices.

Again, all of that--those cuts to Medicaid, the cuts to the Affordable Care Act--is for one purpose: to partially offset the cost of tax breaks for billionaires and wealthy people. I say ``partially offset'' because, even after cutting Medicaid, we are going to see an increase in the national debt of $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and that doesn't include additional interest on that debt.

By cutting Medicaid so deeply, President Trump and Republicans are hurting people at every stage of life. You know, doctors take an oath to make sure they help people at every stage of life, from cradle to grave. What happened 3 weeks ago is going to hurt people from cradle to grave. For many, it will be an early death sentence by denying access to important care, including preventive care. Officially, death certificates may read ``died from late-stage cancer'' or because of an accident in a nursing home, but when you look behind that, you will find that it is because that late-stage cancer wasn't detected earlier or because the nurse who should have been there at the nursing home wasn't there. That will be as a result of the bill that passed 3 weeks ago.

We believe that Donald Trump and Republican Senators know better. We certainly know that they heard from their constituents about what would happen if this bill passed. Like many, I received letters from hundreds of constituents, saying: Please don't pass this bill.

I am just going to read two short excerpts from a few of my constituents.

Mary, from Carroll County, said:

My 52-year-old son is battling colon cancer and has to

undergo chemotherapy every two weeks. He has been sick since

2019 and lost his business and cannot work. He lost

everything and is living with me and on Medicaid. The chemo

is enabling him to have one good week out of two. If they

take his Medicaid away, it will be a death sentence.

That is what Mary from Carroll County said.

Frank, from Cecil County, said:

PLEASE, PLEASE do not pass the budget, I have an autistic

son who can only work part time at a grocery store. He is on

Medicaid. If he loses his [insurance], we will not be able to

cover him. Please do not let this happen. PLEASE!

I received these heart-wrenching letters from many constituents, and I know that all of us in this Senate did as well. Unfortunately, we saw over 50 Senators look the other way in the face of all of those letters and, instead, vote for a bill that cut healthcare for millions of Americans in order to partially finance tax cuts for the very wealthy.

We cannot allow this to continue. In fact, we need to reverse it. That is why I am joining others on the Schumer-Wyden bill to repeal the healthcare cuts that were enacted in that betrayal of a bill 3 weeks ago and to permanently extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which will otherwise expire at the end of this year.

Again, 60 years ago, former Senators passed the Medicare and Medicaid law. They enacted that, improving the lives of millions of Americans. Three weeks ago, we saw the opposite happen--the great betrayal. We need to make sure that we reverse the damage that was done. Then we need to build a better healthcare system for every American. That is what we should be doing at this point in our history: building on the legacy of the Senators 60 years ago and building on the legacy of the Affordable Care Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: Senator Van Hollen for up to 10 minutes, Senator Durbin for up to 2 minutes, Senator Risch for up to 5 minutes, and Senator Sanders for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to oppose the transfer of over $675 million of U.S. taxpayers' money to finance 1000-pound bombs and 20,000 fully automatic rifles and other offensive weapons to the Netanyahu government.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza has gone from horrible to hell on earth. Yesterday, we reached the grisly marker of over 60,000 people killed in Gaza, over half of them women and children. And that number could be much higher. More than 133 people have died of starvation, over 80 of them children, most of them this month.

Experts have been warning about the threat of famine in Gaza for months, ever since the Netanyahu government imposed a total blockade on all humanitarian assistance going into Gaza on March 2.

This is a man-made, preventable crisis, and the solution is clear. The Netanyahu government must immediately allow the U.N.-led distribution system to resume delivery of aid into Gaza to avert a full-blown famine.

I have long said that Israel is completely justified in its war against Hamas, which murdered over 1,200 people and seized over 250 hostages on October 7. And we must not rest until every remaining hostage comes home, and there must be no more October 7s.

But the Netanyahu government is not justified in imposing collective punishment against all of the people of Gaza to pay for the sins of Hamas, and yet that is what is going on as it uses food and humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.

There are now a half million people facing famine-like conditions in Gaza, but they are not just numbers. Colleagues, this is an awful, awful picture, but we have to look at what is happening in Gaza. This is baby Zainab. She weighed 6.6 pounds when she was born 5 months ago. She was 4.4 pounds when she died a few days ago. Her life could have been saved with a special type of baby formula, but none of that formula can be found in Gaza. It wasn't let in.

For months, the Netanyahu government has been blocking thousands of truckloads of lifesaving aid that could save babies like Zainab. And yet the Netanyahu government is denying what every human being can see, and they are denying the humanity of people suffering.

Just 3 days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu said:

There is no starvation in Gaza.

Even Donald Trump, who has given Netanyahu a blank check, called out that lie. He said that ``there is real starvation in Gaza. You can't fake that.''

The World Food Programme says it has enough food to end the crisis, but the Netanyahu government won't let them deliver all of it. And last week, they blocked almost half of the aid convoys that the WFP requested permission to bring in.

On July 27, the editorial board of Haaretz, Israel's longest running newspaper wrote simply:

Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible.

This chart from the Wall Street Journal tells the story. As you can see, back here in March, the Netanyahu government imposed a total blockade for months on all food and humanitarian aid entering Gaza. After several months, they began to let a little trickle of aid in, but they did not allow the deliveries to resume through the tested distribution system that had been run by the United Nations and supported by trusted organizations like the World Food Programme. Instead, they replaced it with an organization that goes by the name of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but there is nothing humanitarian about it. It is a shadowy private organization backed up by mercenaries and the IDF.

The food distribution blocked by Israel had over 400 aid distribution points. The GHF operation has only four, and they are not always open. The operation has become a death trap. When you have 4 sites to feed 2 million people, it is not surprising that thousands of desperately hungry people are

surging to get what they can. And as they surge, it is well-documented that many have been shot and killed, sometimes by GHF security contractors, more often by IDF forces.

