Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleagues today to talk about the events of the last several days, and to say to my colleagues here in the U.S. Senate on both sides of the aisle: I have talked to many Washingtonians, and they are very worried about what has transpired in Minnesota.

They are very worried about what has transpired in Minnesota because they think that someone has lost their life that didn't need to lose their life, and they think that the President of the United States, instead of basically creating a system where that kind of overreach of power would be investigated, instead he is basically accusing the victim here--and basically, really, even attacking Second Amendment rights.

So I am here to join my colleagues to say, what are we going to do to fix this system? What are we going to do to make sure that tragedies like this don't happen and that we investigate the truth--not make up something about the situation minutes after it has happened?

I say this because my State has struggled with these issues of justice, particularly civil liberties and the civil rights of individuals. We had two tragic cases in our State. One, a Native American was just carving on a corner, basically whittling away, didn't understand, as he got up to move to another corner, that a policeman in the neighborhood thought, ``What is he doing?'' and accidentally-- basically when the Native American failed to stop from just moving from one corner to another to continue his whittling, was shot dead.

We had a case in Spokane where a disabled man basically went to his daily ritual of going over to get a soft drink at a supermarket, and on the way there, somebody said, ``I think he's acting a little strange,'' and called the police. And the police showed up, and as he was reaching for a soda in the bottom compartment of the freezer, the police told him to stop. And he didn't really understand what they were even saying to him. What was he doing? He was just coming to get his daily soda. And they beat Otto Zehm and killed him.

So yes, in the United States of America, since 1957, we have had a Civil Rights Division, and we have had a Department of Justice that has enforced the civil liberties of Americans by having oversight of police departments that overreached and basically did something, like they did in the Seattle case against the Native American carver John T. Williams and in the Spokane case against Otto Zehm.

Yes, the Department of Justice had an oversight division and a consent decree with the Seattle Police Department and the Spokane Police Department to get your act together and do training so that you are not killing people that don't deserve to be killed.

And that is the same situation with Mr. Pretti. Mr. Pretti didn't deserve to be killed in this situation, but let's at least have an investigation. Let's at least have a Department of Justice to do something about this. But that is not what the Trump administration is doing.

The first Trump administration tried to roll back the requirements. In fact, the then Attorney General basically said, ``I don't even want to use this consent decree power, because it's one of the most dangerous things, and it's an exercise of raw power.''

Well, the reason why the Department of Justice has this responsibility is because it is their responsibility to make sure somebody doesn't abuse power, particularly in a law enforcement situation like this, and intervene on the civil liberties of Americans. So that Department of Justice, literally in the first Trump administration, basically did not do its job and tried to basically subvert the responsibilities.

Now, here we are today in the second Trump administration, and what are they doing instead of really trying to look at patterns of abuse and patterns of malpractice or States in which law enforcement agencies aren't properly using force in these instances? What are they doing about this misconduct? Well, the second Trump administration makes the first Trump administration look like it was going easy on this situation.

Not only are they taking the money away from the Civil Rights Division, they are basically saying, ``Look, we don't even want you to do that job. We want you to go out and prioritize protecting other issues instead.''

And basically, we have had most of the Agency and individuals who were there doing the civil liberties work and doing this oversight work--they are gone. So now, what we are seeing is that lawsuits are being dismissed. Settlement agreements, you know, issues that really would have been brought to light are just being dismissed.

So the reason I am asking this is because my colleagues now have a chance to say whether they really believe in this function of the Department of Justice and the rights of Mr. Pretti and Otto Zehm and John T. Williams and whether you want to do something about it.

Now, I personally think that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE should be, in this instance, investigated. I think they should be investigated. And we should know the answers, and we should know that we are upholding the civil liberties of Americans, particularly in the right to express themselves and have free speech and go to a rally without being--or go to express their views, in this case in Minnesota, without being killed.

So the question is, what are we going to do about this use of force? So my colleagues are out here saying, It is a tragedy. I agree it is a tragedy. They are out here saying that this situation shouldn't have happened. I agree. I don't think ICE should be in Minnesota. I guarantee the Obama administration rounded up a lot of people and deported them. I know because I had constituents who complained about that.

But the Obama administration didn't go out and just try to make quotas on people. The Obama administration didn't go out there and say, We are not going after the violent people; we are just going to go after anybody to make up the numbers. The Obama administration didn't use force against peaceful protesters. They didn't do any of that. And so now we are acting like that is the mission, and yet, the Biden administration and the Obama administration did deport violent people out of the United States. Yes, they did.

So what is different here is that we have crossed a line. We have crossed a line, and we have allowed ICE to go here and prey on U.S. citizens and basically, in this case, use this power of force. And my only question now is whether my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to stand up for the role and responsibility the Federal Government plays in oversight, in investigation, and upholding the civil liberties of Americans in the United States of America when these incidents happen.

The rest of this is just debate. The rest of this about how ICE operates, about how the Department of Homeland Security operates, about what you want to do about immigration, whether you want immigration reform, the rest of it is just debate.

The real question is, do you believe in these civil liberties of Americans or not? And when police or power by the Federal Government is used in an excessive way and it means the loss of life, do you believe in having an authority that investigates that and is transparent with the American people and holds that system accountable?

I know this: The Seattle Police Department is a better police department because of those consent decrees, and so is Spokane. And the incidents that happened in those two individuals losing their life may not happen again because we went through that process.

The question is whether there is going to be another Alex Pretti sometime soon, where another U.S. citizen loses their life because of this overreach of power, because we are not investigating, we are not protecting these civil liberties, and we are not understanding that we have an administration that is diminishing the very Agency whose roles and responsibilities are to oversee this.

So I want to know, do my colleagues believe in this? Do they believe in this role or responsibility? Or do they not? Because I can tell you, that is the only way we are going to move forward in the information age. The information age has laid this bare. We might have had people shot and killed by overuse of power, in many instances, in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond, but you didn't see it. Now, you are seeing it now. You have got to deal with the reality. You have got to deal with reality that is right in front of us.

So the only question is, do my colleagues really believe in enforcing the civil liberties and civil rights of Americans by investigating this situation, having an aggressive investigation and holding people accountable?

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to congratulate the appropriations colleagues who have got us to this point of voting today on final passage of three important appropriations bills.

I want to congratulate specifically Senator Collins and Senator Murray from my home State of Washington. They have done an admirable job, and I certainly want to compliment Senator Murray for her hard work and attention on policies that affect our State, particularly in the areas of water. But we are here today because we want to say to our fellow colleagues: These are three important bills to preserving science and the role that science plays in moving our Nation forward.

Last May, I hosted an online roundtable with Senator Van Hollen, a lead appropriator--and I thank him and the rest of the appropriators on the committee, both on the Democrat and Republican side--because we wanted to speak out about how Federal Agencies and scientists, including some from my State, were here to decry the impacts that we would see if the Trump administration was successful at cutting the National Science Foundation particularly, cutting NOAA, cutting NASA.

These participants made it clear that industry depends on strong partnerships with the government to conduct basic and applied science and that they can't do it on their own. Important people also were convened in a group in June--meteorologists from around the country--to specifically home in on how cuts to the NOAA budget would endanger Americans on issues like peak hurricane and wildfire season.

And we called on the administration to restore the Agencies to their full capacity. So I am very happy that these three bills, I think, represent a win for science as was recently reported in the New York Times. But it also was specifically important for the science NOAA research budget: $634 million so that NOAA can continue to improve weather forecasting and development of tools that actually save lives and save money.

I know my colleagues from all over the country are plagued by weather events. It could be a hurricane; it could be a tornado; it could be a flood. We obviously were just impacted in the Pacific Northwest, but we need the tools. We need new hurricane hunters. We need new radar systems. We need the meteorologists.

We need the people on the ground, like what happened in Texas, so that you can take weather information about how warmer events are creating more precipitation, and that precipitation could lead to record flooding. We need the whole system to work with the emergency responders, and we need the ability to get people out of harm's way.

These bills also maintain NOAA's fishery funding and increase investment in salmon hatcheries and the Columbia River, and it protects the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund from being zeroed out.

I see my colleague from Oregon here. I know, as an appropriator, he knows how well and important the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund is, just as my colleagues from Alaska, Oregon, California, Idaho, and Montana know. The whole region knows how important these funds are.

Congress has rejected the administration's attempts in the NOAA budget to cut $1.7 billion out of the NOAA budget. It literally wanted to slash the entire R&D arm of NOAA and slash the NOAA fisheries budget by 29 percent, and these three bills today obviously reject that.

We are also sending a strong message that we believe in our scientists in other Agencies, and I will get to NASA in a minute. But just on this continued improvement of sensors and instruments, this bill invests in NOAA's critical research and lifesaving Agencies.

