Floor Statements

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.

Mr. President, I rise to ask the Senator from Oregon a question.

I appreciate my Northwest colleague being here to bring attention to these important issues, and I--so much has transpired in the last few weeks, and so I just appreciate the fact that you are trying to bring part of the awareness.

If we made a long list, there would be many, many things here in this list of authoritarianism that we do not like, and I appreciate you bringing specific attention, although I do find some musings that people find a bicycle protest somewhat threatening, which it is just not. You know, we are kind of famous for our bicycle events in the Northwest, so don't know why somebody finds that threatening when authoritarianism is really the threat.

But I have been so involved with my colleague Senator Grassley in making a really important point, and that is the President is abusing his power on tariffs. When you think about the actions of proposing tariffs, this is exactly why people said, ``We don't want kings to have this authority.''

Why? Because it is such an important constitutional authority given to Congress. It is not something that we think that the President of the United States should have to usher in economic impact in this dramatic way.

And the IEEPA tariffs, the lower courts have already said, ``Yes, we don't think that he has this authority.'' He has been abusing this authority. Now, he is going to try to say there are other emergency powers, and hopefully, the courts will continue to do their job.

But when I think about all of the things he has done, and lots of them are big issues, to me, this one--to basically wield an economic impact on the cost of affordability for Americans, for housing, for food, for transportation cost, a whole myriad of things--when it is only the authority of Congress to do this.

I think of how big this economic stick is that he is wielding. So all we have said here, collectively, a bipartisan group of Senators, is that you should--if you think these things are so great, you should come to the Congress. But the constitutional authority is that only Congress has this authority.

So I think it is a very dangerous precedent. I think, in a global economy with a lot of economic activity to be had, I don't think it is a good idea to have somebody in the office of the Presidency acting as if these tariff policies are their domain.

And clearly, the cost of this on goods and services--particularly those that are really, really hurting us, like I said, affordable housing and things of that nature--are really the impacts. And I don't know to what degree--sorry to say I didn't stay up with you and watch all night, so I don't know what degree you covered tariffs. But I don't know what you think about this

particular point in this debate of yours about the authoritarian power and how much its being abused on tariffs.

Mr. President, if I could--the Senator from Oregon, if he had time for another question on this point.

You know that the Pacific Northwest has a big export economy. We have many ports. People may not know, but we probably export a significant amount of soybeans. And I don't know if the Senator is aware that this is a crisis now. These growers, particularly in the Midwest, are on their heels over this.

This is having huge economic impact, and it is a constitutional authority by Congress. And instead of our colleagues dealing with this authority and dealing with the fact that their own constituents are getting run over, they are still ignoring the fact that the President is abusing these powers.

So I don't know how much you are aware of this, but it is these kinds of activities that lose you shelf space, go to some other country, and then when you try to get it back, the country is already in business with somebody else. So this is affecting our growers across the United States. It is time for our colleagues to admit that this is an abuse of power and help us reign it back in.

And so, I so appreciate your efforts here to talk about authoritarianism, and I appreciate your comments on tariffs specifically, but this is--one side of it is the consumer impact, and the other side of it is the economic impact to growers who wonder why they send people here to vote and take care of their interests if you are going to have somebody at the White House who is just going to run over them. And I hope that we can continue to emphasize this.

And of course, obviously, on the healthcare costs, we put out a report last--well, now, I think 4 weeks ago--about the high cost of healthcare being implemented because of the lack of the ACA tax credits.

But, oh, by the way, guess what was in that report? That tariffs were also having an impact on the cost of healthcare. So it is impacting us on healthcare, the very underlying issue of why we are here and trying to get some relief for the American consumer, as now they start to see these bills and see the choices that they are going to have, but tariffs are affecting our economy in a very significant way, and it is time for our colleagues to say this is the authority.

They have a chance to sign on to our bill. They certainly could sign on. There are seven Democrats, seven Republicans. They certainly could sign on and say that they support that. I don't see anybody on the other side of them making a case that the President has this constitutional authority; it is more that they are just silent, and America needs to know that our economy is being hurt by tariffs, and it is an abuse of power by the White House.

So thank you.

Mr. President, I believe every Senator knows and agrees that our constituents are concerned about the cost of healthcare. Just this morning, I heard some of my Republican colleagues also talking about healthcare affordability. The difference is, I think our Democratic side of the aisle wants to do something about it now. We want to fix one of the biggest health insurance spikes that we are going to see locked-in in 2026 in just a few weeks. We want to do everything we can to stop that.

We know that when you kick Americans off of their health insurance, it hurts all Americans. Democrats know that a vague promise to fix it in the future doesn't help us solve the problems of healthcare delivery today. And we know that the problem is worse than we even imagined just a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a new report on how expensive the premiums which the ACA expiration--the Affordable Care Act expiration of those premiums--may cost American families. The answer is, it is going to hurt a lot. The new report found that out-of- pocket premiums for a single person would more than double on average next year if the enhanced premium tax credits expire.

