Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues, to join the many Granite Staters who have written my office and expressed their grave alarm in opposing the nomination of Mr. Kennedy as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is without experience or qualification for this post. He is uninformed and apparently uninterested in the most basic elements of healthcare policy. He entertains and spreads conspiracy theories that virtually everyone in this body knows to be dishonest and dangerous.

In a different time, in a different political moment, with a different President, Members of this Chamber would have joined together to resoundingly reject Mr. Kennedy's nomination. In fact, in a different time, where qualifications and character mattered, Mr. Kennedy's nomination would never have made it to the floor. But here we are.

Today, it appears that Mr. Kennedy will be confirmed and that Members of the U.S. Senate--the so-called world's greatest deliberative body-- will sacrifice the health of our fellow Americans by failing to stand up for science and for the truth.

For even the most skilled and experienced person, running the Department of Health and Human Services is a really daunting task. We expect and trust the HHS Secretary to direct the administration of critical programs like Medicare or Medicaid; to direct research so that we can find cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases; to help bring new lifesaving medications to market; to find ways to make medicine and care more affordable; to help ensure that our children grow up healthy and that our parents age with dignity.

When a crisis hits, we look to the Secretary of Health and Human Services for leadership, to help lead the fight against fentanyl or to protect our communities from a pandemic.

There is, perhaps, no aspect of public policy as complicated as healthcare, and there are few aspects of life as fundamental as being healthy.

And to be sure, there are grave healthcare challenges facing our country. The cost of healthcare is too high; the cost of prescriptions, too steep. While we have made extraordinary progress in recent generations, we know that too many diseases still cry out to be cured, and too many people struggle to get the care that they need where and when they need it.

The challenges are real, but progress is possible.

When I was Governor of New Hampshire, I worked with Republicans and Democrats in the legislature to help our State adopt Medicaid expansion. And during the first Trump administration, we came together to end surprise medical billing with a new bipartisan law. Of course, there is much more work to do. The point is that when we work together, embrace commonsense solutions, and have the right leadership, we can forge progress. But it takes hard work. It takes seriousness to tackle a challenge as daunting as healthcare. It takes experience, talent, and ability. We are talking about the health of our country and of our children.

This is a job that requires us to search far and wide across our country to find the right person; someone who is informed, capable, and forthright; someone who has a proven track record of leadership; and someone willing to tell the truth in service to the goal of helping every American to be healthy.

Instead, the President of the United States offered us Mr. Kennedy. It is entirely unclear to me what qualifications Mr. Kennedy brings to this office. He has never run an organization or a business even one- hundredth of the size of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has no background in medicine, science, health policy, or government. Most concerning, though, is his complete and utter lack of even the most basic knowledge of the Department he is supposed to lead or the health policy debates and challenges that our country has been grappling with over the last several decades.

It is not simply that we have been asked to hope that Mr. Kennedy learns on the job. It is not simply that we are being asked to grade Mr. Kennedy on a curve. It is worse than that because even for his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy couldn't be bothered to even do his homework.

During his confirmation hearing, I asked Mr. Kennedy some fairly basic

questions about Medicare and Medicaid, the most well-known health programs overseen by the Department he seeks to lead, programs which tens of millions of Americans count on for their care. He couldn't accurately identify a single part of Medicare. He got every question I asked wrong.

When it comes to Medicaid, which, among other things, provides coverage for about half of the births in the United States, he wrongly said it was fully, federally funded, which it isn't.

Let me be clear: The administration is asking the American people to place these critical health programs in the hands of a man who has no idea what they even are. That is a big ask. And it is an ask we wouldn't make of our own constituents. No one in this body would hire even an entry-level healthcare staffer who did not understand the basics of Medicaid and Medicare. Why should we exercise a different, weaker standard for the person who is supposed to be in charge of both? Why, with this administration, does the bar go even lower when the office becomes even higher?

If Mr. Kennedy cannot be bothered to learn the basics about Medicare and Medicaid, he will certainly not bother to stand up for them. This administration has made clear that it is willing to gut Medicaid in order to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.

The President's new Director of the Office of Management and Budget has, in fact, proposed that the administration cut Medicaid--a program that provides health insurance coverage for approximately 80 million Americans--by more than one-third. Does anyone think that Mr. Kennedy will be a voice of reason; that he will speak out on behalf of American families and make the case for saving Medicare or Medicaid? He can't even describe what they are.

Mr. Kennedy is an intelligent and educated man. But education and intelligence aren't a substitute for taking the job seriously. If Mr. Kennedy were in the running for a different post, his failure to understand the basics of our healthcare system might not be relevant. But it so happens to be the American people's great misfortune that he is, in fact, being called to serve as the highest public health official in our land.

Mr. Kennedy's lack of qualifications and knowledge about healthcare have real consequences. If confirmed, his lack of preparation, experience, and interest in America's healthcare will leave our country worse off. Our people will be less healthy.

And nobody will feel Mr. Kennedy's careless disregard for the magnitude of his position more than America's women. When I was initially considering Mr. Kennedy's nomination, one mark in his favor was his long record of advocacy on behalf of a woman's fundamental freedom to make her own health decisions. When Mr. Kennedy was in New Hampshire campaigning for President, he told Granite Staters:

I am pro-choice. I don't think the government has any

business telling people what to do with their bodies.

But since he came out in support of President Trump, Mr. Kennedy has made a remarkable discovery. He decided at the age of 71 that his long- held belief in reproductive freedom for women was wrong. All of his principles about women making their own choices were suddenly no longer true.

Instead, as the Nation's leading public health official, he has said that he will faithfully and enthusiastically carry out the anti-choice policies of an administration that continues to dedicate itself to undermining and taking away a woman's fundamental freedom.

This isn't a hypothetical issue. In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kennedy said that he and the Trump administration would be examining the safety of the drug mifepristone, which is used for abortions and in miscarriage care. During the hearing, I showed Mr. Kennedy study after study--stacks--hundreds of pages of research done over the course of decades, all of which demonstrate the safety of this medication. Let me be clear, the safety has been proven. If Mr. Kennedy and the Trump administration continue to persist in studying a drug that is proven to be safe, it is clear that their objection is not with a lack of research; their objection is to the result of that research. So they want to sow doubt about it. They want to sow confusion. And once they do, they will hide behind the very doubt that they have created as a reason for denying women the most basic of human freedoms: body autonomy.

Mr. Kennedy, having sold out his pro-choice principles, will surely help in that effort. He certainly will not stand in the way of it. The debate about reproductive freedom is fundamentally a debate about whether one believes in the basic promise of our Declaration of Independence that all of us are free and equal. The question for Mr. Kennedy and all those who would deny women this basic freedom is whether they believe that women have the capacity and judgment to make their own healthcare and reproductive decisions just as men do.

Make no mistake, Mr. Kennedy did not have a miraculous conversion something like the Apostle Paul's on the road to Damascus on this issue. He just made a cold-blooded, expedient choice to cut a path to power. He decided that the freedom of women was a small price to pay in order to be able to call himself a Cabinet Secretary. I have had good- faith disagreements with friends and colleagues on the issue of abortion, but Mr. Kennedy is different.

Mr. Kennedy has spent his lifetime arguing for a woman's reproductive freedom. But he now abandons what he used to refer to as a core value for a title and for what he, apparently, thinks is more important than freedom--being in Donald Trump's orbit.

Americans have a particular disdain for those who sell out the freedom of their fellow citizens in pursuit of power. We call such people many things. We seldom call them ``Mr. Secretary.'' Even if Mr. Kennedy was not inexperienced, even if Mr. Kennedy had basic knowledge regarding our health system, even if Mr. Kennedy was not willing to imperil freedom for women, members of both political parties should reject his nomination because Mr. Kennedy, who has forged a career of peddling cynicism and conspiracy regarding vaccines, is, perhaps, the most uniquely dangerous man ever nominated to head America's Department of Health and Human Services.

Vaccines are among the greatest achievements in human history, and America has been at the center of that success. Our doctors and scientists were instrumental in helping vanquish smallpox and banish polio. Because of vaccines, more than 20 million people walk today who otherwise would have been stricken with polio. Hundreds of millions of people are alive today because of vaccines. I am reminded of the words of a previous HHS Secretary:

Vaccines are some of the most thoroughly tested medical

products we have. Vaccines are safe, effective, and

lifesaving.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who was appointed by President Trump, said those words during his first term. He was right when he said this 6 years ago. But today, Mr. Kennedy asserts that this statement is wrong.