During the last month of record flooding in my State, over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes, and now, 73 landslides have been reported. So these important reminders, like weather events, are why we sent a five-point plan to the President saying funding for research, technology, tools, buoys, and other information are important to modernizing the Nation's weather forecasting capabilities.

In addition, as I mentioned, there were other Agencies where the President thought we should make massive cuts. Thank God our bipartisan efforts by appropriators and our colleagues represented by the earlier votes on these bills show that we don't agree with that.

We will double the request for funding for the National Science Foundation, and we support the NSF fundamental applied research investment in universities across our Nation. This is important work in all sorts of medical devices, insulin pumps, pacemakers, important things for healthcare and for manufacturing competitiveness.

We also with this bill send a strong message that we stand by our NASA Agency. This legislation funds all NASA mission areas and avoids jeopardizing our exploration of the moon and solar system. We are not going to put aviation safety at risk or leadership in aerospace technology such as advanced composites.

It restores NASA's budget from under $19 billion, as proposed by the Trump administration, to $24 billion to ensure that we can return to the Moon before China and sustain America's presence there.

So I am very happy that all of these things are really important investments, generational investments in science programs, rejecting the cuts by the administration, and instead fueling the innovation economy that is so important for America's competitiveness.

While I am very happy to celebrate these three bills, we also have more work to do. This week, it is clear that the economic numbers point to the fact that we are not lowering costs in America. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said this week that consumer prices are up 2.7 percent higher than a year ago. It has been a full year since this administration has set in motion its economic policies, and now, we know the prices of groceries are up 2.4 percent, the price of shelter is up 3.2 percent, the price of medical services is up 3.5 percent, the price of electricity is up 6.7 percent, and the price of natural gas is up 10.8 percent.

So the reality is, is that tariffs are having an impact. They are adding to the sticker shock on American families, and they are affecting the price of everything from coffee to clothes to cameras to furniture.

A team of Harvard economists have been tracking retail prices using realtime barcode data. So one thing I want to show is just look at this chart that we are presenting here, ``Tariffs are Raising Prices for Americans.'' With January 2024 retail prices as a benchmark, you can see that, during 2024, retail prices were trending down on both domestic goods and imported goods.

These two lines here--these two lines on domestic and imported goods were basically trending downward--this upper line: domestic, imported goods. So here we are all the way through 2024; these numbers are going down.

But all of the sudden, in 2025 and particularly here in April, all of the sudden, the numbers for both imported and domestic products start going back up, all the way to where we are today, so 2024 policies of the last administration driving prices down. All of the sudden, tariff implementation and these policies, prices now going back up.

This is when so-called ``Liberation Day'' tariffs were announced. Americans started getting squeezed. I don't think they are feeling very liberated. This has been the centerpiece of the President's economic policies, and it remains, in my mind, a broken promise on trying to lower costs.

Inflation does remain a consistent problem. American businesses know it;

American families know it; and they are being squeezed by it. So I am hopeful the Supreme Court will act soon and help Americans by lowering the prices they are feeling because of the Trump tariffs and the fact that they are being imposed on manufacturers, on households, and consumers that are having an effect on our economy.

But I want Congress to act. I hope that, as the Supreme Court takes a look at this, that my colleagues will realize that it is their constitutional duty to play a role here and be responsible, similar to what the Cantwell-Grassley Trade Review Act says. That is, that we are saying Congress has the dutiful constitutional authority on tariffs and you have to have all trade policies come before Congress in a transparent and consistent fashion.

I hope that my colleagues will respond to this as the Supreme Court acts, and hopefully, we will get more attention to the oversight demanded on high costs being impacted by tariffs.

We also must work harder to stop inflation and support policies that my colleagues on our side of the aisle have been talking about: how we want to have more affordable housing, how we want to lower the cost on household goods in general, how we want to address energy prices, and how we want Americans to feel like they can keep pace.

Yet here we are on one of the biggest crisis that we could do something about right now--healthcare--and we are not doing anything about healthcare, the expired ACA--the Affordable Care Act--enhanced premium tax credits, the commonsense solution that we would have had, many Americans--millions of Americans--still having affordable insurance.

Our colleagues have not chosen to address this issue. The House passed an extension, a 3-year extension, and yet here we are, about to leave for a week, and our colleagues in the Senate will not even bring that extension up for a vote.

Mr. President, 80,000 people in my State are now at risk of losing their health insurance. So I asked our colleagues to do something about this. I see the President released a one-page healthcare framework today, and I am glad he is getting in that, but today is the end of enrollment. We need more than a one-page plan. There are a lot of details that go into something that is 18 percent of U.S. GDP. This is almost 1 in every $5 spent in the American economy.

And after 15 years, we have heard nothing really from our Republican colleagues on how they are going to drive down the cost of healthcare. So my constituents now looking at these increased inflation numbers also know that they can't afford to get sick. If they are going to lose this healthcare, they can't afford the impacts of the economy, and they can't afford the impacts of healthcare disappearing out from under them.

It is time we address inflation on a daily basis here. It is time we really think about what we can do to help the U.S. economy, help Americans keep pace, and help Americans restore the healthcare that they deserve to have.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall vote: Myself for up to 10 minutes, Senator Wicker for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA Administrator, but first, I want to make a few comments about the unbelievable weather events that are impacting the Pacific Northwest.

We have had, as many people have seen from national news, atmospheric rivers and unbelievable rain impacting many of our rivers in the western part of Washington--reaching record levels and above record levels and impacting flooding throughout the region.

We, obviously, had another weather event last night, and the last couple of days have had what some people described as 50 to 60 miles per hour winds that ultimately, in some places in the State, were recorded at 90 miles per hour winds. So, this morning, we are facing 350,000 people who are without power and a blizzard on the way.

And, while I think that some people think, well, it is a very mountainous area and you should probably have severe winter weather, not really in the history of our State. I think we have only had a few lowland blizzards in the whole history of our State. So the fact that now a blizzard is on the way, on top of the record flooding and the flooding events still predicted to come back to record cresting of many of our rivers, is making it a very challenging time for the State of Washington.

So we certainly appreciate all the first responders, all the law enforcement that are working in the community, all the work that the Governor's office is doing, all the work that we are--a partnership we are now getting from FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Homeland Security to try to address this as a national emergency and clearly to try to gather information about the direct economic impacts in hopes that we will get support for these issues.

We have had a border crossing, that that was closed and certainly is still closed to commercial traffic. We have one of our major highways, Highway 2, that the Governor has now announced will be closed for months, greatly impacting transportation and trade within our region. We have other routes across the Cascades duly impacted.

So I can say that there are some positive stories out of this, that coordination, that actually things that mitigated and adapted with a levee system to prevent some of the record amount of rain from doing even more damage have been successful. I am sure that we will all share this with our colleagues in the future, but right now, we need continued help and focus in the State of Washington, given these severe weather impacts. And again, I appreciate those Federal Agencies who are helping: FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Nomination of Jared Isaacman

Mr. President, I support the Isaacman nomination. In fact, I supported him the first time he was nominated. He was not pushed through the Senate, not the usual path for somebody to be nominated, and then their nomination reversed, but then supported again by the President. But I do believe Mr. Isaacman is capable of successfully navigating the challenges facing the Agency.

I want to take a minute and thank Secretary Duffy for serving as an excellent steward of NASA during his tenure where we had an acting Administrator. I hope the experience is giving the Secretary an increased appreciation for the expertise and research capabilities that NASA brings to bear in developing technology to protect aviation safety and the competitiveness of our aeronautics sector.

That is clearly an important missing aspect of the FAA--having the best technology and the best understanding of how that technology impacts aviation safety. So I support more partnerships here. I also want to highlight a key decision that Secretary Duffy made that I believe is important to our national leadership in human space exploration.

In September, witnesses told the Commerce Committee that the SpaceX lunar lander would not be ready to put Americans back on the Moon, either in 2027 or 2028. This would almost certainly mean we would lose the race to the Moon to China, which was unacceptable. In response, Secretary Duffy directed NASA to reopen the competition for the Artemis lunar landing mission to ensure that a lander can be ready by the end of 2028, and I believe this was a correct decision, and I am pleased that our nominee Mr. Isaacman agrees.

I would also like to note that Secretary Duffy came to NASA in a particularly perilous time for the Agency, as evidenced in a whistleblower report that my office released in September. Before Secretary Duffy arrived, OMB Director Vought had been pushing NASA to implement dangerous cuts in the President's proposed budget proposal for fiscal year 2026, disregarding the law and the impacts on NASA's mission and safety.

As my colleagues know, the President's budget request called for cutting NASA's budget nearly a quarter, its workforce by nearly a third, and its science funding by half. Simply put, this is not the way we are going to win the race to the Moon or accomplish anything else enduring, for that matter.