The U.N. Secretary General said:

Any operation that channels desperate civilians into

militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.

That should be obvious to all of us. Yet the Trump administration is using $30 million of U.S. taxpayer money to fund that deathtrap, and it is sending more taxpayer dollars to fund bombs to the Netanyahu government to continue the devastation of Gaza.

Colleagues, this must end. The Netanyahu government must immediately allow tested U.N. distribution systems to resume operations and quickly surge food to starving people.

It is important to note that the Netanyahu government claimed it was replacing the U.N. distribution system because Hamas was systematically diverting food intended for civilians for its own purposes. From the start, that was a pretext and a big lie. The U.N. distribution system had strong safeguards to prevent any significant diversion to Hamas, and they were working.

Cindy McCain of WFP said her organization saw no evidence of any effort of Hamas to loot aid trucks. Israeli military officials told the New York Times in a story in just the last couple of weeks that there is no such proof. They said:

The U.N. aid delivery system was largely effective in

providing food to Gaza's desperate and hungry population.

An internal U.S. Government analysis that just came out in the last few weeks found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas. That was also the testimony of former U.S. Special Envoy for Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield.

So why did Israel dismantle a system that was kind of working and replace it with one that is killing civilians as they try to get food? The simple reason is also horrifying. It is that the Israeli Government wants to use food as a weapon of war and for population control.

They opened four aid sites--mostly in the south--to displace Palestinians and move more in that direction. The Israeli Government is trying to herd the Palestinian people into concentrated enclaves as a prelude to pushing them out of Gaza entirely.

It is not a ``secret'' plan, colleagues; it has been right out there in the open. In fact, in February of this year, President Trump said he wanted to remove Palestinians from Gaza. And the Netanyahu government and the Prime Minister himself embraced the plan--which, by the way, had been previously proposed by members of his rightwing coalition. In fact, recently, his Heritage Minister said, as others have quoted, that the government was ``rushing toward Gaza being wiped out'' and ``driving out the population.''

Colleagues, this is part of a coordinated campaign by the Netanyahu government--a government that has declared the removal of Gaza's population as a strategic goal of the war. That is ethnic cleansing by any other name, supported by American taxpayer dollars.

The extremists in the Netanyahu coalition do not just have their eyes set on Gaza. As we speak, Israeli settlers are encroaching farther and farther into the West Bank, killing more and more Palestinians who live there.

It is important to note that one of the arms sales we are discussing is the transfer of 20,000 fully automatic rifles to the Israeli national police, headed by one of the most extreme members of the government, Ben-Gvir--somebody who handed out rifles to settlers a little while ago without having any idea where they were going.

On top of that, back in February, President Trump suddenly revoked all U.S. sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank that had been put in place by the Biden administration. That sent a terrible message.

In just the first 6 months of this year, we have seen the highest rate of settler attacks in years. One of those happened on July 11, when violent settlers beat to death a 20-year-old Palestinian-American citizen from Florida while he was visiting his family. His name was Sayf, and he is the seventh American citizen killed in the West Bank since January 2, 2022, and the fifth in just the last 19 months--some killed by Israeli settlers and others by Israeli security forces.

Just this week, a Palestinian activist who helped make the Oscar- winning documentary ``No Other Land'' was shot and killed by a violent settler who had been sanctioned under the Biden administration--the sanctions the Trump administration withdrew.

Meanwhile, on July 23, just a week ago, the Israeli Knesset approved a symbolic resolution that supported annexing the entire West Bank--a place where 2.7 million Palestinians live.

Colleagues, for decades, peacemakers on both sides have hoped to make the West Bank and Gaza a foundation of a Palestinian state. We need to make sure that we don't support these efforts that undermine peace and security in the region. Children are starving before our eyes.

Colleagues, if ever there was a time to act, it is now. It is overdue, but let's act now and support the resolutions put forward by Senator Sanders.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it was just a few weeks ago on this Senate floor that our Republican colleagues, on a straight party-line vote, cut millions and millions of dollars--billions of dollars from investments in healthcare, like Medicaid. As a result, millions and millions of Americans are going to lose access to healthcare. And for what? All for a giant tax giveaway that disproportionately benefits the very wealthiest in America. They called it the Big Beautiful Bill. It was beautiful if you are a billionaire. For everybody else, it came at your expense in one form or another.

Now here today on the floor of the Senate, we have Republicans bringing a partisan bill once again--this time to cut $9 billion in important investments, including from public radio and public television and, as my colleague Senator Murphy just indicated, from very important foreign assistance programs that are essential to American diplomacy and ultimately to American power and interests around the world.

This is not ``America First''; this is ``America in retreat'' or President Trump surrendering.

To add insult to injury, these cuts are coming after Republicans in this very body and the House of Representatives passed and President Trump signed into law provisions that included the very programs we are talking about cutting today. In other words, this is a total switcheroo where one day, Republicans vote for a package that includes essential investments, and the next day, they turn around on a party-line vote and erase the investments that were just signed into law. That will undermine the entire appropriations process.

I have been listening to comments from some of my Republican colleagues, and they say this is about reducing the national debt. I am all for reducing our deficits and our debt. But I ask my Republican colleagues, if you really cared about fiscal responsibility and deficits and the debt, what happened 2 weeks ago on the floor of the Senate? Because Republican Senators pulled all-nighters in order to pass legislation that resulted in the largest debt increase in American history, throwing away trillions of dollars to in part pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

That bill that passed the Senate just 2 weeks ago will add $4 trillion to our national debt. Why is that? Because even after they made cuts to Medicaid, which will throw millions of Americans off their healthcare, even after that, the tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy people were so big that it is still going to explode the deficit by $4 trillion.