Mr. Kennedy has a long history of dealing in both outright lies and clever half-truths to sow cynicism, mistrust, and confusion regarding vaccines. He has, at various times, discouraged people from getting vaccines for measles and polio.

Mr. Kennedy has led litigation to discredit the HPV vaccine, a vaccine which has led to a dramatic decrease in cervical cancers among young women.

When the pandemic hit, President Trump helped marshal America's scientific resources in Operation Warp Speed to produce a COVID vaccine in record time. This was, in my mind, one of the greatest public health achievements in decades and a real credit to President Trump. But Mr. Kennedy helped lead efforts that attempted to revoke President Trump's COVID vaccine's authorization.

And for more than 25 years, Mr. Kennedy has helped perpetuate the dangerous lie that vaccines cause autism. During his confirmation hearings, my colleagues virtually begged Mr. Kennedy to recant these views. But Mr. Kennedy would not, insisting that if he somehow saw more evidence--only then, perhaps--he might reverse course and tell people he was wrong.

This is a dangerous game that Mr. Kennedy plays. He hides his anti- vaccine conspiracies under a cloak of deniability. Sometimes he outright lies. But most of the time, he insists that he is merely raising questions and that he is simply a man looking for answers. But to borrow from Benjamin Franklin:

Half the truth is often a great lie.

When Mr. Kennedy is presented with facts, he ignores them. He ignored the conclusive data that my colleagues showed him proving that vaccines do not cause autism. He, instead, continued to rely on one tiny, outdated, faulty, disproven study from way back in 1998; a study that the Journal that originally published it has since withdrawn to support his claim, instead of relying on the exhaustive studies that have been conducted since then that prove there is no link between vaccines and autism.

It is fine to ask questions. It is often urgently important. But it is not doctors and scientists who are ignoring Mr. Kennedy's questions; it is Mr. Kennedy who is ignoring their answers. Mr. Kennedy's vaccine conspiracies are not a quirky personality or harmless eccentricity, but especially with the authority and megaphone he will have if he is confirmed, it will be a grave danger to the health of our people.

Mr. Kennedy has already spent much of his career taking legal action against safe and effective vaccines. With the full power of the Department of Health and Human Services, it stands to reason that he will use his post to limit access to certain vaccines, pull FDA approval of others, or change guidelines and recommendations concerning what vaccines children should receive.

But more than that, with the platform of HHS Secretary, Mr. Kennedy will undermine public trust in vaccines and will discourage a growing number of parents from getting their children vaccinated. As for Mr. Kennedy's insistence that is simply raising doubts about the safety of vaccines doesn't mean that he is urging people not to get their children vaccinated--well, Mr. Kennedy may be unqualified, but he is not naive. He knows full well that millions of people listen to his words. Millions more will listen should he be confirmed to this office.

And so what happens? How much, Mr. President, does a lie about vaccines truly cost? Let us say that a greater number of Americans become wary of vaccines due to Mr. Kennedy's musings from the seat of the most powerful public health perch in the world. A greater number of families decide that their kids don't need vaccines. Sometimes that will mean just skipping one vaccine. Sometimes it will mean skipping all of them. These parents aren't necessarily conspiracy theorists themselves, but they have read some scary, if untrue, stories online, and as they try to figure out what to do, the most important public health authority in the land chooses to give credence to the lies rather than reassure parents with the truth.

Maybe, as is true with every parent, these parents are worried about their child developing a disability, and now they hear Mr. Kennedy suggest that vaccines maybe cause autism, so they hesitate. They don't return to the pediatrician's office for the next dose of a vaccine that will prevent their child from getting a deadly disease.

As more and more children become unprotected and as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., fails to advocate for safe, effective, lifesaving vaccines, children get sick, they spread the disease, and all of a sudden, we are back to the kind of deadly disease outbreaks that doctors used to witness in the early decades of the 20th century--a time long enough ago wherein many Americans don't realize what it was like to lose a loved one to an illness like measles. There will be more measles outbreaks like the one going on right now in West Texas, or maybe, instead of measles, it will be polio. People will get sick, and people will die. Take a look in a museum at a rusting iron lung. Go to the graves of the unvaccinated measles victims in American Samoa. That is the cost. That is the price of this particular lie.

I also take issue with the notion that Mr. Kennedy's anti-vax cynicism is somehow advancing scientific progress or healthy debate. The truth is that Mr. Kennedy's conspiracies are not particularly new. They are old theories that have been disproven but that Mr. Kennedy keeps alive by continuing to recycle them long after the debate has been concluded. So, no, I don't object to engaging in new debates on unproven science; I object to rehashing old debates on proven science.

Remarkably, during the hearings, Mr. Kennedy and some of my colleagues sought to place Mr. Kennedy in the tradition of great scientific minds like Galileo and Newton, who dared challenge the scientific status quo with their own provocative questions. There is, of course, a key difference. The difference is that Galileo and Newton were right, and Mr. Kennedy is wrong. The evidence vindicated Galileo. The evidence refutes Mr. Kennedy. That difference is what separated Galileo from the village crank. That difference is what separates a witch doctor from a real one.

This never-ending cycle of cynicism--of relitigating old debates about whether vaccines cause autism--doesn't further scientific progress. It doesn't unlock new truths or cures. It keeps us stuck in the past, stuck having the same debates over and over and over again. All that changes is that the mound of evidence disproving Mr. Kennedy grows higher and higher.

In his hearing, Mr. Kennedy said that he wouldn't apologize for asking what he called uncomfortable questions because ``we have massive health problems in this country that we must face honestly.''

The problem is not that Mr. Kennedy is asking uncomfortable questions; the problem is that Mr. Kennedy himself is not willing to accept the answers to them. The problem is that Mr. Kennedy is wasting our time and our money with dishonest and already settled debates, debates that distract us from the task at hand--the task of tackling the real and significant health problems that are facing our country-- because in his lifetime of fearmongering, what good has Mr. Kennedy actually contributed to the mission of public health?

Mr. Kennedy says he wishes to make America healthy again, but when Mr. Kennedy suggested that the polio vaccine gave people cancer, what child did he make healthier? Mr. Kennedy says he is trying to promote vigorous scientific debate. When Mr. Kennedy suggested that the United States of America develop Lyme disease as a bioweapon, what medical breakthrough did that yield? What disease did he help cure then? Mr. Kennedy's vaccine fears garner him headlines, but have they made healthcare more affordable for a single American family?

Think about the hours and resources that Mr. Kennedy has urged his followers to invest in relitigating proven science and what progress could instead have been made if that money were invested in finding treatments and cures to diseases. That is the price of Mr. Kennedy's insistence that we remain frozen in time in our understanding of science.

Mr. Kennedy has not made America healthier in his career thus far, nor will he if he is confirmed. He will make America less healthy, more doubtful, more divided, more cynical, and further away from finding cures and making scientific progress.

We have real healthcare challenges in this country. The American people need healthcare costs to come down. They want to stop having to make impossible choices between making ends meet and getting their children the medications they need. They want it to be easier to get a prompt appointment with a good doctor in their neighborhood who talks with them and doesn't rush them out the door. They want better mental health care in our schools. They want cures. They want their loved ones to stop being held back by chronic diseases. They want to say fewer early goodbyes because of cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. They want to be able to age at home with dignity and high-quality home care.

Making our country more healthy is no small task, but we can do it. We live in a great country. The American people are talented and imaginative. When we work together, we have the capacity to do extraordinary things. We can make our country better. We can save more lives. But we cannot move forward if we confirm a Cabinet Secretary who engages in the same, tired debates over and over again, if we confirm a Cabinet Secretary who goads us into fighting each other rather than fighting for cures or for lower healthcare costs.

If this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, it will, in effect, be declaring that experience doesn't matter and qualifications do not count. It will be ignoring plain truths and suspending our capacity for

reasoning--all because a President demanded that the majority of this body do so.

If this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, it will be betraying who we are as Americans. It will be sacrificing a better future for the sake of needlessly relitigating the past. It will be confusing a charlatan with a prophet and cynicism with wisdom.