Fortunately, I believe Mr. Isaacman recognizes that some of the most talented people in America work at NASA. I know the Presiding Officer agrees with this, and that we need to be investing in NASA's mission, not gutting them. During his nomination process, Mr. Isaacman emphasized the importance of developing a pipeline of future scientists, engineers, researchers, and astronauts to support the science and technology development and align with NASA's objectives. I strongly agree.

I look forward to working with Administrator Isaacman on the future STEM talent with both NASA and more broadly with the aerospace and innovation sector. Fair questions have been raised about Mr. Isaacman's Project Athena strategic plan, which was drafted in May and leaked to the press. I have asked Mr. Isaacman about this plan.

In response, he told me the plan was intended to be a proposed approach to collecting data and information from NASA and the space community, serving as a starting point in an in-depth conversation with NASA's management employees on how to ensure NASA remains the world's preeminent aerospace and technology organization.

Mr. Isaacman assured me that this plan was not part of a misguided effort to sell off capacities or slash the workforce or have reckless actions like DOGE had proposed earlier. He promised to share with us the results of the study and analysis with Congress and to engage in a dialog with the committee before doing any implementation. I take Mr. Isaacman at his word,

and I do look forward to working with him on these particular promises.

So, Mr. President, I know you are a huge supporter of Mr. Isaacman and have helped promote his renomination. We are here now with an important mission between this institution and what our national objectives are in going back to the Moon. I am optimistic that Mr. Isaacman will bring a steady hand and clear vision to NASA.

I hope we can partner together, all of us, to achieve this incredible thing for the American people. I know it is time for us to return to the Moon, and there is much at stake with international competition.

I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting Mr. Isaacman on the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to support the gentleman's future request here and to say that the bipartisan ROTOR Act, the Rotorcraft Operations Transparency and Oversight Reform bill represents a major step forward for aviation safety.

Not even 1 year ago, 67 people lost their lives when a Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 over the Potomac, and it was one of the deadliest aviation disasters in history. I do thank the families who are represented in the gallery today for their steadfast support. This is an important step to honor the memory of their loved ones.

I want to thank Senator Cruz for his bipartisanship in reaching this agreement. He and I worked together on legislation we had originally introduced called the Safe Operations of Shared Airspace Act and, working with him, achieved a date certain for when these requirements had to be met. We came together to craft that bill because safety is not a partisan issue, and this bill reflects it. Most of all, I want to thank the families for their steadfast pursuit of the right answers. Even in unimaginable grief, they refused to let their loved ones be forgotten.

When the NDAA language became public that rolled back postcrash safety measures that the FAA, NTSB, and the military had agreed to, the families spoke up. They stood at a press conference with Senator Cruz and me. They made phone calls. They demanded better, and today, we are closer to delivering on that and what they have asked for.

The ROTOR Act ends the exemption for planes to be in the airspace without a broadcast signal--that includes the military, so no more flying in the dark. And what is most important, it strikes the deadly language that is in the NDAA bill that just passed here that had widened that loophole. The Senate passed the NDAA with that provision in it, but this bill repeals it, and we hope that our House colleagues will take it up very expeditiously, and I thank the chairman for working with the White House and the House to try to get that commitment from them.

But just as we have said, we have no idea how this language got in the bill in the first place. I won't be surprised if somebody tries to stop us again. But we will be ready, along with the families, along with our colleague Senator Moran, to fight for this.

This bill requires broadcast technology in aircraft operating in busy airspace. It gives pilots situational awareness and real-time alerts. And NTSB Chairwoman Homendy and her predecessors have been recommending this for over 15 years. So we want to thank her for her leadership.

It also mandates comprehensive safety reviews for all airports across the United States, military and civilian aircraft where they share the same skies. So not just here, but places like San Diego, Tampa, and Norfolk, and it requires the FAA to establish an office dedicated to FAA-DOD coordination. That is really important. It requires a memorandum of understanding with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard to share safety data, and it directs the Army inspector general to audit pilot training, maintenance protocols and the compliance.

This bill represents real progress. I want to thank the chairman, Chairman Cruz, for working with all of us on the committee to get this legislation where it is today, passing the U.S. Senate with a firm commitment for aviation safety.

We will work with our House colleagues to continue to strengthen this. We will work with our House colleagues in the future. But passing this bill today may not be the final step, but it is a huge step forward in getting this legislation to the President's desk.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to make a point clear, and that is that section 373 of this year's National Defense Authorization Act poses a serious risk to the aviation safety and should be removed.

Last night, I came to the floor to raise alarm about this provision, and today I want to explain even more clearly why it is so dangerous and why it should be removed from this bill. This section, section 373, eliminates safeguards added after the January 29 DCA collision. It weakens essential military aircraft technology standards. It enshrines these lower standards into law. And it leaves the public less safe.

The National Transportation Safety Board Chair, the head of the Agency investigating the crash, has called this provision, section 373, ``A major step backwards from where we are today and an unacceptable risk to the flying public'' and she adds ``an unthinkable dismissal'' of the 67 families who lost loved ones. The families of Flight 5342 have said section 373 does nothing meaningful to mitigate the risks that prove fatal for their loved ones.

Senators Cruz, Moran, myself, and Senator Duckworth have pointed out in a joint statement that this provision needs to be stripped from the bill. We have worked on a bipartisan solution after much of the discussion and investigation by our committee, the committee of jurisdiction, the Commerce Committee, and said that in this ROTOR Act, we should pass these provisions that would help still make aviation safer.

The families of 67 victims are facing their first holiday without their loved ones. They have spent the past year advocating for meaningful reforms that, as I mentioned, we passed out of the Commerce Committee. They deserve to see real safety reforms, not a reversal of progress made since the tragedy.

Let me explain to my colleagues how we got here. Current FAA regulations require aircraft operating in busy airspace, including military helicopters, to be equipped with what is called ADS-B Out technology. That stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, meaning that the vehicle should be broadcasting out its location.

It is a critical safety technology. When transmitting, it is broadcasting

an aircraft's precise location, making it easy for air traffic controllers and nearby pilots to locate it. Even though that was the law--and it was clear it should be the law for really important safety reasons--in 2019, the first Trump administration issued a rule allowing for a limited waiver for sensitive government missions to operate without this broadcast technology.

The rule specifically stated that this exemption should not be used routinely. It was meant for genuine national security situations, not everyday operations, meaning that there was an extreme case, and they needed to use it for an extreme purpose.

But the Army didn't do it for an extreme purpose. That is not how they treated the waiver. They abused the waiver. They operated 100 percent of their helicopter flights in the National Capital Region airspace without ADS Broadcast technology transmitting out--not some flights, not most flights, every single flight.

I believe the waiver never should have been granted--that in a crowded airspace, it was a ridiculous idea to think that military helicopters and commercial airlines could be within just a few hundred feet of each other. That makes no sense to me.

Then on January 29, an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission collided with American Airlines Flight 5342--obviously without its broadcast technology transmitting--and 67 people were killed: 60 passengers, 4 crew members, and 3 soldiers on the helicopter. It was one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the United States in decades.

What we learned, that the helicopters--we learned later, I should say--that the helicopters didn't have its broadcast equipment broadcasting out. It wasn't even fully functioning during the flight. And we learned that this wasn't some isolated incident, that the military had been flying in the busiest airspace in the country right next to a commercial airport in these flight paths for years without this requirement--or even in their exemption, being asked for, rarely used.

Instead, they were routinely using the exemption. Why did the FAA even give them this exemption to be within a few hundred feet of commercial aircraft? Why did they believe that the military was going to only use it in extreme conditions? The NTSB investigation revealed that there had been over 15,000 close proximity incidents between commercial aircraft and helicopters near the DCA airport between October 2021 and December 2024.

The warning signs were there; the data was there; and yet nothing was done. After the crash, the FAA and the Department of Defense finally did take action, I am sure, under the scrutiny of the public outcry in the disaster. They closed Helicopter Route 4 between Hains Point and the Wilson Memorial Bridge, the route where the collision occurred.

They restricted nonessential helicopter traffic near DCA, and they required that when essential helicopter flights do operate in restricted areas, commercial arrivals and departures must stop. That was the recommendation after the crash. And critically, the FAA and DOD entered into an agreement requiring military aircraft operating in the DC airspace to broadcast via the ADS-B Out broadcast system.

This was a direct response to the crash and the urgency of the recommendations by the NTSB. But those recommendations, those are being rolled back in this National Defense Authorization Act, in section 373. Instead of strengthening the standards in this underlying bill, which is what our committee and I am pretty sure the House Committee was in agreement, wanting to make even more improvements. We wanted to ensure that the military, the Army, was in compliance to improve the air traffic safety, but instead, we have a bill that weakens it.