Now here they come 2 weeks later to pass this rescissions bill that cuts very important services and very important components of our foreign policy for $9 billion. Mr. President, that is 0.23 of 1 percent of the debt that the Republican Senators voted to increase just 2 weeks ago.

So nobody is fooling anybody when Senators come down to the floor and say ``We have got to do this because of our national debt,'' having exploded the national debt by $4 trillion just 2 weeks ago.

So what does this package include? Well, it includes cuts to public radio. That includes NPR. It includes PBS. Also, public television is cut. So we explode the debt by $4 trillion 2 weeks ago, and this week, we are coming after Big Bird. That is their solution to dealing with the national debt.

If you look at the cuts to public radio, they can have very harmful impacts around the country because in many rural areas especially, people do use access to public radio to get alerts about natural disasters. So this would put those communities at risk.

This is part of a pattern. It is part of a pattern we are seeing in the funds being withheld by this Trump White House that we already passed. Here, we are talking about cutting funds through this partisan process, but the Trump White House is unilaterally withholding important funds for disaster relief.

We learned after the tragic flooding in Texas that claimed so many lives that FEMA failed to answer nearly two-thirds of the calls on its disaster assistance line because the Trump administration had cut so much of the FEMA staff.

In my State of Maryland, a number of months ago, we witnessed terrible flooding in the western part of our State. In fact, some of you may have seen the images of elementary school students being evacuated from their school on boats. Fortunately, no one died in that flood, but the damage was extensive.

We are still waiting on the Trump administration to answer our State's request for some help for those families and small businesses that were hit.

Now, this is a pattern that goes beyond just disaster relief. In Maryland,

we have also seen cuts to FEMA programs designed to protect communities and let them have the resources to put in place protections like higher walls so that they are not victims of natural disasters. Those funds were cut. So we see those cuts to those essential programs.

We are also seeing this across the board when it comes to global health. I am not going to go through all of those cuts. Some of my colleagues have identified those. I will just say that our foreign assistance is not charity. Our foreign assistance, as colleagues have said, has been an essential element of our overall foreign policy. If you talk to wise generals at the Defense Department, they will tell you that our national security and foreign policy strategy rest on three pillars: Yes, of course, defense and military power but also on diplomacy and development. So, when you make these deep cuts that are impacting diplomacy and development, including, by the way, the 1,300 patriotic State Department employees who were just fired last week-- when you do that, it is our adversaries who benefit, and it is the American people who lose, along with our allies, because those are not giveaways, those investments.

You know, if your neighbor's house is on fire, you don't just sit in your house and let your neighbor's house burn. You go help them out because they are your neighbors, and it is the right thing to do, but it is also the smart thing to do because that fire may be heading to your house next.

And when it comes to issues like global health and the spread of disease around the world, it is the same story: We save millions of lives, including millions of kids' lives whom we help, but we also prevent those diseases from jumping over the oceans and coming to hurt people right here in the United States of America.

But this administration doesn't care. If you look at a Lancet study, they have estimated that the cuts that the Trump administration has made in the area of global health and other important investments will cost 14 million lives by the year 2030, including 4.5 million children who will die. We just saw a story in The Atlantic that revealed the Trump administration is paying to incinerate--to light on fire--500 tons of emergency nutritional biscuits that could go to feed hungry kids.

So I really urge my colleagues to take a step back and not move forward with these cuts. As I said, the notion that this is somehow their contribution to reducing our national debt when they exploited our national debt by $4 trillion over 10 years just 2 weeks ago is ludicrous.

But I will close, since I see the vice chair of the Appropriations Committee on the floor, with just a final point that does deserve repeating, which is that we have had a bipartisan appropriations process, and we have done our very best to preserve that tradition, but when you take an action on one day and we vote on a bipartisan basis for important American priorities, whether in public radio or in addressing global health issues--when we do that one day and the President of the United States signs that into law and then we run down here a few months later and say, ``Do you know what? We didn't mean it with respect to these programs, and we, on a partisan basis, are going to yank them away,'' that undermines trust and confidence in this entire system.

So both for the American people and the important investments that we did make, which they will now lose, but also for the future of this institution and the power of the purse, I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to honor the memory of the late Terrance Taylor, a treasured Marylander and true public servant who served in Congressman Steny Hoyer's office for over two decades, including as his district director.

Terrance's expertise and unwavering commitment to service touched countless lives across Maryland's Fifth Congressional District. He embodied the very best of public service: compassionate, dependable, and driven by a tireless dedication to ensuring that Marylanders received the assistance and benefits they deserved. Whether it was a veteran seeking benefits, a senior navigating bureaucratic redtape, or a community rebuilding after hardship, Terrance was always there as a steadfast, patient, and kind advocate.

Beyond his outstanding professional contributions, Terrance will also be remembered as a devoted husband to his wife Candace and as a loving father to his son Simon. Terrance leaves a legacy of leadership, compassion, and good humor. I ask my colleagues to join me in expressing appreciation for and paying respects to Terrance's legacy and memory, with gratitude for his impact on the people of Maryland and our Nation.

I call up my amendment No. 2585 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I know it has been a long day's journey into the night, but I think Senators were surprised to learn that this bill has a $100 million slush fund directed to OMB. So that would be on top of its existing budget.

This is at a time when FEMA grants to many of our States have been canceled; grants for law enforcement have been frozen; grants for victims of crimes are on hold. That is not efficiency. That is creating chaos and uncertainty, and I ask my colleagues: Why in the world would we want to send another $100 million to OMB?

They are currently before the Appropriations Committee with their current request for fiscal year 2026. They want a 13-percent increase there; we will consider their request.