In the end, if this body confirms Mr. Kennedy, more parents will reject vaccinations for their children, more people will get sick, and a growing number of children will likely die.

The exact impact of Mr. Kennedy's confirmation in terms of lives lost or progress thwarted will, of course, be hard to quantify. Regardless, what we do know for certain is that Senators on both sides of the aisle are willing to denounce the lies that Mr. Kennedy has spread, and we saw that in our hearings. But, colleagues, the issue in this moment isn't whether you will stand up against lies; the issue is whether you will stand up to the man who tells them. And in this moment, in this Chamber, it appears that not enough of my Republican colleagues are willing to do that. I hope I am wrong.

I urge my colleagues to reject Mr. Kennedy's nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in expressing my opposition to the President's nominee for the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Russell Vought, and to join the millions of Americans who have been gravely alarmed by the President's order to cut off already appropriated Federal funds for communities all across the country, a move which has been a longstanding priority for Mr. Vought.

I can think of few people more dangerous and deeply unsuited for the role of director of the Office of Management

and Budget, or OMB, than Mr. Vought. It is not simply that Mr. Vought's proposals will devastate communities across our country--though, if enacted, they certainly will. It is not simply that Mr. Vought's values are deeply out of step with the majority of Americans--though, they are.

And it is not simply that Mr. Vought has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the notion of government by consent of the governed-- though, time and again, he has done just that. It is because in the President's order to cut all funding for all Federal grants, a passion project straight from the pages of Mr. Vought, the President's reckless and illegal actions have already thrown communities into chaos, and they have hurt the American people.

Any nomination for a senior post in an administration is, to a degree, an act of faith. We never fully know the manner in which someone will perform their duties until they are in the post. But with Mr. Vought, the situation is different. Not only do we have a clearer picture of how Mr. Vought would approach the job from his last time that he held this post, not only do we have a blueprint from the proposed budget developed by Mr. Vought at his think tank, we need only to look at the events of the last week to see how Mr. Vought would handle his office.

Mr. Vought was the architect of President Trump's order to cut all Federal grants to communities in every corner of the country, including in New Hampshire. This order rightly and deeply alarmed constituents across our land, who have appropriately inundated their Senators' and Governors' offices with calls expressing their opposition to the President's reckless, thoughtless, and uninformed action.

The President, through his order, interrupted cash flow to critical services and left police departments unsure if they were being defunded. He left fire departments wondering if they would get the grants that they depend on to modernize their equipment and hire more firefighters.

He left rural hospitals in turmoil as they tried to plan for the months ahead. He left the staffs of homeless shelters who provide care for veterans uncertain that they would have the resources that they need to be a port in the storm for America's heroes.

And he left addiction treatment centers without any indication of when the next grant might come, grants that are used to keep our kids and communities safe from the deadly dangers of fentanyl. It was chaos.

And it remains chaos. While court orders have brought a temporary pause to the President's funding cutoff, there is no certainty about what will happen next. And in some cases, cash flow is still irregular, leaving everyone from daycare providers to landlords wondering whether or not they will be able to continue to operate.

And so the American people wait in the dark, prisoners to the President and Mr. Vought's political gains. Mr. Vought has had experience managing the Office of Management and Budget. One would think that he would appreciate that any organization with a budget--a police department, a small business, a hospital--needs to have a reliable idea of what funds are going to be available if they are going to make any plans for the future.

They cannot depend on the whims of a President's tweet or on the last-minute salvation of a court order. If a small business is going to add a second location or hire more staff, it can't do it if it has to worry about critical grant money being impounded.

If a fire department wants to modernize its operation, it needs to know if the grant that it is planning to apply for and is supposed to be available in a few months, a grant that has already been approved and signed into law, will exist. If it doesn't, the department's new engine is no longer a reality.

But perhaps Mr. Vought does not understand how to maintain a budget because, of course, during his time as director of the OMB, he helped blow up the budget deficit and never turned in a surplus--an extravagance that most Americans cannot afford.

And make no mistake, this is not an academic discussion; behind every one of these budget lines are people, people who will be hurt if the President and Mr. Vought get their way and cut all Federal grants-- grants that are indispensable to Americans for a wide range of critical activities and indispensable to our way of life.

They are critical to the firefighter who relies on these grants to have the best equipment while keeping our homes safe from smoke and flame; to the police officer walking the beat who deserves to be supported and not defunded; to the teenager struggling with addiction who is finally on the road to recovery but may fall back into despair if the addiction treatment center closes because the President and Mr. Vought decided that political games are more important than serving the people and saving lives.

In short, this chaos, this flurry of orders and memos and counterorders and Washington doublespeak, this playing with the lives of the American people, this is not leadership, and it is no way to govern a country, much less the greatest country on earth.

We have seen Mr. Vought in action. It has already been a chaotic two weeks since the President ordered this self-inflicted catastrophe.

We cannot afford our police departments, our fire departments, our veterans, our children--we can't afford a chaotic and lawless 4 years under Mr. Vought.

Now, what is particularly astonishing about the President and Mr. Vought's reckless order to cut off Federal funding is that it portrays how deeply out of touch they are with the American people, how woefully they have misread our country in this moment. Our country, of course, has partisan divisions, but I have found that often on a more fundamental level, the majority of Americans--not the loud, but the many--want most of the same things. They want costs to come down. They want their rent and groceries to be more affordable. They want to get the care that they need from their doctors without worrying about going into debt.

If they have children, they want what all parents want for their kids: They want their kids to be given the chance to follow their dreams. They want to know that they will get to and from school safely each and every day. They want their streets free from the dangers of fentanyl and other drugs.

And from their leaders, the American people want leadership and results. And they know a good idea can be red or blue. Lower costs, safer streets, and a more hopeful future--that is what most people want.

If the President and Mr. Vought thought it was worthwhile to listen to the American people, then they would know this, because in our great country, there is no great clamor from people asking for a President to seize authority--authority that belongs to Congress--to cut off funds to fire departments, police departments, hospitals, and addiction centers.

The American people want more money in their pockets. They aren't asking the President to seize power to choke off funds to their communities. The American people didn't ask for this. The American people don't want this. The American people do not deserve this.

The President's reckless and extreme order makes one wonder who the President and Mr. Vought believe they are working for. Perhaps, Mr. Vought can show me, tell us all, where this great majority of Americans who want a President to have unilateral power to take away fire department grants, defund police departments, or end special education programs, where that majority is.

How is America better off with a fire department unable to buy a new engine? How are we better off with more Americans struggling with addiction, unable to get on the road to recovery? Who does it serve when a veteran is forced to sleep on a snowy street because the shelter he used to stay in closed after a funding freeze? And why should the architect of such a plan ever be in a position of authority?

But let's say for a moment that the President and Mr. Vought don't get their way and this funding cutoff is permanently blocked, the fact that one of the administration's first acts was to draft this order shows just how deeply out of step they are with most Americans.

This order should never have been given and tells us everything about the President and Mr. Vought's priorities. How does the President's order do anything to actually lower prices, to make

rent cheaper? What family is better off because of the President's attempted power grab? Who has been made more prosperous, more safe, or more healthy by this action? The President and Mr. Vought's order serves no cause but the advance of the President's personal political power.

Now, I continue to stand ready to get to work with anyone, including the President, to work on a bipartisan basis to deliver on the priorities of the American people and bring down costs. But the President and Mr. Vought's actions--to put aside efforts to bring relief to American families and instead seize power, to cut off funds to every community in the country--demonstrate that they are, at the present time, unconcerned with what the American people actually want.

Mr. Vought's lack of regard or respect for what the American people want is, unfortunately, not a surprise. Throughout his time in public service, and even in these confirmation proceeding, Mr. Vought has demonstrated a thinly veiled disdain for the principles of self- government--principles which have served America well since we declared our independence.

To my Republican colleagues who are hopeful that the President will restore some or all of the funds that were cut off by this order, I would remind you that the grant money was never the President's to cut, freeze, or restore. It doesn't belong to him or to Mr. Vought. It belongs to the American people.

Congress makes laws and appropriates funds, not the President. At stake is not a legal technicality. At stake is our very notion of self- government, a notion that Mr. Vought appears to disdain.

The right of Congress, the first of the three branches of government provided for in the Constitution, to make laws and appropriate funds was made clear first in our Constitution and then in the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Administrations from both parties understood and respected this law.