What does section 373 do to weaken it? Because I am not sure all my colleagues understand this. I think some people are complacent about aviation safety. There is no room for complacency. You have to understand what the language does, and you have to understand that giving them an exemption to begin with was a mistake and certainly trying to continue to get that exemption into law is also a mistake.

Before the crash, the ADS-B Out was already required by Federal regulations for aircraft operating in a busy airspace such as the National Capital Region. The 2019 exemption for ``sensitive government missions'' was supposed to be limited, but the military, as I said earlier, abused it by flying 100 percent of their helicopter flights without this transmission.

After the crash, the FAA entered into an agreement, and that is why we are so frustrated because, now, instead of strengthening the standards and closing the loophole, section 373 does the opposite. It codifies the ability to fly without ADS-B broadcast technology into Federal law.

What was a regulatory exemption that could have been fixed by the FAA, instead now is becoming a congressionally sanctioned loophole on aviation that will make our airspace less safe. It is wrong-headed, and we should get it out of this bill.

Under section 373, military helicopter flights can operate in the DC special flight rules area only with what I think some of my colleagues are thinking, this is really great. We will just make it the TCAS system. That is a standard that exists, and that is a traffic alert and collision avoidance system.

So they think, oh, that is the system we are implementing into law. One big fat problem: The TCAS doesn't work under the conditions that led to this crash. TCAS, the traffic alert and collision avoidance system, is inhibited by design below 900 feet. So during the descent to avoid--basically, you are in a cabin with a pilot that is supposed to be focused on landing. You do not have alarm bells and all the whistles and everything that distract the pilot at this critical function.

So it doesn't really operate below 900 feet. The DCA collision happened at 278 feet, while Flight 5342 was descending, so this alert system did activate, finally, 20 seconds before impact, and the crash still happened because it was too late. As Chair of the NTSB, Chair Homendy, wrote in her letter: ``A requirement limited to TCAS- compatible warning systems would not ensure adequate safety for any aircraft in the DC airspace.''

When are we going to listen to the investigators we pay to investigate why we had crashes and why people died? When are we going to listen to them and their recommendations? She continued, ``Section 373(a) would roll back those broadcast requirements to the very conditions that existed in the DC airspace at the time of the accident, by allowing military aircraft to operate without ADS-B.''

Section 373--you think, well, how could it get worse than that, now you are recreating the exact conditions of the accident. But it also includes a broad waiver authority. Any general or flag officer can waive even the most minimal TCAS requirements. This requirement that some of my colleagues put out a statement last night, going, Oh, we are good with this because it has TCAS in it. And now, we have the NTSB saying that makes no sense because it doesn't even function in the type of accident we are talking about. And now, even within the provision, it says, Oh, if you don't like that TCAS anyway, you can waive it because you have made a determination.

Why is that so important? Because the military went to the FAA and said, ``We want an exemption for very, very limited use'' and then used it 100 percent of the time. So do we think they are really telling us an accurate statement when they say, ``Oh, we might want to get rid of TCAS too''? Well, I believe they will not use TCAS, and it doesn't function in the accident requirement anyway.

The NTSB investigation has shown that the Army and other military departments do not understand the complexities of DC airspace or how to conduct a thorough safety risk assessment. And while section 373 requires the Secretary of Transportation to sign off on any waivers, Chair Homendy wrote that this provides little real protection, that the language gives the military departments broader latitude with no meaningful input from the FAA. OK, so it just means the military can do whatever they want in the commercial airspace. The aviation industry and the affected communities are the ones that are going to continue to pay the price here.

So let's be clear. The NTSB, our National Transportation Safety Board, in its own investigation, found serious maintenance failures across the

Army's helicopter fleet. The crash helicopter equipment was improperly installed and hadn't been working for more than 700 days. The Army never caught it. In fact, the helicopters in the battalion, 8 of 16, could not even transmit when required to do so because of maintenance failures. There is a really big issue that we are going to hear a lot more about in January from the NTSB, and that is that the altimeters on the helicopters were also unreliable.

My sense is the NTSB is doing really important engineering investigative work now to find out why those altimeters were so off. This is important to know because, again, if we are going to pass a bill saying, ``Go ahead, military, operate in the commercial airspace'' and you don't even have good altimeters, it presents even more risk. When the NTSB tested three other Black Hawk helicopters over the Potomac, their barometric altimeters showed the helicopters 80 to 130 feet lower than they actually were.

So it just says that something is not working on these helicopter systems. Good investigative work--if you watch any of these shows, mid- air collisions, any of these things that document what the NTSB does-- you will find that good engineering will come up with what is the problem with these helicopters on the altimeters, and they will tell us something important that we needed to know.

But we should not be flying helicopters around close to commercial aviation space, within a few hundred feet, when we know they aren't even accurate. In a crash that happened at 278 feet, this kind of error is the difference between life and death. This is the same Army that section 373 would trust to conduct its own risk assessment and decide when it is safe to broadcast their location. Again, why are we allowing military helicopters to fly within a few hundred feet of commercial planes?

The Lilley family, who lost their son, First Officer Sam Lilley in the crash, called out these waivers directly, stating, ``The National Security waivers allowed by this draft are deeply concerning. This bill addresses that with a window dressing fix that will allow it to continue setting aside requirements with nothing more than a cursory risk assessment.''

Section 373 only applies to a training flight. It does nothing to address VIP transport operational missions or other military flights that happen around DC every day. Even if this provision were good policy, which is not, it would still leave the majority of military operations near commercial aircraft completely unaddressed.

So what we have here is a provision that rolls back the post-crash requirements that were agreed to by the FAA. It codifies a Federal loophole that the military has already used, and basically, in an environment where a crash was caused, it substitutes a technology standard that didn't prevent the crash to begin with and is not the recommendation of the Agency charged with telling us what kind of improvement should be made. And it creates a broad waiver with no meaningful oversight.

That is how we got into this situation. Let's say, for instance, there was a need for military aircraft up and down the Potomac close to--close to--the commercial flights. You would still set standards, and you would have oversight, but we had thousands of incidents of alarm bells going off, and nothing happened. Nothing happened to fix it. Nobody at the FAA, nobody at the military--nobody fixed it. And now, unfortunately, so many people have lost their loved ones.

So what is in this bill is not safety reform. It creates the appearance of reform, but it is not. That is why Senator Cruz and I and Senators Moran and Duckworth have been working on comprehensive legislation, the bipartisan ROTOR Act, and would have loved that, instead, to be in this legislation. It is bipartisan. It basically is many of the recommendations that we have already heard from the National Transportation Safety Board that would make all of us, including those who fly on these flights, safer.

The difference between our legislation and what they are talking about--well, as I mentioned, on January 29 the Black Hawk wasn't transmitting, so it was essentially invisible. We want to make sure that we know where flights are.

Our bill would set a national standard to ensure safer separation between military and commercial aircraft, not just in Washington, DC, but everywhere--San Diego, Tampa, Norfolk, anywhere where military and civilian aircraft share the skies. The Flight 5342 families agree. They have said, ``We continue to call for swift passage of the bipartisan ROTOR Act, which is a strong first step in addressing comprehensive nationwide reforms to ensure the tragedy like Flight 5342 never happens again.''

That is why we worked so hard. We are not even saying the ROTOR Act is the final piece. As I said, the NTSB will make more announcements in January in their recommendations and their findings. But I know this, we should not be passing the National Defense Authorization Act with a huge loophole that is putting the flying public at risk.

I hope our colleagues will realize this and work together to get this provision out of the legislation. I hope that you will think about the 67 families who lost their loved ones in this tragedy that was preventable. I hope that we will consider making sure that all our colleagues understand that transportation safety is not a one day on the job issue. It is a constant in which we have to be vigilant about why it is so important to follow the rules and make sure the flying public is safe.

The stakes are too high. Let's not go backward on aviation safety. Let's get this section out of the bill, and let's pass the ROTOR Act.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor tonight to talk about a few issues. Literally, I thought I was going to come and talk about healthcare and the need for us to come together to help reduce healthcare costs and to continue to fight to make sure Americans are covered because covering them helps reduce all our costs when you have the reduction of uncompensated care. But I also wanted to mention a very important safety issue on aviation.

But what I need to say now is really to the State of Washington and to our National Weather Service people. I just got off the phone from our National Weather Service Director for the Pacific Northwest, who was telling me about the extremely dangerous events that are now taking place in the Northwest, with flooding, that we are going to see catastrophic events in at least a couple of our counties, and certainly a lot of damage in the better part of Puget Sound.

So it is very important that the public understand that these rivers, particularly in Snohomish and Skagit Counties, are going to reach catastrophic levels, literally 4 to 5 feet above the historic mark of these rivers. So this weather event of what is called an atmospheric river, bringing about this much precipitation into our region is going to cause the need for evacuations.