They, of course, are telling everybody else to do more with less, but they want more. We should get rid of this wasteful spending. They don't need $100 million. And so I am proposing to strike the $100 million, reduce the deficit at least by $100 million.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I would say the best way to save taxpayer money is right now--

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague and the ranking

member of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Merkley.

I just want to start by reading a statement. This is a quote:

Anyone that says current policy baseline [is the right way

to go] is engaging in intellectual and economic fraud . . .

it's intellectually lazy. My basic mission in life is just to

try to create some honest math.

That wasn't from Senator Van Hollen or anyone on this floor; that is from a Republican Member of the House, Congressman Schweikert from Arizona, talking about exactly the issue we are debating here in the U.S. Senate.

Let me read you another quote--a little more colorful--again about this Republican accounting fraud:

This is fairy dust, and they're [just] full of crap. And

I'm gonna call them out on it.

That is Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.

They are right. This is a fraud. This is a fraud that would make the Enron scammers blush.

I quote those House Members for a reason, because we can disagree with what they did in their bill--and I strongly disagree with it--but at least they used honest math, and at least they used the math that is required by the rules here in the Senate, the honest math that Republicans here in the Senate want to dodge because it will both tell the American people just how big the deficits are but also because it will screw up their whole entire plan.

Just so people listening have some sense of how these Senate numbers are designed to disguise the real impact of their deficits, look at, for example, the basic individual tax rates in the House bill. When they extended those tax rates from the Trump 2017 bill, it cost $2.2 trillion under what we call the current law baseline, which is the reality baseline because that is what it will cost when you understand that they sunset at the end of this year, and that is what it will cost to renew them.

So under honest accounting, it is $2.2 trillion. Under the Senate fraudulent accounting, that $2.2 trillion deficit miraculously becomes an $83 billion deficit.

Let's look at the House permanent extension of key deductions for businesses. That would cost--honest accounting--$821 billion; under the Senate accounting scam, $6 billion.

So what we are seeing here is this blatant, deliberate effort to mislead the American people about the true costs of this bill, about the deficit impacts of this bill, about how it will impact the debt.

We all know that when the debt goes up and we have to put more of our costs on Uncle Sam's credit card, it puts upward pressure on interest rates. That means Americans will pay higher interest rates on their mortgages, on their car loans, and everything else.

So when you try to hide the deficit impact, you really are trying to fool the American people, and we are here to blow the whistle.

Now, I just want to show our colleagues something that was put together by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. If you look at the blue, you can see that for each year, starting this year--2025, 2026--the blue is what Senate Republicans claim their bill will add to the deficit. The red is how much more it will actually add to the deficit.

So at the end of this 10-year period, what you see is that Senate Republicans are claiming that their bill will add $441 billion, which is still a big number, but the real number, when you do honest accounting, when you add up all of these, is $4.2 trillion--a much bigger number.

I do want to point something out on this chart that I think everybody watching should understand. If you look at these orange parts--these are the additional deficits from tax cuts--starting here, in year 2029, 2030, you will see that they actually do start going down. Why is that? It is because the tax cut that President Trump promised for no tax on tips--they phase those out. This is all just a make-believe ruse: Yes, we start providing no tax on tips, but those disappear.

The tax breaks for wealthy people--they go on, and they go on not just for this 10-year period. But the reason they violate all the rules of reconciliation is because they keep going on after that.

As Senator Merkley said, if you look at the entire history of the Byrd rule--that is Senator Byrd--it was designed to make sure that 51 Senators, through a vote, could not make these kinds of permanent changes in any area, but specifically they were worried about areas that would increase the national deficit and debt.

So what Republican Senators are doing is not only misleading the American people, but they are violating the entire structure that carved out this special procedure that we call reconciliation for the budget, which was intended to lower deficits and debts, not have them go on forever.

As Senator Merkley has pointed out, I think if you look over a 30- year period, we are talking about $35 trillion-plus additional to the debt, and Republicans want to hide that from the American people.

That is budget fraud, pure and simple, and it is a violation of the rules of the U.S. Senate, this whole special structure that was created not to blow bigger holes in the debt and deficits but to actually try to constrain them. So shame on everybody who is part of this fraud on the American people.

I yield the floor.

I will.

So they are simply saying--their current policy baseline that they want us to make believe about would say that this wouldn't cost them; in other words, if they extended this, it wouldn't cost anything.

It is interesting to note--and not only does that expose the fraud behind the current policy baseline, but they made a very deliberate choice. Even though they now say that they can make these tax cuts permanent and still comply with the rules, they decided to make the tax cuts for very rich people permanent. But even though they say it is not going to cost anything anymore to provide tax cuts with no tax on tips, they are phasing those out.

And all of these areas are where President Trump made promises that he was going to take care of some working people. Well, those go away fast. The tax cuts for the rich, they go on for not just a full 10 years, but they keep going, which is why this is a violation of the entire reconciliation process.

Clearly, they are not. I mean, this is literally magical thinking. This is why Republican Congressman Chip Roy called this ``fairy dust'' and why the Congressman from Arizona said this was pure intellectual and economic fraud. That is what it is. That is the bottom line.

Well, the Senator is right. It was right down this hall, actually, that President Trump was sworn in, and he said it was going to be a new golden age for working people. Well, as you are pointing out and this chart clearly shows and their own budget reveals, it is clearly a golden

age for billionaires and people who make a lot of money. And, in this bill, they make sure that that golden age for very rich people goes on forever.

They had a few little crumbs that they were throwing for a little while, we can see, to others, but just for a little while and just small amounts compared to the golden age for the billionaires.