But Mr. Vought does not. Mr. Vought has said that he disagrees with this law. In his hearings, he refused to commit to follow the law, and has since become the architect of a brazen attack on this very law, the attack launched by the President's order to cut off all Federal grants.

The laws of the United States are not meant to be enjoyed a la carte. It is not Mr. Vought or the President's prerogative to choose which laws to follow, any more than it is their prerogative to choose which Federal grants to cut off after the grants have already been appropriated by law.

But this is simply who Mr. Vought is--not a trusted guardian of taxpayers' funds but a man who believes that both he and the President do not answer to the people.

In the past, Mr. Vought has refused to allow for proper oversight. He has refused to cooperate with inspectors general, the people's watchdogs against corruption. He repeated the lie that the 2020 Presidential election was rigged and supported the President's attempt to overturn the will of the people, a will that was reflected in our free and fair elections.

At the start of the confirmation process, Mr. Vought suggested that the President does not even need the advice and consent of this body, and instead he could just abuse of the power of recess appointments to fill out his Cabinet.

So Mr. Vought has placed us in a remarkable position. He is asking us to vote for him in a confirmation process that he does not even believe needs to exist. He is asking for the support of the people's representatives, while maintaining that he shouldn't even have to answer to the people in the first place.

It is also ironic that we are considering Mr. Vought's nomination because it was 5 years ago this week that this body debated President Trump's attempt to illegally impound funds that were intended for Ukraine, an impoundment attempt that was supported and directed by Mr. Vought. Five years ago, Mr. Vought helped the President cut off legally appropriated funds to America's allies. And 5 years later--5 years later--Mr. Vought has helped the President cut off legally appropriated funds to the American people.

Five years later, it is clear the failure to hold the President and Mr. Vought to account didn't mark the last time that some people in this body surrendered their principles to appease Donald Trump. It was not the end of the indignities that this body would be asked to tolerate; it was barely the beginning. It only encouraged more.

That is, of course, the danger of lawlessness. That is the danger of the winding road toward authoritarianism. Once one act of lawlessness is tolerated, it becomes easier to tolerate another, until we arrive to where we are today, where pointing out illegality from our public officials sometimes seems like little more than an afterthought.

It should not be too much to ask, it should not be too much to expect, that those who have the privilege to help lead the world's greatest democracy follow the laws of our land and respect the consent of the governed.

We know what Mr. Vought has done during the President's term. We know that he was the architect of the President's order to seize the power to cut off Federal funds. And we know that, if given the chance, the budget that he would help author would be the most extreme put forward by any administration in our lifetimes and would be devastating for our country.

Through his think tank, Mr. Vought laid out his priorities in what was a proposed budget in 2023 for a potential Trump administration. And now, the President has nominated him to manage the Office of Management and Budget.

In his budget, Mr. Vought would gut Medicaid by over $2 trillion. He would undo much of the progress States like New Hampshire have made since we expanded Medicaid. He would kick families off of Medicaid, families who are already feeling the pain of high costs and struggling to make ends meet. More people would become sick because they couldn't afford preventive care and be forced to make impossible choices once they fall ill.

These cuts would be especially devastating for families who have children with disabilities, families who rely on Medicaid dollars to get the best support for their children so that the children can thrive and have all the opportunities that any parent wants for their kids, and so the parents can go to work and build a family and a future.

It is not clear precisely when, for Mr. Vought, a child with a disability getting the support that they need became less important than paying for a tax break for a billionaire. But it is not just Medicaid. Mr. Vought's budget would end tax credits through the Affordable Care Act that have helped millions of Americans afford lifesaving care.

His budget would cut back Pell grants and make it harder for families to afford higher education.

His budget would defund much of the FBI, including ending many of the FBI's invaluable counterterrorism efforts.

Mr. Vought's budget would also eviscerate the Department of Homeland Security's cyber security defenses. He is perhaps one of the first people from either party who in today's age thinks we should be spending less on cyber security and not more.

Make no mistake, American families would be hurt by Mr. Vought's budget. America would be less safe with Mr. Vought's budget.

But few provisions in his budget--his proposed budget--are as outrageous as his cuts to veterans' benefits. Mr. Vought has proposed slashing benefits for veterans by tens of billions of dollars. He has proposed narrowing the number of veterans who are even eligible for certain health benefits.

He even proposed banning funding for women's reproductive care for women veterans. These heroes have defended our freedoms abroad, but Mr. Vought would endeavor to deny their freedoms here at home.

We will never fully repay the debt that we owe to those who have served. Indeed, we cannot. But we need to try each and every day. We should be working day in and day out to do more for those who serve, but, instead, Mr. Vought is looking for ways to slash care and benefits for veterans and their families.

It is not clear to me what more veterans would need to do, what further sacrifices they would need to make, for Mr. Vought to agree to not take away the benefits and care that they have earned through their courage and valor.

Let me be clear. There are few things in my mind more deeply un- American than to try to fund the extreme political agenda of a budget by taking money out of the pockets of America's best and bravest.

There has been a quality of make-believe surrounding the debate over Mr. Vought's confirmation. Some of Mr. Vought's defenders have dismissed concerns regarding his proposed budget as alarmist. They assure us that this budget will never be passed. They dismiss our concerns regarding his past statements supporting an expansion of authoritarian power as hyperbolic. They insist that his words do not indicate how he will actually act in his role. They dismiss our arguments regarding his record while at the helm of OMB as rehashing ancient history, and some of my colleagues even dismiss our concerns about the President and Mr. Vought's order to cut off Federal funds as sensationalist and dramatic. They assure us that the court stopped the order and that the President will hopefully restore these funds soon enough.

And maybe, on that last point, they are right. Maybe the courts will fully stop the President's order to cut off these funds. Maybe the President and Mr. Vought will be thwarted by the laws that they seek to circumvent.

But I submit that the President and his nominees should be judged by what they want to do, not simply by what they are able to get away with.

So what kind of America does Mr. Vought want? What would he do if everything that he has proposed in his first term, in his writings, in his hearings, in his budget, and in the President's order to cut off all funds were able to come to pass?

Russell Vought's America is an America where Medicaid has ended as we know it, where more people get sick and fewer people get care, where police departments and fire departments are defunded in the service of political games, where our efforts to fight addiction and get fentanyl off our streets are gutted, and where more people slip from the road of recovery into spirals of despair.

(Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)

It is an America where the FBI's counterterrorism program is scrapped, and our country is less safe, where cyber criminals from China and Russia are given free rein to gain a leg up. It is an America where families with children with autism are left to fend for themselves, where we even break faith with veterans and take away care that they earned through unimaginable sacrifice. It is an America where even our heroes become dispensable.

It is an America where Presidents decide which laws to obey and disobey, which funds appropriated by Congress to permit and which to take away, where the people's watchdogs can be fired, and the people's representatives ignored.

We would be an America governed not of, by, and for the people, but of, by, and for a President.

I don't know with certainty what the future holds, what the courts will permit and what they will block. But I know that, in this moment, the question before us is whether or not we should confirm to high office a man who has clear disdain for self-government.

Self-government--government of, by, and for the people--it is not simply a patriotic turn of phrase. It is what makes America different. Being a part of this self-government experiment is why all of us are even here serving in this body in the first place.

My dad, a World War II veteran, would always remind me that freedom and democracy are history's exception; they are not the rule. In Iran or in Putin's Russia, there is no debate over impoundment. In autocracies, what the autocrat decrees is law, but in America, we set out to do something different. We created a system of checks and balances. We declared that power was derived from consent of the government. Unlike virtually every nation before us, we did not put our trust in kings or oligarchs. No. Instead, in the words of Lincoln, we dared to ask:

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the

ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal

hope in the world?

We believed these words once, and most Americans believe these words still. And we believe that even our greatest leaders need to be checked by the people and their elected representatives.

To my Republican colleagues who support the President and who are considering supporting Mr. Vought and who dismiss his words and actions about the need to seize greater Executive power, I remind you that history has shown us that when a leader gains a power, they are inclined to use it, and they certainly are not inclined to give it back. The power of the purse is a power that belongs to Congress and the people. My colleagues need to decide if they are willing to surrender that power on their watch.