Do not tarry in the evacuation. If evacuations are requested, please comply. These are very drastic situations, and we need the public to understand that. So I am sure you are going to hear a lot more from your local forecasters, your county executives, your emergency response teams, but just know that we are under an unbelievable weather event, and we need to have the public's cooperation.

I would like to turn now before I get to healthcare, Mr. President, to come to the floor to speak about the National Defense Authorization Act. I see it was just delivered here from the House. I was hoping that our House colleagues would have stopped that legislation and actually made a fix to it. That is section 373, of this year's Defense Authorization Act, which really undermines our critical commercial aviation safety and it exposes the gaps that we saw when we had the January 29 DCA air collision.

So I hope that my colleagues here will help us make changes to this section of the Defense Authorization Act. We know how important this is, the Flight 5342 passenger families, the Lilley family, along with myself and Senator Cruz, have been trying to sound the alarm bells around the Capitol in the airspace about why we shouldn't let the military fly without this important broadcast system, so that people know when they are in the region and can translate that communication, so that air traffic controllers and other aircraft in a busy airspace know when the military is there.

We know what happened when a Black Hawk involved in the January 29 collision wasn't actively transmitting its location. We know what happened. We know that we have seen since then much from the NTSB. In fact, tonight, a letter from the National Transportation Safety Board is expressing their strong opposition to the inclusion of section 373, in the National Defense Authorization Act. It basically is saying that it significantly reduces the safety of the airspace around Reagan Washington National Airport by allowing the Secretary of the military Department to operate, transmitting its missions to the DCA airspace in a manner that is basically how we got in to the collision to begin with--basically with it not transmitting.

So I don't know why we have to have a letter from the NTSB telling us what we are doing in the National Defense Authorization Act is making the airspace less safe. I don't even know how this got in the bill because I guarantee you, Senator Cruz and I didn't approve of this being in the bill. I am pretty sure my colleagues in the House, Congressmen Larson and Graves, didn't approve of this being in the bill. So how is it that this is now in the bill that we all have to respond today, including the National Transportation Safety Board, basically saying this language should not be there.

It is so important, that the families that have had to come together to support legislation that Senator Cruz and I do support, had to put out their own tweet. They basically said that it doesn't fix the failed system that produced the accident in January. So the families are having to lobby.

So who is not listening? Who is not listening to the ranking members of committees? Who is not listening to the NTSB? Who is not listening to the families of the victims? Who is jamming this into a bill just because they think that DOD still deserves to fly in a crowded airspace without people knowing that they are there?

So I hope my colleagues will take this issue seriously. I hope my colleagues will understand that this is not the way to fix legislation. I mentioned my colleagues, Senator Cruz, and I have passed the ROTOR Act out of committee, important legislation that does fix the problem, that is endorsed by the families, that is endorsed by the NTSB, that is endorsed by other groups. And yet we couldn't get that into this legislation. But yet, somehow, mysteriously, without anybody knowing how or why, this language is stuck into this bill. Listen to the Lilley family, who lost their son, First Officer Sam Lilley in the crash. They recognize this provision creates another loophole and stated: ``Safety that depends on exemptions cannot be the foundation of [a secure] airspace system.''

So not only does this provision fail to rein in the training flights properly, it will keep making it more difficult for commercial aircraft to see military training flights flying so close to the flights around

Now, Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to continue to work on the affordable care issues that are facing our Nation. We know that we have to work together to address the Affordable Care Act and that the system needs to continue to have updates.

We know that in this time period since 2010, the uninsured rate in the United States was a staggering 18.2 percent. After the enactment of the ACA, which significantly expanded coverage, around 45 million Americans had access to either Medicaid or the ACA plans--and that is that we actually cut by more than half the uninsured rate to an alltime low in 2023 of 7 percent.

Now, in my home State, we took advantage of the Affordable Care Act and further drove the uninsured rate down to 4 percent, significantly reducing hospitals' and providers' financial burden from providing uncompensated care. So there has much been said about these individual provisions in the Affordable Care Act on the exchange, but the bottom line is--that ability for the Affordable Care Act to drive the uninsured rate in half to an alltime low of 7 percent and 4 percent in my State is a great example of what it did to help lower costs across the whole system.

There are still some challenges on the exchange, and there are more affordable ways to deal with that population on the exchange. I authored one of them called the Basic Health Program. It is now working in three States and soon to be the District of Columbia, and that is definitely thousands of dollars cheaper per year than what you can buy on the exchange. And I would encourage all of us to look at that as a solution for the future.

But according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund, States that expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act saw an average 40- percent decrease in uncompensated care. Another, the Center for Budget and Policy, basically, as this chart shows, found that the Affordable Care Act reduced uncompensated care costs by more than $6 billion in expansion states.

Just imagine--reduce the cost by $6 billion by just covering people and not having this tragedy of uncompensated care. Literally, I have had hospitals tell me that one person can cost millions of dollars by just constantly coming to the hospital. If they would have just had healthcare, had insurance, their costs would have been covered, instead of the constant uncompensated care costs.

So the real challenge here is that since the passage of the ACA, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, have been trying to repeal this bill that cut the uninsured rate in half, provided care that was affordable in the Medicaid expansion and covered other things, as in the basic plan, they tried to repeal all that 70 times--70 times. OK. So I am not surprised that we are days away from a vote, and yet they are still not coming together to show us how they are going to reduce healthcare costs.

We need to keep covering people because covering people is a way to help reduce costs. As I mentioned, the expansion of the Basic Health Program is one way to lower those costs. But I know that in this last big bill passed by my colleagues, they basically cut $1 trillion from the healthcare system, taking away health insurance from 15 million Americans, raising the healthcare costs and basically creating challenges. I know in one Seattle Times headline, basically, ``Washington health care insurers fret as the ACA subsidies remain in limbo.'' That is because people are following what we are doing--or I should say not doing--and they are trying to understand where they are going to get affordable insurance.

I heard from a woman in Spokane, she has a chronic lung disease and recently fractured her knee. Her premium has gone from $723 per month to $2,180 per month. Her only option, a plan with less coverage, has a lower premium, but makes her liable for 30 percent of all hospital and ER payments, making the plan incredibly risky. She is just a year and a half away from qualifying for Medicare, but these massive costs mean she and her husband will have to cut back on groceries and other expenses.

I heard from another constituent in Clark County. She works three jobs, but none of them--none of them provide healthcare. Because of the expiring subsidies, the cost of her basic bronze plan has doubled to $1,050 per month with a deductible of $9,000. She is going to an occupational therapy provider for arthritis. But when she got the $1,000 cost estimate, she canceled.

Another constituent from Long Beach, WA, told me her son has mental health issues, and she helps pay for his housing. But if her premiums go up, she will have to make the difficult decision about getting care for her son or a roof over their head or this issue of premiums.

We know the costs are rising for other things, like groceries, prescription drugs, and other necessities. So health insurance is going to push people off of a financial stability. If Congress doesn't extend the expiring ACA credits, an estimated 5 million Americans--80,000 Washingtonians--will drop insurance altogether, creating more uncompensated care.

And as I said in the beginning, passing the Affordable Care Act, cutting the uninsured rate in half, was a huge milestone, beyond saving $6 billion, but making the system healthier and less expensive. So why do my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not understand that we can't just cut, in the Big Beautiful Bill, these important healthcare programs. We can't try to repeal the ACA 70 times and then, all of a sudden, believe that you can just cut people off of the ACA program without trying to provide a more cost-effective solution?

I know my colleagues Senator Crapo and Cassidy are trying. My guess is they would like to get a solution here. I thought we should have done it before we opened the government back up because we had the optimal period of time where people were listening to real solutions. Now, we have kind of divided into our corners.

I am very worried that we are not going to get this done when, in reality, we could. We could. We are making things more expensive when we don't need to. Without the extension, millions of Americans will simply choose not to purchase the coverage, and the premiums will, on average, double for the remaining people on the exchange. So that meager $1,000 to $1,500 provided by my colleagues, Senators Cassidy and Crapo, in health savings accounts is nowhere--nowhere--close to covering the out-of-pocket deductible of a $7,000 typical associated plan with the health savings accounts.

So I talked to them before, I wanted to work with them in earnest. I thought it was some novelty in certain places like Indiana that was worth exploring. But we cannot take millions of people off of the Affordable Care plan and then say that you are going to give them $1,000 when we know that their out-of-pocket expenses are going to be $7,000.

So, as we have all suggested, fix this program, particularly for the very small 5 percent or 6 percent that are at the very high income level, figure out a plan that is more cost effective than what we are providing today, and I am sure--I am sure--we can provide a solution for the American people.