I just want to say, to answer the question from the Senator from Rhode Island and pick up on what my colleagues have said, that when I was the senior Democrat, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan was the chairman of the committee. And, look, we disagreed on many things; we agreed on many things. We both agreed that we should get our deficits and debt under control. We had different ideas on how to do it. He wanted to privatize Medicare. We wanted to close tax breaks for the rich. But the reality is that the Holy Grail--the only guiding North Star for Republicans at that time-- was: We have got to bring down deficits and debt.

This is not that Republican Party--not in any way, shape, or form. They clearly don't give a damn. In fact, they are worried, as we can see, that the American people still care, which is why they want to engage in this fraudulent scheme.

But I will just close on this: I remember one of those years--I believe it was the 2012 Republican convention--they even put up a debt clock. They put up a debt clock at the convention.

Right? I am looking under my desk for the debt clock here because the Republicans seem to have hidden it away forever. They want to wish it away. That is what they are telling us.

I thank my colleagues. And I think, as Senator Merkley said, if you care about the deficit and debt and you don't want working families to have to pay for these tax cuts for billionaires and the rich, vote no on the bill.

Mr. President, Donald Trump likes to call the bill that Republicans are trying to rush through this Senate the Big Beautiful Bill.

Well, it is big all right. It took the Senate clerks nearly 16 hours to speed read through it. But it is only beautiful if you are a billionaire or otherwise very wealthy in America. For everybody else, this is a big ugly betrayal of a bill--betrayal because tax cuts for billionaires are coming at the expense of virtually everyone else.

I agree with many of the things my colleague from North Carolina, Senator Tillis, just said. But I have also read the bill. If you look at the bill, the tax benefits overwhelmingly go to the very highest income earners in the United States of America. Fifty percent of those tax benefits go to just the top 5 percent.

So this is a choice that is being made by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress to give to billionaires additional tax handouts at the expense of the rest of the country. They are choosing to engage in a huge transfer of wealth from people who are working paycheck-to- paycheck to those who are living off their huge inheritances or gigantic stock portfolios.

Americans are going to have to pay for the tax cuts for billionaires in many, many ways. Millions will lose access to healthcare. Others will no longer be able to put food on the table. Others will not be able to afford to pay heating bills on freezing nights. Virtually, every American will see their energy bills increase and their health insurance premiums go up. And every American is likely to face higher borrowing costs for their home mortgages or car loans--again, all so billionaires and very wealthy people can get big tax cuts.

Let's look at some of the real hits to American families, starting with the attack on healthcare. Donald Trump said he would ``love and cherish'' Medicaid. He said the people won't be affected. That is a lie. What he loves are tax cuts for his billionaire buddies.

Let's just take a look. This bill pays for over a trillion dollars in tax giveaways to people who make over $500,000 every year by cutting a trillion dollars of health benefits from those who rely on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

Think about that tradeoff. Indeed, because of the cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in this bill, 12 million Americans will lose access to healthcare coverage. On top of that, another 5 million Americans will lose access to health coverage because Republicans refuse to extend the tax credits that millions of middle-class Americans use to purchase coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

So while extending tax cuts for the very wealthy, they are not extending the healthcare tax credits that middle-class Americans use to help afford health insurance. The result of these cuts and the refusal to extend those tax credits means that nearly 17 million of our fellow Americans will lose access to healthcare coverage.

In my State of Maryland, that is 229,000 of my fellow Marylanders. And who are these Americans? Who are these Marylanders? They are babies and children. Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program cover 38 million children in America, 700,000 children in Maryland.

Medicaid covers 40 percent of births in America, over 40 percent of births in Maryland. More mothers will die as a result of pregnancy- related deaths if this bill passes.

I think we will also know Medicaid is especially important to helping people through the vulnerable stages of their lives. It covers one in four people with mental health or substance use disorders. It is the primary payer for long-term health services, covering 60 percent of nursing home residents. If even a fraction of those residents lose coverage, entire nursing homes can close, and those families will have to figure out how to care for their expelled loved ones. An analysis that was done estimates that as many as 500 nursing homes could close because they are on the cusp.

Rural hospitals are also especially vulnerable. It is estimated that up to 300 rural hospitals could close if this bill passes.

Americans with disabilities, Medicaid is absolutely essential to their lives. It helps them receive home and community-based care so they don't have to choose between getting the care they need and being separated from their loved ones. A study by Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania predicts that this bill before the Senate will result in over 51,000 preventable deaths each year--preventable deaths. So, officially, the death certificates will say that somebody passed away because they had late-stage cancer. It was detected too late because they couldn't get the preventive care they needed or an accident occurred at a nursing home because there were not enough nurses on site. But those reasons, those conditions will have been set because this bill passed.

And, again, making millions of Americans more vulnerable to pay for tax cuts for the ultrawealthy is unconscionable, but it is the choice being made in this bill.

Now, 17 million people who will lose their health coverage is a very big number to wrap our heads around. So I want to read just a few stories of Marylanders who rely on Medicaid and who have been watching closely this whole effort that has unfolded on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

I had a call from one of my constituents who has a son. Her son takes chemotherapy, and he relies on those chemotherapy treatments to sustain his life. She wrote to me that if he loses access to his health insurance, that it would be ``a death sentence.''

Another Marylander wrote to me about his autistic son who is still able to work but who depends entirely on Medicaid for support. He also said: Please don't let the Senate pass this bill.

And the stories go on and on and on.

Just the other day, Senator Alsobrooks and I had a telephone townhall. We had 12,000 Marylanders joining us. After that call, we received many more stories about people who would really be in desperate shape if they lost access to their health coverage.

Now, on top of the 17 million Americans who stand to lose their health coverage, all other Americans are likely to see higher premiums because what happens when you have uncompensated care is more people go to the emergency rooms at the hospitals. Those hospitals can't just eat all of those additional costs, and at the end of the day, those additional costs cycle through the system in the form of higher premiums for others. We are already seeing that impact in Maryland as insurance companies today look at the possible liability they will have going forward as a result of this legislation.