To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, even if you imagine that you may agree with the ways in which the President would use his power to ignore Congress and impound Federal funds today, you certainly may disagree with the ways this illegal power is abused tomorrow. You may open the door for further abuses down the road. You may find that a future President of a different party or persuasion is inclined to use this power in ways that leave you deeply alarmed but unable to stop.

That is the danger of surrendering the rule of law to expand Executive power. History has shown that the end result is never more freedom because, to borrow a phrase, those who would seek power by riding the back of the tiger surely end up consumed by it.

I suspect that my Republican colleagues will vote to confirm Mr. Vought, although they shouldn't. I voted for many of the President's nominees, and I believe that the President and our country would be better served by people who encourage his better impulses rather than enable his worse ones, who understand that no leader is above the law, and who respect our system of government of, by, and for the people.

In the end, to confirm Mr. Vought is to confirm him in spite of his record, his words, and his promises.

So, no, I am not alarmed by Mr. Vought because he is not a member of my party. I am alarmed by Mr. Vought because, unlike some of my Republican colleagues, I respect Mr. Vought's intelligence enough to take his words seriously. So when Mr. Vought shows his disdain for self-government, I will take him at his word, and so should this body.

In the end, Mr. Vought, while seeking office in our government, is wrong about a fairly fundamental thing. He is wrong about democracy in America. The people's representatives are not a nuisance to be circumvented. The people's laws are not an obstacle to be surmounted. The people's funds are not a political weapon to be seized. Nor are the people's wills, wants, and, yes, votes idle noise to be discarded or ignored. No. In this country, in this great democracy of ours, the will of the people represents nothing less than a hope without better or equal in this world.

Mr. President, I can keep speaking about the damage that Russell Vought would do as leader of the Office of Management and Budget. I will also appeal to my colleagues here to let me know if any more of them intend to speak.

Mr. Vought's nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget is one we should all reject, not because we disagree with his policies but because he fundamentally disagrees with our form of government. He fundamentally disrespects this body--the body created along with the House of Representatives by article I of the U.S. Constitution. He fundamentally believes that his judgment is better than the people's.

I would also add that Mr. Vought's beliefs are some of the most extreme that I have heard expressed or watched implemented in my lifetime.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

On behalf of first responders from New Hampshire, I vote no.

Mr. President, I am honored to recognize Celma Silveira of

Atkinson as January's Granite Stater of the Month. Celma regularly helps Granite Staters in need by providing them free house cleanings.

Celma started her small business, Cleaning by Celma, after she and her son experienced domestic violence and homelessness. After spending time in a shelter for survivors of domestic violence, she started cleaning homes to earn money to support herself and her son and eventually started her own cleaning business. Celma faced challenges both big and small while starting her own business, but she has successfully grown and expanded it over the years and now enjoys a healthy base of clients.

And while her business has blossomed, Celma has also always made sure that she supports Granite Staters in need. She has partnered with Cleaning for a Reason, a national nonprofit organization, to provide house cleaning to cancer patients, and in her own time, Celma donates house cleanings to disabled veterans. When Celma first meets the recipients of one of her donated cleaning services, she takes care to ensure that their biggest concerns are addressed and that they come away with the comfort and relief that a clean home can provide. Celma believes that every person has goodness in their heart and wants to spread her own goodness by providing these cleanings.

Celma's dedication to helping Granite Staters who are struggling is a beautiful example of the Granite State spirit of going above and beyond to uplift others. Her passion for sharing her work with her community is why I am proud to name her January's Granite Stater of the Month.

Mr. President, before I start my remarks, I do want to note that we have had news just now of a terrible tragedy at DCA. There has been a plane crash. We do not know all the details yet, but it is fair to say that, here in DC and all around the country, we should all be praying for the loved ones of those involved in this crash, hoping for some positive news, but knowing that this was a very, very serious crash, and the news is not likely to be good as we learn more. Our hearts and our prayers go out to all of those affected.

Mr. President, I rise at this late hour to join my colleagues in expressing my grave concern--my alarm--at the new administration's attempt to discard the rule of law and expand Executive power and, in so doing, threaten the well-being of communities across the country, including in New Hampshire.

Typically, when Presidents are inaugurated, especially after a divisive election, they try to bring the country together. They focus on what unites Americans. President Trump campaigned on a platform promising to bring down costs for families. This is a priority of mine and a priority of Granite Staters, and I would welcome commonsense, good-faith efforts to work together to bring down costs.

Despite my deep and meaningful differences with the President, I am and remain willing to work together to help lower costs for families. But in the opening days of the Trump administration, it has been overwhelmingly clear that lowering costs is not one of President Trump's priorities.

This administration's priorities have ranged from the ridiculous to the reckless--unconcerned with delivering relief and results, more concerned with exacting retribution and revenge, pardoning violent criminals who attack police officers, firing inspectors general, who are the government's watchdogs, and freezing Federal grants--an illegal act that, should they go through with it, would be devastating for the lives of everyday Americans in every corner of our country and would signal a break with our principles of self-government.

The President isn't going after high prices; he is going after the rule of law. He is going after our system of self-government. He is going after our government's ability to support communities and families across the country, and he needs to reverse course now.

In New Hampshire, our love of freedom runs deep. New Hampshire was the first colony to sign the Declaration of Independence. Patriots from New Hampshire, under Colonel John Stark, fought in one of the first major battles of the Revolutionary War--the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was Colonel Stark who, years later in a letter, wrote the words that would become our State's motto, a motto recognized by people in faraway corners of the world, including Ukraine--the words ``Live free or die.'' For us Granite Staters, these words represent an unwavering belief in the idea of self-government--that the government's powers derive from the consent of the governed.

We secured our freedom through the rule of law and our Constitution. We believe, as Americans across this country believe, that this great country of ours has no use for a king, nor do we have any use for anyone who confuses themselves with a king.

We secured these freedoms through the rule of law and our Constitution. We did all this not only because we believed that our values of freedom, the rule of law, and democracy are noble principles--although, indeed, they are--but because freedom, the rule of law, and democratic, small government are still the best means to improve people's lives.

Presidents from both parties have been committed to this principle, but the actions of the Trump administration have demonstrated a break with the rule of law and self-government that 10 years ago would have been impossible to imagine being tolerated by either political party.

Let me run through some of the most egregious priorities that this administration is advancing instead of doing what the American people expect them to do, which is working to lower costs for families.

As the first day of the new Trump administration drew to a close, the President chose to pardon the violent criminals who assaulted police officers, stormed these halls, and tried to overthrow our free and fair election. He has referred to these criminals as ``patriots.'' The patriots on January 6 were the Capitol Police who saved lives, including the Vice President's, and saved our democracy.

The violent criminals who assaulted police officers, who beat them with fists and flagpoles within an inch of their lives, do not deserve our praise, nor our pardon. To pardon them, as the President did, is to venerate lawlessness, reward violence, and betray police officers.

Police officers have some of the hardest jobs around. They deserve a President who has their backs. Instead, the President sent a message that violence against police officers is permissible, even laudable, if it is in his name or to advance his political cause.

I suggest that the President meet with the families of those officers and explain to them why these criminals deserved a pardon, why he thinks people who attack police officers are patriots.

The pardons have been issued. These violent criminals are now free. January 6 is now a part of our history, and time marches on. But the shamefulness of the President's decision will not fade away.

Of course, the pardons were only the beginning. By the end of the week, late on Friday night, the President attempted to fire at least 17 Federal inspectors general. Inspectors general offices are indispensable watchdogs who identify tens of billions of dollars in savings per year, and they crack down on fraud, abuse, and corruption. They hold big corporations to account, preventing those corporations from ripping off the American taxpayer, such as through overpayments on Federal contracts or Medicare reimbursement.

But in order to do their jobs effectively, inspectors general are supposed to be apolitical and independent. They need to be able to operate without fear or favor. Their job is not to serve the President's agenda; their job is to serve the American people. But President Trump, in a reckless, illegal, and politically motivated act, tried to reduce what is a pillar of government accountability to a rubberstamp for his agenda.

Even if one is not concerned with the illegality of this act-- although you certainly would hope that the President would be concerned with following the law--this action to expand and consolidate Executive power does nothing to bring down costs and, in fact, will make government less efficient, open the door to rampant corruption, and waste more taxpayer money.