We know now that the cost of hospitalization by people like my constituent in Spokane with chronic conditions like lung cancer or other issues are really worrying the American people. We know that even as we try to get a solution, that people are focusing on abortion restrictions, as if those people in the Affordable Care Act part of the exchange we are talking about are people that were part of this issue. So literally, our colleagues on the other side,

who tried to say, let's cut the Affordable Care Act 70 times, put in decimating language in the Big Beautiful Bill are also saying, The only way I am going to solve this problem for you is if you change the law and try to put more restrictive reproductive rights into statute.

So we can do better than this. We can focus on finding bipartisan solutions. We can focus on working together as members of the Finance Committee and actually get something done, but time is running out. I know that we want to get something done, but this Finance Committee-- has the full committee met in open mark-up for 7 days of debating and amending legislation, and that is what it takes to get our colleagues in order.

I want us to understand what legislating really looks like. We know that when we had the Covid pandemic, we all came together and created a solution to help the economy keep going, to help the airline industry keep going, to help small businesses. We could have done more. We obviously had differences of opinion about how much to do, but we worked in a bipartisan fashion.

So now, as we face this crisis where Americans are losing their health insurance, people have retreated to partisan corners again on things like choice and things like cutting people off of health insurance, instead of working on solutions that really lower costs.

I ask my colleagues, let's work on solutions so that we will have something for Americans. Otherwise, beginning January 1, which is not that far from now, Americans are going to have less insurance, they are going to have more costs, and many of them are going to be facing a healthcare crisis without the aid and help of insurance to get them through it.

I hope we can do better than that. I hope that we can learn from the fact that expanding affordable health insurance to Americans is a winning concept. It is worth achieving. I hope our colleagues will try to achieve it in the next day.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 5 minutes, followed by Senator Hyde-Smith for up to 5 minutes and Senator Murkowski for up to 3 minutes, prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak on the 11:30 vote we are about to have. And I come because I want to speak against the effort to overturn the land management plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Congress established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1980 to protect the diverse and unique, very fragile ecosystem located on 20 million acres in the northeast corner of Alaska. However, at the time, Congress failed to permanently protect 1.5 million acres of Coastal Plain, the biological beating heart of this incredible wilderness--a wilderness that is often called America's Serengeti; that is because of the hundreds of thousands of caribou that migrate and depend on these lands. Herds that Alaska Native Tribes rely on for subsistence and they have been an essential piece of their traditional culture and way of life.

Because it is one of the largest remaining untouched ecosystems on our entire planet, I believe we should strive hard to protect it. It is so unique. People do want to travel there. But many would like to ignore the fact that it is a fragile and irreplaceable beauty that lives along the Coastal Plain in order to search for oil and gas that may lie beneath.

The battle has been the subject of many intense congressional debates for decades. So far, we have been able to protect the Coastal Plain and keep it intact, as it has been for millions of years. And many Americans had hoped we had moved on. That is, moved on because even the oil companies have said, by virtue of not wanting to pay for any leases, that this area is not a good place to drill.

Some companies even paid to get out of their leases. I say moved on because, time and time again, insurers and major banks have pledged not to finance development in the refuge. The two failed lease sales under both the Trump and Biden administrations should have been the end to all of this, and that is because we were supposed to raise $2 billion. In fact, when the language was passed, they said, well, we will raise $2 billion, but they have actually only raised a few million.

So, in other words, this vote is about whether we want to spoil one of the last great pristine spots on planet Earth for what the market says is worth a few million dollars. I know, especially in Europe, there is a lot of tourism in the Arctic today. There are many people that want the last frontier experience and are paying for cruise ships that actually have ice-breaking capacity to travel to the Arctic Circle.

Why aren't we encouraging the same kind of tourism? And I think what makes even less sense about the future is that, why would we vote to destroy something so fragile and so irreplaceable when we have a choice?

I want to point out that using the Congressional Review Act to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could very well backfire on our drilling advocates. If Congress votes to overturn the Biden record of decision today, it would create legal and regulatory chaos, not clarity.

That is because it would revive the Trump era leasing plan that is legally flawed and under active litigation, effectively leaving no valid framework for how leasing could proceed. Just a way of saying, my guess is, it would have more lawsuits that would be easier to attack. That is because the CRA, if signed into law, the Department of the Interior couldn't reissue a similar rule, and the old leasing program did have serious legal deficiencies.

Contrast that with the existing record of decision, which followed science, law, and public input and balancing environmental protections and resource extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So I hope we won't make an irrevocable, irredeemable mistake in the Senate today by voting to overturn a science-based record of decision that was done by the book and with the public input. We should be hammering out a bipartisan agreement instead on other major issues like healthcare affordability or finding other ways to reduce the cost of living.

But this administration has opened up all drilling all over the United States for oil and gas production, and yet it isn't much higher than the record levels that were achieved during the Biden administration. That is even after the Big Beautiful Bill gave nearly $6 billion in tax breaks this year for some of the biggest oil and gas companies.

So we gave huge, massive tax breaks that could have gone into paying for affordable healthcare, and instead, we gave them to oil companies. And yet we are not really producing much more than we have been producing under the last administration.

Even after we have seen the repeal of dozens of environmental regulations that protected America's health the oil companies had complained about. Even after the administration opened millions of acres in the sensitive lands, including the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, and millions of offshore acres, even when coastal residents are screaming they don't want these oil rigs off their coast.

So it isn't producing the effect that some of my colleagues hoped. So this is not a CRA we should vote for. We should oppose the CRA and keep the land management that is in place.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today because we are now in the middle of November, and we know that we have open enrollment in our healthcare plans, and we have consumers trying to make choices. We need to give them clarity that we can help drive down the costs.

As somebody who worked very hard on the Affordable Care Act--on one provision that was different than the exchanges, the basic health plan--I can tell you that this plan has been successful at making a market for consumers at the low end of the market, above the Medicaid rate but up to 200 percent of the Medicaid rate, and providing them with affordable insurance through something called the basic health plan. It is in four States and soon to be in the District of Columbia.

If you think about it, an individual buying on the exchange would probably have to spend about $9,500 to get an equitable silver plan, but these individual States purchasing on behalf of bundles of their constituents are only paying $6,000 for that same plan on an annual basis.

So what are we doing? We are basically making a market. I say it is like going to Costco. If you buy in bulk, you get a discount. If you allow these States to buy on behalf of a large pool of their constituents who can't make a market on their own, you obviously can get a discount.

I am very interested in our continuing and saving Federal dollars and delivering good healthcare on something called the basic health plan. So I was not surprised that yesterday or in the last few days, the world--in DC, anyway, and around the country--has erupted into this debate about how do

we make healthcare more affordable--that is exactly right--and how do we make sure that Big Insurance doesn't just capitalize.

Now, all of a sudden, both sides of the aisle are talking about insurance companies making the money and how we drive down the costs. I appreciate that, and I welcome the chance to talk to any of my colleagues.

In fact, I saw that the Wall Street Journal had a column today basically saying:

Republicans Pitch Alternative to ACA Extension to End the

Government Shutdown.

I was glad to see that. I thought that was a great alternative. I don't know how much of it was just discussed at your lunch or how many of these ideas of making healthcare more affordable were discussed, but I definitely think this particular idea by my colleague Senator Cassidy has merit, only because I think the Senator on the Finance Committee, along with myself and the chairman of the HELP Committee, has tried to look at ways to make healthcare more affordable, and it deserves some fair consideration.

This idea is really something called a health reimbursement account. Since 2008, health reimbursement accounts have been a critical component of one State's Medicaid Program, the Healthy Indiana Plan in the State of Indiana. Today, over 800,000 Indiana Medicaid enrollees automatically have access to these accounts and are using them to lower their medical expenses. The State of Indiana pays for the first $2,500 in healthcare costs, which covers a large portion of their insurance plan's out-of-pocket expenses, but the enrollees make monthly contributions, depending on their costs, to upgrade their healthcare coverage to more generously include things like vision and dental benefits.

One of the biggest benefits of the Indiana health reimbursement account is that the program encourages good financial management and the use of preventive care, like annual checkups.

Currently, if an enrollee spends less than the $2,500 in medical costs and in using preventive care, they can roll over their remaining account to the next year to lower their monthly medical expenses. This has been a proven path to promoting responsible and measured healthcare spending. It also encourages, as I mentioned, the use of preventive care.

We all know we need to drive down costs in the long run.

What happens when we don't have good health insurance and as we see November and December coming without a real plan for millions of Americans to buy affordable insurance, we are just going to drive up the costs of uncompensated care. The Affordable Care Act has lowered the amount of uncompensated care and helped us lower the cost of insurance overall, but we need to keep going, and we need to do more.

So I think that these health reimbursement accounts proposed by my colleague Senator Cassidy--I hope this article in the Wall Street Journal is serious, that Republicans are interested in floating this idea--and the Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage have a variety of ways in which we all can take part in a conversation to drive down the costs of care.