That is, we have had insurance commissioners and various offices across various States trying to make guesstimates about this, but increasing from $880 a year to $1,900 a year in 2026 just shows you how dramatic that situation could be for American families. These are families who will have to shoulder these unnecessary increases. They will be on top of all the other inflationary issues that they are dealing with now, issues like household goods, gas prices, electricity, housing, groceries, and now we want to throw at them healthcare costs.

We are very clear on our side of the aisle: We want the maximum amount of people to get health insurance, drive down uncompensated care, drive down everybody's cost, and deliver good healthcare for our citizens. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured rate was cut in half from almost 16 percent--roughly 15.7 percent

in 2010--down to an alltime low of 7.7 percent in 2023. So the result is not just healthy Americans having their cost decreased by taking uncompensated care out of the system. It is remarkable progress towards getting everyone covered and having net savings for everybody.

We know that the current majority on the other side of the aisle, they are no fan of the Affordable Care Act. They are no fan even of universal coverage. If you can imagine, we are not even being prescriptive. We just say, ``We want to see universal coverage.'' We want everybody to have health insurance. Not only do they not agree with that, they have tried to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act 50 times in the past decade--50 times they have gone after the Affordable Care Act, and they have failed.

One time, thanks to the courage of the late Senator John McCain and two of my other colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the last significant threat to our healthcare system was defeated in 2017. Maybe some people here still working on the floor remember that dramatic moment.

But now, with the passage of this budget reconciliation act in July, Republicans are trying to reverse the progress of the Affordable Care Act. Congratulations, you are having an effect. You are taking that act and healthcare out of the system. You may be trying to do it in a sneak attack. You may be trying to do it in a vague way, but we are on to the fact that you are trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and you are trying to get rid of the ability for Americans to get affordable insurance coverage.

So what now? What are we going to do to prevent rural hospitals from closing? Everyone knows that $50 billion in your slush fund that was part of the reconciliation bill is not enough to save rural hospitals, even if he uses it, even if the President would use it just on so- called red States, it is not enough. And now, you are going to say that 15 million Americans who no longer have the Affordable Care Act marketplace plans or the Medicaid coverage that was stripped out of the healthcare system, we are not going to have that.

So you have no ideas on how you are going to help keep people insured or keep these hospitals operating. So, instead of meaningful negotiations, my colleagues have decided they don't want to tell us what their ideas are to deal with the current crisis. It is not a next year problem; it is a today problem. So instead of using jurisdictional powers like the Finance Committee--they could have come up with a solution. They could have come up with a meeting today. Instead, they were having a hearing on cryptocurrency.

If you thought this issue was so important, why didn't you have a hearing today on how to make health insurance more affordable for the American people? Even if you didn't want to address this particular idea, how is it that you want to have a meeting on cryptocurrency or give tax breaks to oil companies, but you don't want to deal with the health insurance problems of the American people? So instead of working with their counterparts or the House of Representatives--oh, wait, the House of Representatives, they are not even here, and yet we are in this situation.

So who are you neglecting? You are neglecting your constituents. You are neglecting 5 million Americans, including 80,000 Washingtonians, who are not going to be able to have affordable insurance by the end of this year. They will have to make a decision in November and December, but we already know from projections, 80,000 of them will make a decision because they just simply can't afford it.

Back to those numbers that were on the chart earlier: When you look at households and incomes, somebody might say, ``Oh, well, somebody might be able to afford $840.'' Well, not if you are a family of four on $40,000. You are not going to afford that if you are on $75,000 of income, and now, you are going to pay $3,368 more--or even $90,000 of income. I got news for people: Seattle is one of the most expensive places in the country to live, and coming up with now, all of a sudden, $3,000 more for health insurance that you didn't think you were going to have to pay? People are going to make the wrong decisions.

God forbid that these people get sick or have a condition that is really life-threatening, and who is going to be responsible for taking this out of the system because people don't want to come up with a solution today? It is not that hard. We can extend these tax credits. We can have affordable health insurance in the market. We can talk as an organization of people who--by the way, Finance Committee is charged with looking at this issue and discussing it. That is why we fought so hard in the Affordable Care Act for something called the Basic Health Program, which covered people under the 200 percent of the Federal poverty line and provided more important health insurance.

But right now, we need to act. We need to say to families who are going to be threatened by this that we can work together and we have a plan. And our plan is going to be able to be implemented immediately.

What is more important than having millions of Americans lose their health insurance? And then basically say, ``We don't really care about this, when we already are teetering on so much inflation, so many affordability issues, so much of people struggling.'' And if people think we really recovered from a post-Covid era, we haven't. People are still struggling with the aftermath and the effects of that, and now, we are basically saying we are going to add to your insurance.

So, as I did a few days ago here on the Senate floor, I came and talked about how States are now putting these numbers out, a lot of States. When I found this out this summer, I did many events across the State of Washington trying to bring awareness to the public about this, and I found out that some States were really trying to hide the ball-- like they literally didn't want to tell people these costs were going up. Maybe they thought they were going to wait until after the enrollment period opened, when there was nothing you can do much past that. But these States are seeing astronomical costs for health insurance--the State of Texas, a 39-percent increase; Arizona, a 48.95- percent increase.