Beyond the 17 million who will lose access to affordable healthcare, you also have millions of Americans who are going to be hit as a result of the cuts to the food and nutrition programs, to the SNAP program. We are going to see a whopping 20 percent cut--$200 billion--to the SNAP program. Over 40 million Americans get some kind of help from that food and nutrition program, and over 3 million of them will lose their SNAP benefits entirely. Others will see rising costs. In Maryland, it is going to impact 684,000 people, most of whom are families with kids.

In addition to 17 million Americans losing access to healthcare coverage and in addition to the 40 million Americans who will be impacted by cuts to food and nutrition programs, I want to just focus for a moment on another hit to American households. Some of us have discussed this on this Senate floor before, but it hasn't gotten as much attention, and it relates to the energy bills Americans pay, including their electric bills, because this bill will drive them up. It directly attacks the production of more clean energy, and less energy with rising demand means higher costs for households.

I don't know if folks remember about a year ago when Donald Trump had a state dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where he begged 20 fossil fuel CEOs for campaign cash. It was reported on at the time. Well, he succeeded in raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donations. Now we see the payoff in this bill to those powerful special interests, and that payoff comes in two forms.

First, this bill gives big oil companies a new $1 billion tax break. As a result, some of the fossil fuel companies will pay zero dollars-- zero dollars--in Federal income tax.

Second, this bill--and the Senator from North Carolina referred to some of the provisions that will have this impact. This bill sabotages the production of more clean energy. It does so by slashing production and investment tax credits for clean energy and scuttling new clean energy projects. It continues the Trump administration's baseless attacks on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is a program we established that will be a win, win, win for our environment, for our economy, and for family pocketbooks.

By cutting these clean energy incentives and initiatives, this bill will reduce the overall amount of energy added to our electric grids by at least 50 percent by 2035. Think about that. So this bill is going to result in a dramatic reduction in the amount of new energy produced that goes on the electric grids. With less energy generated and higher demand, household energy costs and bills are going to go up. In fact, it is predicted that household electricity bills will go up by $110 on average as soon as next year and by up to $400 per year for families over the next decade.

This will serve the interests of big oil and gas producers and utility companies that benefit from the higher prices that consumers will have to shell out. This will also do something else. It will surrender entirely the clean energy playing field to China, which already has a big head start on us in the area of clean energy deployment. So this is not America first; this is very much America in retreat.

I don't often agree with Elon Musk, but he is absolutely right when he said just a few days ago that the latest Senate draft bill will ``destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country--utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.'' That is the Republican Senate bill--looking in the rearview mirror rather than ahead.

Again, what is the driving purpose? What is the North Star of this bill? It is to give very, very wealthy people tax cuts at the expense of everybody else. Everything else is sacrificed.

As a result of those tax cuts, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the highest income earners will get an average tax break of $255,000. The top one-tenth of 1 percent will get a tax break of $255,000. Individuals making over $1 million a year will get a $35,000 tax break. As I said earlier, almost 50 percent of all of the tax benefits, all of the tax moneys, will go to the top 5 percent of income earners. To make that happen, as I have said, everything else gets sacrificed--cuts to Medicaid, cuts to food and nutrition programs, cuts to clean energy that result in higher costs for consumers.

But even after making all of those cuts and imposing all of that pain on so many Americans, this Republican bill is still going to add over $4 trillion to our deficit over the next 10 years and an estimated $35 trillion over the next 30 years.

So despite paying for part of those additional costs through cuts to Medicaid and food and nutrition programs, they are going to blow the roof off of our deficits and debt. Make no mistake, when you do that, you cost every American because it will generate upward pressure on interest rates, which raises costs for Americans who want to take out a mortgage to buy a home or want to get a car loan or for small businesses. In fact, the Yale Budget Lab projects that the House-passed bill would add over $1,000 a year to the cost of a mortgage and over $800 a year to the cost of a small business loan. That is the House- passed bill. The Senate bill will be worse because the Senate bill adds about $1 trillion more to the deficit over 10 years than the House bill.

I do want to just focus on a final aspect of the deficit and debt impact of the Senate Republican bill, and that is this very deliberate effort to use fraudulent accounting to hide the deficit impact of this bill from the American people.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you sign a contract to rent an apartment for $2,000 a month. You know that is going to cost you $24,000 for the full year. Now, at the end of the year, if you want to keep renting that apartment at that rate, any normal person would say: Well, that is going to cost them another $24,000. Senate Republicans want to tell the American people that the cost of continuing to rent that apartment for another year is zero--zero--because the amount of rent they have to pay in year 2 is the same rent they had to pay in year 1.

In other words, Republicans want to say that because they have been giving billionaires and wealthy people tax cuts for 10 years, it will cost nothing to extend them for another 10 years. That is the so-called current policy baseline.

In other words, if you just keep in place for another 10 years those same tax breaks for billionaires and others, we don't have to count the lost revenue, and we don't have to count the amount the deficit will increase as a result of that lost revenue. A third grader can see that this is bogus math.

Let me read a colleague's statement, made this year by somebody. Here is what he said:

Anybody that says current policy baseline [is the way to

go] is engaging in intellectual and economic fraud.

I wanted to make sure I got that quote correct because it was made by a Republican Congressman from Arizona, Congressman Schweikert.

Here is another quote:

This is fairy dust, and they're full of crap. And I'm gonna

call them out on it.

Who said that? Congressman Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas.

I think it is worth quoting those Republican Members of Congress because while I dramatically disagree with what they did in their House bill, at least they used honest accounting. At least they didn't try to perpetrate this budget fraud that we are witnessing here in the U.S. Senate--a budget fraud that would, I dare say, make the Enron scammers blush.