The health reimbursement accounts are already in place in Indiana, here in our Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and also in the DC Health exchange. So it is not as if there is only one place that is doing this. In those instances, it is a voluntary program. People can voluntarily comply, voluntarily decide to take the program up and participate in it and, as I said, get involved in better healthcare decisions and better timeliness of these decisions.

I have no idea what is going to happen here today, but I know this: There is enough time to talk about good ways to lower the costs of healthcare, particularly for this population that has to make benefit decisions right now. Lower these costs, implement this, and get our government back open.

I hope that people will give serious consideration to what my colleague Senator Cassidy and others have talked about in this very important area of driving down the costs of care.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I actually like good local journalism. I am going to fight as hard as I can in the U.S. Congress to keep local journalism and fight AI, that basically might obliterate it, for all intents and purposes.

So I am just going to read my statement here.

In an article printed in the Vancouver Columbian on August 11, 2025, the headline is ``Child care center owner urges Congress to take action to save the [Affordable Care Act] tax credits, expansion.''

The owner of an east Vancouver child care center joined

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Monday morning to draw

attention to Washington's rising health care costs.

The two spoke at a news conference at Tree Hill Learning

Center on Southeast 196th Avenue, along with representatives

from a local insurance agency and Workforce Southwest

Washington.

Washington's Insurance Commissioner said that in May that

14 health insurers in the state were seeking a rate increase

for next year. The proposed increases for plans sold on

the individual health insurance market averaged 21.2

percent and ranged [anywhere] from 9.6 percent to 37.3

percent.

The office expects premium increases to affect about

300,000 people statewide.

Dana Christiansen, owner of Tree Hill Learning Center, said

this isn't the first time she has had to face rising

healthcare costs for her two Vancouver childcare facilities.

``Each year, I face a difficult decision of how much of the

rate [increase]--currently at 24 percent--do I take on and

absorb,'' Christiansen said. ``How much do I pass on to the

employee? How much do I pass on to the families in the form

of [higher childcare] tuition increases?''

Each rate change request is evaluated independently by

actuarial staff, said Aaron VanTuyl, spokesman for the

insurance commissioner's office. That's mandated by state

law.

[But] the rate changes are usually finalized in September,

VanTuyl said. Claims and administrative costs, medical and

prescription drug costs, company expenses and profits will

all be reviewed by the commissioner's office as part of

determining if they are reasonable.

Cantwell called the proposed increases a threat to health

care affordability.

The insurance commissioner's office said Congress'

anticipated failure to renew the enhanced premium tax credit

is contributing to the proposed increases.

Congress created the premium tax credit in 2014, as part of

the Affordable Care Act, to lower health plan premium costs

for eligible households. The American Rescue Plan in 2021

expanded who was eligible for the credit and the Inflation

Reduction Act extended it to this year. It's set to expire at

the end of this year.

``We [all] know that increased rates are something we could

deal with in Congress,'' Cantwell said. ``That is why today I

am urging Congress to take action . . . [on] the Affordable

Care Act tax credits and their expansion, and make sure

[that] we do so before the end of the year.''

The senator's office said rate increases are being

requested nationwide and three states have already approved

them.

The Congressional Budget Office expects fewer people will

participate in subsidized exchanges and the uninsured rate

will climb if the enhanced premiums aren't extended.

NBC News reported earlier this year that Republican

lawmakers are split on whether to extend the tax credit. Some

said the federal government could no longer . . . support it,

while others wanted it extended.

Just a little side note before I keep reading, five of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said they wanted the tax credits extended. That was early in August.

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange, the state's health

insurance marketplace, estimated about 216,000 health plan

enrollees in Washington were eligible for the enhanced

premium tax credit.

Christiansen said her business already operates on thin

margins.

``I view providing healthcare benefits not as a perk, but

as a fundamental necessity,'' she said. ``I never want an

unforeseen illness to financially ruin an employee or force

them to neglect their health.''

Still, rising child care costs are forcing her [clientele]

to reconsider if they can afford to keep their child in a

licensed facility or continue working [at all].

``We cannot solve this problem alone,'' Christiansen said.

``We need the support of lawmakers, the insurance industry,

and regulatory agencies to address the root cause of the

rates and increases that are disproportionately affecting

those who need it the most.''

As the clock continues to tick here--that is actually the end of the story. I wanted to read that story because that was August. It showed, at that point in time, we had people on this side of the aisle who wanted to negotiate. They were in the news. I summated it by saying there were five people, but I am sure there are more by now.

That is why we are asking with this simple proposal: Let's open the government, extend these tax credits for a year, because we know there is bipartisan support in both the House and Senate to do that, and continue to reform this so we can keep this childcare facility in Vancouver, WA, in business.

Let's not make this--we shared a lot of stories about individual people, but we haven't shared enough stories about the small business impact and the economic impact to employers, when you take affordable health insurance away from them and they don't have options.

This owner lamented in the story: Which should I do? Do I absorb these costs and not be a profitable business? Do I make these employees not have health insurance? Do I raise these costs and then these parents can't have the childcare that they need to stay?

She told me on that day that, literally, some people decided to stop work because they no longer could afford childcare. This is ruining our whole economic picture by making insurance too expensive, by making the costs play too big a role in our economy, and taking workers away from us.

I support this 1-year proposal. I support us working together to reform the system. I have championed many things in the Affordable Care Act that drive down costs and have driven down costs, and I will work with any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to continue and expand that work because it is important. It is important for us to continue to have affordability, particularly in healthcare. As we have a rising baby boomer population reaching retirement age, we have no other choice but to focus on affordability.

I yield the floor.

Do I have consent to ask my colleague a question?

Will my colleague yield for a question?

Thank you.

I noticed in your proposal that you are talking about something that you had hoped to effect January of next year. Is that correct?

What is the Senator from Louisiana's interpretation of how the market controls the--you are trying to create a market mechanism where you are giving the consumer the same amount of money you would give them in the tax credits to make the insurance more affordable, only through a health savings account. But how do you know, once you have that in a health savings account, the market is going to not still have an increase above that amount? So how do you think this affects the market?

Well, if the Senator would yield for another question. I am assuming that you think affordability is the key. I certainly think affordability is the key. Nobody wants to subsidize expensive health insurance. We want to create market mechanisms to drive down the costs of health insurance, not just spend money to buy expensive insurance, whether you buy it through the tax credit or buy it through a health savings account. We want to create those mechanisms.

So, again, all of this is going to take place in November and December--right now, in December. So somehow you would make some calculation in January about what would go into a savings account or are you thinking of a flat number?

If the Senator would continue to yield.

The issue is that, you know, so much of this is already set up, and I think you are trying to be creative in a way to--instead of the Alexander-Murray cost revenue sharing, I think you are trying to figure out something that would get people the same amount of money to make them whole over the next year or two; is that correct?

So I would say what we are trying to do is make people, as the market is out there, whole over the next year or two. That is exactly what we are trying to do.

We are happy to debate how we make health insurance more affordable after that. That has been a goal of our side of the aisle for decades. We want to make it more affordable. Now, we will always be measured about how successful we have been on that, but I think that we are going to continue to strive to make it more affordable and really are proud that we drove down the uninsured rate with the Affordable Care Act because we covered more people, thereby lowering costs because of not having so much uncompensated care.

So I am glad to see somebody saying ``let's talk,'' and let's put a proposal out there. Happy to continue to have a dialogue about any idea that helps us move forward.

You know, the issue is that so many Americans are, in this moment, right now, making these decisions, and how you effect that for the next 2 years is the biggest question.

And you and I know if we said: OK. We are huddling tomorrow or, you know, the Finance Committee is huddling tomorrow, then everybody up here would be trying to convince us not to do various things. So the question is, How can we protect the Marketplace in the next year or two in the simplest way and then get about us going back to business, talking to each other, trying to work out what are the best creative ideas for lowering health insurance costs?

I don't know why we haven't done a PBM bill. My colleague Senator Grassley and I have a bill. I think you have a proposal. Other people have proposals. We are letting PBMs get away with so much in the expensive prescription drugs. I don't know why we don't spend all our time driving down the cost of health insurance.

I am happy to work creatively on ways to protect the market over the next 2 years so that we can finally get to some creative discussions. I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues here on the floor tonight to talk about the importance of SNAP benefits. And I think you can see that what we don't need is more chaos. And we certainly don't need less help. What we need is for our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the White House to help us with SNAP.

Now, my newspapers have been very clear.

The Spokesman-Review: ``SNAP benefits remain in limbo.''

The Seattle Times: ``State SNAP recipients brace for lower benefits after partial funding.''