So why is an inspector general important? To begin with, the inspector general, tasked with finding ways to save taxpayer money, would not do so by releasing a memo freezing Federal grant funding across the board for every community in every corner of the country.

In a truly unprecedented act, President Trump ordered the freeze of nearly all Federal grant funding. This includes grant funding for firefighters, for police departments, for care and shelter for veterans, for disaster relief, for resources to fight the spread of fentanyl, for law enforcement fighting drug trafficking, for school lunches, for special education for students with disabilities, for small business grants, for community health centers--in short, for virtually every part of American life. Then the administration released a memo doubling down on these efforts and offering more chaos and more questions than answers.

Communities across the country began to scramble to find out if they were losing their funding and for how long. My office and the offices of every Senator and Governor in the country have been deluged with frantic calls from our constituents desperate for answers.

Since then, the administration announced that the memo was rescinded, and then the White House announced that rescinding the memo was ``not a rescission of the federal funding freeze,'' only further muddying the waters. The White House continues to send out confused and chaotic messages.

The administration has suggested that those of us who are speaking out about the devastating consequences of their actions are being alarmists. They have given glib assurances that the funding for particular programs will not be cut. This is, of course, ridiculous.

This is the White House's mess. This is the President's chaos. It is not on the American people to do the White House Office of Management and Budget's job for them. It is not on the American people to determine how this order is being implemented and what funds are being impacted. It is on this White House. It is on this President to take ownership of a mess that started with the President's orders--this self-inflicted disaster.

The alarm that I hear from my constituents is real because the devastating consequences to our communities and our families if these grants remain frozen are very, very real. These grants are not toys to be played with. They are not a political football to toss around. Behind every one of these grants are people whose lives depend on this funding. It is not OK, it is not permissible for the people who rely on these grants to be left waiting for clarity from the administration, hoping the President can summon enough magnanimity to restore this funding.

Let me talk for a moment about why these grants matter to people whose lives are being played with.

In New Hampshire, Granite Staters have been devastated by the fentanyl crisis. Everyone in our State knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who has been personally affected by this crisis.

Last year, a woman who I was talking with about the mental health of our young people in our schools approached me after an event. She told me she had lost three brothers to the fentanyl crisis--three brothers from one family.

Far too many young people have been lost to addiction. Far too many promising futures have been lost, young people with a lifetime's worth of hopes and aspirations cruelly dashed by an overdose.

In New Hampshire, it has been a struggle just keeping our heads above water when fighting this crisis. Every time we begin to get a handle on it, a new threat emerges. It is tough work that has required the dedication of public servants from across our community--law enforcement officers, addiction specialists, teachers and school administrators, veterans organizations, hospitals, and parents. It has required the uncommon devotion of everyone.

While we have made progress, the challenge is still as daunting as anything our State has ever faced. The progress that we have made, though, has been possible in part through Federal grant programs, including the State opioid response grant, grants to community health centers, funding for law enforcement, and recovery services block grants.

This funding across a range of sectors has allowed us to get more resources behind successful programs and strategies that have proven records of working. For rural communities in particular, these Federal dollars make an extraordinary difference. Lives have been saved because of this funding, but President Trump would end these grants.

Another grant which would be frozen by this order are grants for firefighters. The firefighter grant program has been invaluable in helping fire departments in big cities and small towns alike to modernize their equipment, hire more firefighters, and provide more training so that our first responders can do their jobs safely and effectively.

Being a firefighter is an unimaginably tough job. Every day, they know that they can be called to rush into danger to save lives.

I have had the privilege of visiting fire departments across our State that have benefited from this program, including in Berlin, where, thanks to Federal grant funding, they were able to secure a new engine, which will replace one that the fire department has had to rely on for 43 years.

Our firefighters need to remain on the cutting edge so that they can do their jobs and get home safe, but President Trump would end those grants.

Federal grants are also indispensable for keeping police departments fully funded. For instance, COPS grants are vital for giving departments the resources to remaining fully staffed. New Hampshire received a $1 million COPS grant in 2023 to help develop an anti-heroin task force. At a time when police departments are often stretched to the limit, freezing these funds is reckless and dangerous.

Let me be clear on this point. I have proudly stood up to members of both political parties when they have attempted to defund our police departments. The most important job of government is keeping people safe. Defunding police departments is always wrong, and President Trump's order to defund police departments is wrong now.

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. After all, a President who would pardon violent criminals who assaulted police officers can't be trusted to put police officers first and his political ambitions second.

This is just a small sampling of the grants and people--people--who would be affected by an across-the-board funding freeze.

President Trump seems to spend most of his time with the multimillionaires and billionaires who want even more tax cuts for those already at the top. The President perhaps would know the dangers of his actions if he knew the Granite Staters that I know whom I have the privilege of representing.

The President has been to New Hampshire in the past and seen our State from the stage of his rallies. He has seen New Hampshire under the glow of television lights, under the gaze of cameras, surrounded by campaign signs emblazoned with his name. But perhaps if he knew the Granite Staters who have been writing and calling in alarm to my office, he would learn about the people whose lives would be hurt by this grant freeze.

If he talked with New Hampshire police officers, he would know they need every dollar they can get as they work to get fentanyl off our streets and as they try to keep our children safe from addiction, danger, and despair.

If he listened to the Granite Staters who volunteer at our homeless shelters, he would hear about how Federal funding is used to help homeless veterans, to ensure that our heroes have a place to rest their heads on a snowy, cold New Hampshire night.

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of visiting Sunset Heights Elementary School. I talked with students. They told me about what they were learning and why they loved their school. I saw firsthand how Federal funds help pay for their special education programs--programs that help ensure that every child counts, that every child has a chance to learn, to dream, to reach their full potential. It was a wonderful day. These were wonderful kids. And no one--no one--is made better off by having the funding for their special education programs jeopardized, frozen, or taken away.

Or perhaps, Mr. President, if you knew the Granite Staters who live in Berlin, in New Hampshire's north country, you need not look further than the new breathing apparatus that they now have that sit ready for our bravest to grab as they run toward danger, to know why these grants matter and should not be frozen--because this act freezing these grants would prevent other stations from getting the help that the Berlin Fire Department received. Do you think it was a mistake that the Berlin Fire Department received this grant?

These are the people, the faces behind these grants, this Federal funding--our fellow Americans who live, breathe, and provide for their families within the margins of these budget lines, whose dignity and safety, whose

hopes and aspirations should be regarded as more than just the stitching of a political football.

Perhaps the administration will restore some or even all of this funding, but it shouldn't have to come to this. Even now, the American people don't know what funding is affected and what funding is not. The American people--the people whom the President serves--would like to know: Would this administration be inclined to make up their mind on precisely what funding they would like to freeze, what funding they would like to take away? The American people want to know what part of the American life is the President willing to devastate.

People's safety, their jobs, their health, their fire and police departments, their lives should not wait in the dock, subject to the confused wordings and impulsive whims of the next tweet, the next press release, the next ill-devised memo to be issued and reversed and reissued again. We work for the American people, and they deserve so much better.

President Trump's order will not only hurt the lives of Americans all across the country; the order is also illegal and at odds with our American belief in self-government. The President does not have the authority to freeze or take away funds that have already been allocated by Congress. It is Congress--not the President--who makes laws, and that is not a technicality. That is what separates democracies from authoritarian states, Presidents from Kings.

So even if the administration announces that they will restore every dollar of funding, even if they do not threaten any grant in the future, let's be clear: The money is not the President's to restore, freeze, or take away. It does not belong to him. It belongs to the American people.

If the President can unilaterally take away funds from any program he disagrees with, why should we pass laws at all? Why even have a legislature? When a President seizes legislative power for himself, it makes one wonder whether or not this President--a President who tried to overturn a free and fair election--truly believes in self- government.

Now, some of my Republican colleagues are inclined to give the President the benefit of the doubt, to voice their concerns but to dismiss the President's actions as perhaps confusing but not wrong. I think that, in a sense, sells the President short. He didn't issue this order by mistake. He is the President of the most powerful country on Earth, and his choices are his own.

The President's actions to grab power were not an elaborate accident. The President didn't pardon the January 6 rioters by accident. The President did not try to fire 17 inspectors general by accident. The President did not order the freeze of all Federal grants by accident. The President deserves the respect to be treated as a leader who is responsible for his own actions.