If you go through the numbers, it is dramatic. For example, an honest scoring of the bill shows that extending the individual tax rates from Trump 2017 will cost $2.2 trillion. That is what the House of Representatives said--$2.2 trillion. When you use the fraudulent budget math that Senate Republicans want to use, all of a sudden, that is $83 billion.

If you look at the cost of extending key deductions for businesses, the House used accurate accounting; it comes to $820 billion over 10 years. Under the Senate plan, it is $6 billion.

So I am not going to spend a ton of time going over this chart, but I do want to put it up here. This is from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The blue shade in each of these years shows what Senate Republicans say their bill will cost in each of those years. There is the so-called current policy baseline. This is what those House Republican Members called fraudulent accounting, and it is. If you add up all of those blue deficits over those 10 years, they claim it is $441 billion additional debt over 10 years. But if you use the honest accounting that we have always used in the U.S. Senate for the purposes of budget reconciliation, you get the full bar, including the orange numbers, which is $4.2 trillion in debt over those 10 years.

I do want to point out to my colleagues something interesting because they have these dashed orange lines. What this is representing is that some of these costs from lost revenue in some of these out-years go down. That is because under this House Republican plan, the tax cuts for people with the no tax on tips--they go away. They vanish. They vanish right here in 2029. But the tax cuts for very wealthy people, for billionaires and others--they go on for the 10 years. In fact, they go on forever.

The last point I want to make is, by letting them go on forever--the tax cuts for very wealthy people--Senate Republicans are violating the entire structure of the budget reconciliation process because when it was first devised, the entire purpose of it was to reduce our deficits and reduce the debt. Republican Senators are perverting the entire purpose of that special procedure that allows things to pass in the U.S. Senate with 51 votes and not having to secure the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster. They are violating that entire structure. Again, why? Because they are hell-bent on making sure those tax cuts for very wealthy people go on forever--again, at the expense of everybody else.

I will just close by pointing out that it wasn't that long ago that just down the hall here, in the Senate Rotunda, Donald Trump took the oath of office. He looked at the cameras, and he said he wanted a new golden age for America.

But this is not a golden age for America. It is a gilded age for the wealthiest people in America, and those are the people he was really speaking to because they are the ones who were sitting behind him on Inauguration Day: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, the tech titans, the billionaire Cabinet--more billionaires than any Cabinet, by far, in American history.

That is who this bill serves. It serves very wealthy and powerful people, and it does so at the expense of everybody else in America, in one form or another.

And I hope--I hope--our Senate, on a bipartisan basis, will give it a big thumbs down.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today in support of Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution to make crystal clear that, as required by the Constitution of the United States, the President may not take offensive military action against Iran or any other country without congressional approval.

Last Saturday, the world learned through a social media post by Donald Trump that he had ordered an attack on three of Iran's nuclear enrichment sites, the first-ever direct U.S. military assault on Iranian territory.

We all agree that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon, but bombing is not the best, most sustainable way of achieving that goal, and nothing--nothing--I heard yesterday at the intelligence briefing changes that assessment.

The bombing attack was also a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to the Congress the power to declare war. And make no mistake, initiating a bombing attack against another country is not only a matter of foreign policy, it is an act of war.

For anyone who claims otherwise, I ask them to consider this: What would we have said if Iran or any other country had flown bombers over our country and struck our facilities? We would rightly call it what it was, an act of war.

While the President has the authority to defend the United States when attacked, article I of the Constitution vests the responsibility to go to war explicitly and exclusively in the Congress, not in one person in the Oval Office.

James Madison put it best in 1793 when he wrote:

[I]n no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found

than in the clause which confides the question of war or

peace to the legislature, and not to the executive. . . . The

trust and temptation would be too great for any one man.

That is why the Framers of the Constitution designed a system of checks and balances to stop the government from ignoring the will of the American people, and the American people absolutely do not want the United States to be dragged into war, unnecessary wars.

So beyond the debate over the particular politics or policy of President Trump's decision to attack Iran, this debate is about the rule of law. And no President--past, present, or future--is above the law. Those strikes violated American law, and prominent legal experts have said they also violated international law.

The fact that there is now a cease-fire in place does not obviate the need to pass this resolution. President Trump has already shown that he is willing to initiate hostilities on his own, and, indeed, as Senator Kaine just mentioned, President Trump just said a few hours ago that he would ``absolutely'' consider bombing Iran again.

And just last month, when asked whether he needs to uphold the Constitution of the United States, President Trump answered: ``I don't know.''

We, the U.S. Senate and the House, should make clear that compliance with our Constitution is not optional.

Now, President Trump did not just attack another country in violation of the Constitution, he did so in spite of the facts presented by our own U.S. intelligence Agencies. Just 3 months ago, the U.S. intelligence community noted that they ``continue to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.''

That assessment has been reaffirmed year after year since at least 2007 that Iran was not producing a nuclear weapon and had not made a decision to do so. You would think that the facts and intelligence assessments would matter when a President chooses to attack another country. Apparently, not in this case.

Indeed, when President Trump was confronted with the U.S. intelligence community's assessment just days before he launched the attack, he dismissed it. It was an inconvenient fact. It was inconvenient because it showed there was more time for diplomacy to work, time to get a negotiated solution.

Secretary Rubio was asked about this intelligence assessment after the United States bombed Iran. His answer, very revealing, he said: ``Forget about the intelligence'' and then went on to try to justify the timing of the attack.

Now, as I said earlier, most, if not all of us, agree that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, which would pose an existential threat to Israel, threaten America's interests in the region by further emboldening Iran's malign actions, and increase the risk of nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East.