The President of the United States, as my colleagues have said, has been ordered by the courts to pay for SNAP benefits, but instead of doing that, wants to continue to make life harder on not just Washingtonians, but many people across the country. Nearly 1 million Washingtonians receive SNAP benefits. We are talking about benefits that are helping them make ends meet. And as we have seen from food banks since the COVID days till now, not everybody can find food without paying exorbitant costs. So the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was created to try to help those Washingtonians and other people feed their families and feed their children.

More than 38 percent of SNAP participants are families with members who are older adults or disabled. Nearly 10 percent of Washington households are food insecure--meaning they don't have the necessary access to have adequate food because they simply can't afford it.

So we are here tonight to talk about how we want to save SNAP. SNAP benefits, as we know, help with the average household receiving benefits--or about $5.92 a day. Yes, that means that the fourth most expensive State to buy groceries in the U.S. and that the average cost of weekly groceries in the State of Washington is $287--over $1,000 per month.

So we know that the SNAP benefit program helps us. So we know this administration likes to go from crisis to crisis, but grocery prices have been rising because of the Trump tariffs. And now, because the fact that our Republican colleagues will not work with us to open the government, those families who rely on SNAP are having a big challenge.

We know that what we need to do is put SNAP dollars back into our economy. Every dollar spent on SNAP generates $1.54 of economic activity. In the 4 years leading up to the COVID pandemic, SNAP lifted 154,000 Washingtonians out of poverty, including 77,000 children.

My office released data yesterday showing where halting SNAP would cause the most damage. People in Yakima County, where more than 57,000 people, 21 percent of the county's residents, receive SNAP benefits. In King County--that is where Seattle is--nearly 200,000 people will lose benefits.

So let's be clear: The administration could fully fund SNAP benefits, do as the courts have asked. But for some reason, it is better to deny these people the benefits they deserve. I don't understand.

We know what the courts have said, one in Massachusetts, one in Rhode Island. It said the administration should use the available emergency funding to fulfill SNAP benefits to 42 million Americans. That is what the courts have said. So the economic hardship that is being put on these American families at the hands of this administration is unconscionable.

Why would the President freeze a program that not only stimulates the economy, helps fight hunger, feeds families, counteracts the tariff costs, and do what the courts is telling them to do? I don't understand why the American people, particularly families at lower income, are some sort of bargaining chip here in the U.S. Senate. I thought we were here to solve problems. I thought we were here to help the American people.

Yakima County, as I mentioned, one of the most hard-hit SNAP counties, is really demonstrating a failure to extend the premium tax credits that help keep insurance affordable. Data from the exchange also showed that the people in this particular county expect a 133- percent increase in health insurance premiums for those county residents.

So here we are, the most hard-hit SNAP county in our State and also now statewide facing a whopping $1,049 per month increase in their premiums. How do my colleagues expect people in Washington to survive with out-of-control health insurance costs, out-of-control food costs, and especially as inflation rose to 3 percent in September?

So instead of coming to the table on meaningful negotiations, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are still refusing to address the high costs of food and the high costs of healthcare. We are here tonight to say it is easy to save SNAP. The President could just do it.

But let's work together to lower these extraordinary costs of healthcare on American families, to help a food program that has helped our farm communities, and certainly helped families. Let's do the right thing and help save the SNAP program.

I thank my colleagues, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week, the U.S. Senate voted to terminate national emergency declarations that enabled President Trump's tariffs on Brazil and Canada.

Next week, November 5, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a majority of trade cases challenging President Trump's authority to impose global tariffs under the Emergency Powers Act.

The law is clear that the President does not have authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs on imports on more than 80 countries around the world. I am pleased that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed the Trade Review Act, legislation proposed by myself and Senator Grassley. The Cantwell- Grassley legislation focuses on the fact that it is this body's job and responsibility to do trade acts.

The Chamber of Commerce clearly states in their letter that they are representing millions of businesses around the United States of all sizes to try to press upon us the importance of why Congress needs to reinstate its role.

The U.S. Chamber writes to the Members of the U.S. Senate:

``The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges Congress to pass

legislation to reclaim its constitutional role in setting

tariffs, including the Trade Review Act. Doing so would

restore appropriate procedural deliberation in the enactment

of taxes on trade, benefitting the millions of Americans

whose livelihoods depend on international commerce and the

certainty that supports investment in our economy.

Members of Congress continue to hear from farmers, workers,

and business owners about the harm inflicted by broad-based

tariffs and the associated economic uncertainty. American

families are facing thousands of dollars in higher prices as

a result of these increased taxes. Small businesses,

manufacturers, and ranchers are struggling with higher costs,

with additional economic pain likely coming in months.

The Chamber--

Meaning the U.S. Chamber.

has long supported legislative proposals to reassert

congressional prerogatives on trade as a means to secure

durable outcomes. The Constitution grants exclusive authority

to Congress ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and

excises . . . [and] to regulate commerce with foreign

nations,'' and exercising leadership on this front should be

a priority in the context of today's challenging economic

outlook.

By establishing a more deliberate process for enacting

tariffs, Congress can ensure that [the] appropriate

stakeholder consultation and a methodical assessment of costs

precede any decision to raise [costs] on traded goods. To

date, several proposals have been introduced that address

these concerns, including but not limited to the bipartisan .

. . Trade Review Act as well as resolutions terminating the

national emergency [declaration on] tariffs (S.J. Res. 88

[and] S.J. Res. 77). The Chamber urges members of Congress to

work across the aisle to enact [this] legislation requiring

an up-or-down vote for any new tariffs and those imposed in

the year to date.

This is signed by Neil Bradley, Executive Vice President, Chief of Policy, Head of Strategic Advocacy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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

Mr. President, I hope that as we continue to talk about trade, that Congress will take the steps necessary to end tariffs on U.S. small businesses and American families.

Healthcare

Now, Mr. President, I also want to rise to talk about the serious healthcare crisis and the affordability crisis that is affecting our Nation. In just 2 days, on Saturday, November 1, millions of Americans are going to go online to sign up for their 2026 Affordable Care Act health insurance plan.

As we know, keeping healthcare affordable is a key priority, and I see that the premiums that are being talked about are going to increase by hundreds or thousands of dollars every month for the same coverage they just had this year. That is, next year is going to go up thousands of dollars.

Some people are going to say, ``I can't go without health insurance. I have to find a way to cover this extra cost by cutting back on food and prescription drugs or working longer shifts.'' But for about 5 million Americans, including 80,000 in my State, they will probably be forced to say, ``I just can't afford health insurance anymore.'' They are going to hope they don't get sick. They are going to hope that they don't have an emergency, but we know that that is uncomfortable.

Last week, my office released a case study detailing what this decision would look like for a married couple in Washington State making $120,000 a year. Across all 39 counties in my State, couples in this situation would have to decide what to do in the face of an average premium increase of a whopping $1,049 per month. That is, their costs will go up $12,000 per year.

Here is just one example in King County, my State's largest county. This couple would go from paying $425 a month to $1,386 a month. This problem isn't unique to Washington. There are other parts of the United States that are seeing the same thing.

Hopefully, all of this data is being released to individuals, and hopefully, our colleagues are paying attention to this because it is showing what premium increases look like, but a couple in the State of Alabama--I am sorry, a single woman in Alabama making $65,000 a year could see her premium increase 43 percent from the 2025 levels. It would mean she would pay an additional increase from going from $314 a month to $452 a month.

Another example, for a family of four in Texas, for parents making $70,000 a year but don't just get insurance through their jobs, their insurance would cost $505 in 2025, but without the extended premium tax credit, likely to face $1,551 cost per month in 2026.

So these costs are adding up on American families. Together, these costs continue to hold individual households and their budgets in an undesirable position. We are already hearing stories about people squeezing in medical procedures before the end of 2025.

To make matters worse, for families with massive increases in premiums and with the rise in inflation we have seen since January of this year, households are trying to decide whether they take care of healthcare or groceries or electricity.

And the sad truth is that we could have worked this out. We could have done this in the bill passed earlier this year. Congress could be working right now, even, on working down the cost of insurance premiums for 24 million Americans. But instead, people are refusing to come to the table to discuss this issue.

The Senate needs to be the place we used to be: that is, getting legislation done. We need to work together collectively to have votes and to discuss how to solve these problems in good faith

across the aisle. We should be extending the ACA premiums now and making sure these prices don't rise and continue to work on long-term solutions to make health insurance more affordable for Americans.

So I urge my colleagues to continue to work with us. The ACA tax credits expiring at the end of this year and this enrollment that we are going to see on November 1, that everybody is going to see how much these costs are going up--I am asking my colleagues, let's roll up our sleeves. Let's work to lower these costs.

I know that in the Affordable Care Act, there are States like New York, Oregon, and Minnesota who have the basic health plan. The basic health plan provision, modeled on something our State had first done, lowered the costs for a lot of working families across the United States. Programs like this should be considered, as well as solutions that would help us lower costs for the future.

I yield the floor.