If the White House didn't want confusion regarding the freezing of these funds, they wouldn't have issued the order. If the White House didn't believe that the President has the unilateral power to take away funds allocated by Congress, then they wouldn't insist that he has the authority to do so.

And let me be clear. Leaders who respect the values that define us as Americans--freedom, democracy, the rule of law--they don't confuse violent criminals with patriots. And leaders who intend to govern above reproach do not fire the people's watchdogs in the cover of night.

The President is using his opening days in office to test our society's capacity of outrage, to test the loyalty of the Republican caucus, and to push the limits of the rule of law and self-government to, in short, see how far he can go, perhaps even hoping that, in this relentless tumult, we become accustomed to the bending and breaking of the law.

I understand that my Republican colleagues support the President. I understand that they support much of his agenda. But this is a pivotal moment. My Republican colleagues need to decide just how far they are willing to go. If they are not concerned by the President's actions, I urge them to consider the precedent that President Trump is setting up.

Would they be comfortable with a future Democratic President purging the government of all of its watchdogs? Would they bestow on a Democratic President the power to unilaterally defund programs that Congress passed into law? Because this will not be the last time that President Trump will test the limits of what my Republican colleagues are willing to swallow.

That is, of course, the problem with appeasement. Once the bully is appeased, the bully simply demands more and more. And even if the President restores all of these grants, even if this entire episode is mere sound and fury, that restoration offers no promises for tomorrow. When a leader gains a power, history tells us that they are inclined to use it and they are certainly not inclined to give it away.

The decision to give the President the power of the legislature to control the purse will live on beyond this night. My Republican colleagues have to decide if abdicating their authority as the people's trusted representatives to make laws is a bridge too far or is merely a lamentable but acceptable burden to appease this President.

So it is unfortunate, to say the least, that we are mired in this chaos. We live in such a great country. America is positioned to outcompete our rivals. We have the best scientists, entrepreneurs, workers, and fighting force in the world. What more could we do, what great things could we accomplish if we were not devoting our energies to overcoming chaos of our own making, of President Trump's own making, of devoting all of our hours to binding self-inflicted wounds?

I know that both parties and the President can find ways to work together. We have done it before during the President's first term--for instance, to end surprise medical billing, get more resources to tackle the fentanyl crisis, and to deliver for veterans. I am always willing to put in the work to do what is best for New Hampshire and the country.

In this moment, perhaps above all else, the people want us to work together to bring down high costs, and it is remarkable to me that the President and his party have declined so far to introduce a single piece of legislation to lower costs.

Make no mistake, pardoning violent criminals who attacked police officers doesn't lower costs for families, nor does removing the portraits of decorated generals from the Pentagon, nor does removing security details from the President's political foes, nor does firing the people's watchdogs or freezing funding for veterans, for police departments, for firefighters.

No one's rent will be easier to pay. No one's grocery bill will be any lighter. The President's actions will not bring down any costs for families. But that doesn't mean that they come without a price. The price is the millions an inspector general might have saved. The price is paid by the families who will be hurt. The price is paid by our police officers who may lose funding. The price is paid by the families of Capitol Police officers who the President of the United States has let down.

The price we the people are asked to pay is our commitment to self- government, our commitment to the notion that inspired delegates in a hall in Philadelphia that, in America, we do not seek to be ruled, that we are capable of solving problems and making decisions, and that no one is above the law because here we believe in government of, by, and for the people.

The price is, in short, all of the beliefs that inspired us who serve in this Chamber to enter public service. The price is nothing less than the very ideals that make us proud to call ourselves Americans.

As we near midnight, we will mark the birthday of another President: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt who, when speaking of the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, said:

Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy

forget in time that men have died to win them.

We have come too far and sacrificed far too much for freedom and for the miracle of self-government for us to discard these ideals for political expediency, to dispense with the rule of law as the latest casualty of the President's self-described quest for retribution.

I hope my Republican colleagues tell the President that he went too far and

that they reverse course. But for now, the President should know that, no matter what he does, we are not going to grow accustomed to illegality. We will not resign ourselves to the lives of our fellow Americans being imperiled for his political gain.

If he wishes to fire the people's watchdogs in the black of night, then he can expect us to stand here on the floor and speak out as the clock strikes midnight. The President will do whatever he does, but he will not do so to a silent Chamber.

We still believe in self-government. It has been nearly 250 years since we declared our independence, but we have yet to gain an appetite for a King. In the ``Live Free or Die'' State, we remain a freedom- loving people. We know that problems get solved for real people, for real families; that prices get lowered; that people have a chance to build a future, to own a home, to save for retirement, to send their kids to college, to have a vacation, to live a life that they build in the way that is best for them.

We know that the way to do that is to ensure that our democracy serves the people, that our democracy preserves their power, that public servants are accountable to their constituents. That is how we make sure that the American dream continues.

I urge the President to reverse course, to get to work on a bipartisan basis, to stop the uncertainty and unpredictability that so many people are faced with right now as they try to make decisions about keeping a daycare center open, hiring new police to keep our streets safe, hiring nurses to keep our rural hospitals open.

Those are the decisions, the day-to-day decisions that are being impacted by the President's recklessness. I urge the President again to reverse course, to get to work on a bipartisan basis, to do what he needs to do to listen to people, bring down costs, and deliver for the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to extend my thanks to my colleague from Kansas for sharing that wonderful reflection on Tyler's exceptional work for the people of Kansas and for the people of the United States. We are blessed to have wonderful people to work with in this job.

Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in opposing this legislation that is the Republican Party's latest effort to take away a woman's fundamental freedom to make her own healthcare decisions and take away a family's fundamental right to navigate heartbreaking and complex health decisions without government interference.

I come from the ``Live Free or Die'' State. Granite Staters and Americans love freedom. Our country's promise is that freedom belongs to everyone.

But today, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the extreme actions by Republican legislatures in some States, women in America are not free. In a sense, this legislation that we are debating right now is disconnected from reality. This bill ignores a pretty basic fact: Infanticide is illegal in every corner of this country.

The claim that this legislation will save lives is disingenuous, and the assumption underlying this bill that an expectant mother would seek an abortion after months of pregnancy for anything but the most dire of reasons shows a deliberate willingness to ignore the realities of women's health.

So here are the facts. All that this legislation will do is make it harder for doctors to perform lifesaving care for their patients. And it will make it harder for families to make the best healthcare decisions for themselves in moments of great heartbreak as they face the final moments of a desired pregnancy or the final moments of a terminally ill newborn's life.

It is also remarkable that this is among the first pieces of legislation that the Republicans have brought to the floor since the inauguration of the new President. This is, of course, legislation in search of a problem. But it is not in search of a motive.

Some of my colleagues have decided that rather than address the most pressing issues facing the American people, they will, instead, push legislation to curtail the freedom of women--just the latest in their long line of effort since Roe was overturned to take away more and more freedom from half of the population.

I am willing and eager to work with my colleagues to tackle the greatest challenges facing our country. That is what our constituents expect and deserve of us and something that this bill so clearly fails to do. This legislation will not bring down the price of groceries, nor will it reduce rents or do anything to make it easier for families to make ends meet. But it will make life harder for expectant mothers facing a painful choice.

It won't make healthcare more affordable, though it provides that doctors can be put in jail for providing care for their patients. It won't keep our children safe from crime or fentanyl traffickers, though it will make our daughters less free.

This legislation, in short, does nothing to address any of the great challenges that America faces. It seeks only to deny and diminish the freedom of our fellow Americans.

But this is what some of our colleagues have decided to focus on during the first full day of the new administration. Across our country, in red States and blue alike, in the distant corners of the land of the free, there is no great clamor to further limit freedom; there is no great clamor to have Members of Congress substitute their judgment for that of a woman's, her doctor's, and her family's. But you wouldn't know it if you follow the action of the Senate majority today.

We cannot lose sight of what this debate is ultimately about. At the center of this debate is a very simple question: Do we believe in the promise of our Declaration of Independence that we all are created equal? Do we believe that freedom belongs to everyone? And do we believe that women deserve to be free and equal citizens in the United States of America?

This is America, the world's greatest democracy. Here, women should not be second-class citizens. In this country, each of us is supposed to have the freedom to chart our own future. We know

well that that freedom includes the freedom to make personal, private decisions that others may disagree with.