So the question is, How do we best accomplish that goal in a durable way that doesn't unleash unintended consequences and put Americans and others at greater risk?

President Obama answered that question. That is exactly what he accomplished through the agreement his administration negotiated with Iran 10 years ago this July.

President Obama made a deal with Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon, and the agreement was working. Iran was subject to round-the-clock, 24-hour inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. That agreement made the whole world a safer place.

But in his very first term, Donald Trump ripped up that deal. Not surprisingly, Iran began to enrich uranium at higher levels, though still not at the 90 percent level needed for bomb-grade material.

Now, by the time Donald Trump returned to the White House this year,

even he and his administration had come to understand that the best way to ensure that Iran does not decide to develop a nuclear weapon is through negotiation. That is why, earlier this year, he dispatched his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to open negotiations with Iran, and those negotiations were ongoing. Indeed, the sixth round of discussions were scheduled to take place on Sunday, June 15, just 2 days before the Netanyahu government launched its attacks on Iran. Not surprisingly, that Israeli attack derailed the ongoing United States-Iran negotiations.

It is important to remember that a decade earlier, Prime Minister Netanyahu worked very hard to derail President Obama's ongoing negotiations with Iran. Indeed, Prime Minister Netanyahu even addressed a joint session of Congress, urging the Congress not to proceed with those negotiations.

Prime Minister Netanyahu did not succeed in derailing President Obama's JCPOA. That agreement went into effect, and it did make the world and our country and Israel a safer place.

But unlike then, Prime Minister Netanyahu succeeded this time. He outmaneuvered Donald Trump. That story is well-documented in a June 17 New York Times piece entitled ``How Trump Shifted on Iran Under Pressure from Israel'' and a June 23 Washington Post story entitled ``Netanyahu decided on Iran war last year, then sought to recruit Trump.''

Simply put, Prime Minister Netanyahu accomplished that goal. President Trump joined his war of choice against Iran. And in doing so, President Trump put our men and women in uniform in the region in grave danger and unnecessary risk.

Following the attack, Iran fired 14 missiles at a major U.S. air base in Qatar. Fortunately, Iran gave the United States and Qatar advance warning, and there were no casualties. But the full extent of Iranian retaliation could play out throughout the region and other places around the world over a long period of time.

And what was accomplished? What was accomplished? To hear President Trump tell it, the Iranian nuclear program was ``obliterated.'' That is flatout untrue--untrue.

We know from public reporting that a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment found that the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by ``a few months.''

Whether it is a few months or somewhat longer, the point is this: The strikes did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program. Before the attacks, U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, and in the aftermath of the attacks, Iran may well change its mind and move forward.

So President Trump disregarded a politically inconvenient U.S. intelligence assessment when he launched the attacks, and he is now making up his own politically convenient narrative about the results.

What has been particularly cowardly is the Trump administration's efforts to escape their own failures by hiding behind the amazing men and women of the U.S. military. To hear President Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth tell it, any criticism of their decision to attack Iran is somehow a criticism of the American military. This is garbage, and they know it. Our service men and women performed their mission flawlessly, and they did it with courage and with resolve.

It is especially rich to see Donald Trump, who has so often insulted and belittled our military heroes, now try to hide his own failings behind them.

So let's be clear, while we owe our servicemembers a debt of gratitude, we do not owe that debt of gratitude to President Trump or members of his Cabinet for their decisions or for their current efforts to manipulate the narrative about the results of the attack.

I have to say, as my colleague Senator Kaine mentioned, that the spectacle of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth berating the press for questioning their claims that the Iranian nuclear program had been ``obliterated'' only revealed their manic desperation to hide the truth.

Remember when President George Bush declared, with respect to Iraq, ``Mission accomplished''?

What President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are communicating is that it is somehow treasonous to ask about intelligence reporting that casts doubts on their claims. This is not only an effort to intimidate and silence the press. It also sends a terrible message to all the intelligence analysts in the U.S. Government. It says that anybody who presents facts that don't fit President Trump's political narrative is trying to, as Secretary Hegseth said, ``make the President look bad'' or ``undermining the success of our pilots'' or ``trying to manipulate the public mind.''

That is ridiculous. We have already seen the dangers of manipulating intelligence to fit the President's narrative, rather than fidelity to the facts. The United States went to war in Iraq under false pretenses. Remember when the Bush administration told America that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction? Remember when Vice President Cheney warned, in March 2003, that ``if there's a mushroom cloud in New York, you will know that Saddam Hussein is behind it.'' And, of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So false intelligence and false narratives that fan the flames of unnecessary wars cost us dearly. The Iraq war cost the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money. The war upended the region, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, strengthened Iran, and unleashed ISIS on the world. It was the worst U.S. foreign policy blunder in a generation.

The Trump administration has now created a culture of fear and retribution throughout the Federal Government. We have already seen patriotic Federal employees be fired for telling the truth. A whistleblower just filed a complaint the other day. He had been at the Justice Department. He said: I didn't sign up to lie.

So the real challenge is this: The President has not obliterated the Iran nuclear program, but he is doing everything he can to obliterate the credibility of the U.S. intelligence community so he can invent his own reality without contradiction. That is why it is more important than ever that Congress stand up for the Constitution and insist that the President cannot initiate hostilities without approval from Congress.

That is what this resolution asks. It asks: Do you support the Constitution and the role it gives to Congress to declare war? Do you believe that the people's representatives should have a voice in whether American lives and, specifically, the lives of our Nation's Armed Forces, are put at grave risk?

We owe it to our troops, and we owe it to the American people to ensure that no President--not this President or any other--can unilaterally commit our Nation to go to war.

The Constitution does entrust that responsibility to us. Let's not abdicate it.

Colleagues, I urge you to vote yes on the Kaine War Powers Resolution.

I yield the floor.