Our commitment to putting freedom first is part of what makes America different. Indeed, that is what makes us exceptional. The American people understand freedom's importance. Their leaders should remember it too. The American people have not asked for the extreme agenda that this legislation represents. They haven't asked the majority to further restrict their freedom.

I urge my colleagues to listen to the American people, to put aside this partisan agenda, and to get to work on tackling the challenges that are facing our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass into law lifesaving, bipartisan legislation that will enable us to keep fighting the opioid and fentanyl epidemic that has destroyed families and devastated communities across our country.

New data from just this week found that drug overdose deaths dropped 17 percent from last summer to this summer. We now have a much better sense of what works to prevent and treat addiction, the resources we need to do so, and the light that exists on the other end of this terrible, terrible tunnel. But we can only get there if we keep up the fight.

The SUPPORT Act of 2018 established vital addiction treatment infrastructure. Reauthorizing this law is essential to our addiction prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts. Just two of many examples include funding addiction treatment for pregnant women and supporting first responders.

The original SUPPORT Act passed the Senate with 98 votes, and the bipartisan reauthorization passed the House with 386 votes. Now the Senate must send it to the President's desk before we adjourn for the year. This is not the time for complacency, nor is it time for despair. Nothing less than people's lives depend on us acting.

So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4531 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and

passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I will just say that I regret the objection. A Senate version of the reauthorization was, of course, included in the package that we all agreed on--bipartisan agreement in both the Senate and the House, after months and months of work, reauthorized through our committee process--and was stripped out, of course, on Wednesday at the instruction of Mr. Musk. So the House had already passed this bipartisan bill. It had huge and overwhelming bipartisan support there, and this is really unfortunate because, of course, the opioid epidemic--especially the fentanyl epidemic-- continues to devastate our communities, and it is truly unfortunate that the objection was made tonight.

Mr. President, I am honored to recognize David Bugbee of Concord as December's Granite Stater of the Month. David, who is 71 years old, has been donating blood regularly since he was 17, helping countless Granite Staters and others in our region through this precious gift.

David was first inspired to donate blood by his father. As a child, David remembers going with his dad to regular blood donation appointments, although at the time he didn't realize that is what his father was doing. Eventually, he grew curious about the little square bandage he noticed his dad sporting after these appointments and asked what the appointments were. When he was 17 years old, David saw a flyer for a blood drive at his Manchester college and, remembering his dad's frequent donations, decided to go. After his first donation, David knew that this would be a meaningful way in which he could help others--and since then, he has given blood more than 200 times.

Donating blood is David's way of giving back to his community. Blood donations can be used for many different purposes in a hospital or emergency setting, and hospitals rely on volunteers like David to collect enough supply for patients in need. David has said that he counts himself lucky to have had jobs that have always allowed him to leave for blood donation appointments during the day. He does not find it a bother at all to give a pint of blood and has gotten used to the sensation, even saying that the period of rest that is required after donating can give him a little break in his day to sit down afterward and eat a snack. A lifelong Granite Stater, David regularly visits his donation center in Concord to give blood, and he appreciates the Red Cross workers who run the center. He has especially noticed that they always show their gratitude to those who donate.

David's selfless commitment to regularly donating blood is a great example of the Granite State spirit of helping other people in any way possible. As we celebrate the holiday season and reflect on ways in which we can support our fellow Granite Staters, I am proud

to name David December's Granite Stater of the Month.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I am honored to recognize Matthew ``Matty'' Gregg of Nashua as October's Granite Stater of the Month. Matty ran the entire length of New Hampshire earlier this month--230 miles--to raise awareness about hunger in our state.

Matty's run was motivated by his desire to draw attention to the thousands of Granite Staters who experience food insecurity, to inspire others to help those in need, and to encourage State government leaders to evaluate what more they could do to address hunger. He raised funds for NH Hunger Solutions, which connects Granite State families with resources, and also highlighted additional organizations that address food insecurity. For instance, Matty spotlighted White Mountains Community College, which allows all students to eat for free, and the Manchester Food Collaborative, which focuses on expanding access to healthy food for everyone in Manchester while reducing food waste. Matty is also focused on ending the stigma that can sometimes be associated with seeking help, whether it is receiving free lunch at school or visiting a food bank.

Matty's 230-mile New Hampshire run took 8 days, and he made 11 stops. He was cheered on by students from local schools at his stops up and down the State--in his hometown of Nashua, 100 students from Mt. Pleasant Elementary came to his stop and even ran with him for a few minutes. Matty's run for hunger was not the first time that he has combined his love of running with his passion for making a difference. In 2018, he ran across America for the Firefighter Cancer Support Network, running more than 5,245 miles and raising thousands of dollars. According to Matty, these extreme runs act like ``lightning rods'' to draw attention to a cause, and over the past decade, he has raised over $600,000 for different charities. He says that the support of his family--including from his wife Alicia and his children Noah, Ethan, and Emma--makes it easier to endure the grueling distances.

Matty's dedication to ending hunger in our State is a true example of the New Hampshire spirit of taking action to address issues affecting our communities. His creativity and willingness to--literally--go the extra mile to help more people get the food that they need is why I am proud to name him Granite Stater of the Month.

Mr. President, I am honored to recognize Linda Sarette of Sanbornton as November's Granite Stater of the Month. Linda has been tending the gardens at the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery since 2019, ensuring that the final resting place of fallen servicemembers is a place of beauty and calm.

Linda was raised to understand the value of service. Her father served in the Coast Guard, and after his death in 2019, he was buried at the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen. The cemetery is a place that is deeply important to our State, where we can reflect on the brave Granite Staters who gave the words ``Live Free or Die'' true meaning. Linda noticed that there was no garden in the section that her father was buried in, and the staff told her that they would put one in if she would care for it--and she has been tending gardens at the cemetery ever since. Linda has been gardening for her entire life, and she uses her knowledge and skills to plant flowers, weed, and trim the hedges at the more than 100 gardens throughout the cemetery, working up to 4 days a week in the spring.

Over the years, Linda has found a family of volunteers at the cemetery. She has gotten to know many of the people that come to visit loved ones at the cemetery. Throughout the years, different people have also joined Linda in volunteering to take care of the gardens, but regardless of whether other volunteers are there, she has remained a constant presence. Linda is there on quiet days, comforting families going through a difficult time, and she is there on holidays to place wreaths and flags at each grave.

Linda's commitment to ensuring that all fallen servicemembers are shown dignity at their final resting place is a beautiful example of the Granite State spirit of showing respect toward those who serve, in life and in death. Her kindness in supporting the

New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery is why I am proud to name her November's Granite Stater of the Month.

Madam President, I am honored to recognize Kimberly ``Kym'' Lozada of Manchester as September's Granite Stater of the Month. After her husband passed away, Kym felt a drive to find ways to support her community--and now, through her barbershop, Get Faded, Kym offers free haircuts and other events to support adults and kids alike.

Kym, a mother of six, opened Get Faded in February 2023. When her husband passed away 6 months later, she wanted to find a way to help other single parents who might be struggling with the busy back-to- school season. She started an annual event with free haircuts for local students, and this year, the shop also gave out 150 backpacks filled with school supplies. The business has also hosted trunk-or-treat for kids on Halloween. Get Faded prioritizes ensuring that all children feel comfortable; it is a certified sensory-safe barbershop, where the barbers are trained to give haircuts to children with autism or sensory processing sensitivities that can make it difficult to experience a traditional haircut. Overall, Kym makes Get Faded a place where every child can feel supported--and, of course, get the haircut they want to feel stylish and confident.

In addition, like many Granite State families, the Lozada family has experienced the effects of the fentanyl crisis. Kym's late husband dealt with addiction, and she is open about his experience in the hopes that she can inspire others to get treatment. In Kym's words, ``I will keep telling my story in the hope that it can save someone's life.'' Get Faded recently hosted free haircut events for adults at Hope for NH Recovery, a center that offers peer-based support for those dealing with addiction, and at AmeriHealth Caritas, an organization that works to bring healthcare to communities throughout the State.

Kym's dedication to helping those in need is a true example of the Granite State spirit of pitching in to help our fellow citizens. Her family's experience is one that is not unique in our State, but her perseverance and commitment to helping Granite Staters in her own way can inspire all of us.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.