So, somehow, these numbers were not available to the broader public, and we published a report last week making sure that the biggest insurers in that State--and we were projecting what the State's insurance commissioner or other groups and organizations were saying that this increase is. And now, the Kaiser Foundation is putting an even brighter light on what those numbers are, saying that probably that most people will just see an actual doubling of their premiums.

So how can it be okay to--and even if you thought, ``Well, okay, 5 million Americans, they are just going to be short changed. No problem.'' It is not that. It is when those people don't have health insurance, it affects the whole system. It takes that progress we made in the uninsured rate, driving it down from 16 or so--15 percent to 16 percent, down to 7 percent, and it means that you are not raising the cost on the entire system by seeing a bunch of people with uncompensated care.

We did this to cover citizens because it was the smart thing to do, and my colleagues should just come to the table and say, ``We agree. We need to fix this now. We agree that an open enrollment period that starts as early as October 15 in one or two States and starts for everybody November 1 is on us now. And if we don't send the right signal, this is the catastrophe that is going to happen for people, and that we really do care about affordable health insurance.''

At a time when we already have price increases in, as I said, a lot of household items, now is not the time to put healthcare on the list and crush families with this extra burden. Let's sit down and get this done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know many of my constituents are contacting me about the rising cost of healthcare. I know that many of my colleagues are saying that they are being contacted about the rising cost of healthcare.

Believe it or not, some of it is impacted by tariffs--some of it, the anxiety of what happened when Medicaid was threatened in the Big Beautiful Bill. But most specifically now, they are hearing from their State insurance commissioners that rates are going to go up as early as October 15 in the State of Idaho and in many, many States across the country, as early as November 1, are starting to now have to make a choice. Are they going to pay for this huge increase in insurance premiums because this institution, this body, did not deal with the Affordable Care Act extensions of subsidies that provided affordable health insurance to millions of Americans?

This is something that is already going to affect the burden that rural hospitals have. It is going to burden Americans as they try to keep working, and it is going to burden an ever increasing healthcare system that is facing these costs.

I hope that we can do something, to make a commitment to focus on affordability. Why? The American people are seeing a huge cost increase in groceries, in gasoline, in everyday products. Our manufacturers are seeing increases in cost. And so this is an issue that needs to be tackled today, not in a few weeks when you are locked in to the higher rates. It is not something that can be done by the end of the year because you are going to be locked in to higher rates. This is something that Congress and the administration need to hash out now.

Now, I am an advocate of--I wish we would have hashed it out last summer. I basically started realizing in July that this was going to affect my State, when our insurance commissioner came up with what they predicted would be a 20-plus-percent increase in rates, and we started speaking with small businesses across the State who said it was going to affect their ability to keep their employees because of the cost of healthcare.

So what are we doing now? Well, instead of addressing this issue, the Affordable Care Act healthcare market rate extension of making sure that premiums don't rise significantly on many Americans, people are denying that the problem exists or that the deadline is actually here-- past due, really--to affect what we think is an emergency.

Last week, my office released a report showing that dramatic increases in premiums for many States in the United States have already gotten approval, and just one chart that I will show you shows those increased rates, not just for the State of Washington--which we saw a 21-percent increase--but for many other States: Arizona, which they are proposing a 48-percent increase; Georgia, 39-percent increase; North Carolina, 29.36 percent; and Texas, 39.28 percent.

Why are they going up so much? Well, insurers are saying in their States, the primary reason, as I mentioned earlier, administration tariffs, cost of delivering the healthcare system, and the pending failure of Congress to extend the tax credits in the Affordable Care Act. As a result, as I said, many people will be paying these higher rates, but 5 million Americans across the country, including 80,000 Washingtonians, the estimates are, will just no longer be able to afford insurance.

That is the estimate: 5 million Americans across the country, 80,000 in my State, will just be like, ``Nope, can't afford insurance anymore, not going to buy it.'' Why is that so important? Well, because the Affordable Care Act drove down the rate of uninsured in America from about 15 percent to about 7 percent. That decrease in uncompensated care helped us reduce our overall healthcare costs too, for people who are getting insurance in many different ways.

When you have uncompensated care, the costs don't just evaporate and go into the sky. They are paid by the rest of us in the system. Failing to deal with this affects everybody's healthcare, not just those on the Affordable Care Act premium plan of extension of these credits. It affects everybody because you are increasing the cost of healthcare throughout the entire system.

I don't want to roll the dice on this and find out what happens to many of my constituents. I don't want to find out what happens when people who don't have health insurance get sick anyway and go to the emergency room or have a devastating diagnosis just because we wouldn't act. When you think about this, the ranks of people who are in this uninsured market don't stop getting sick. They do still have costs, and that uncompensated care is what drove up the cost of our healthcare system overall.

So now, as we face inflation, it is the last thing we should be doing, is to drive up the cost of anything just because we have failed to act. The last thing we need to do is discover that, on November 1, that those premiums, which will go into place as people purchase those plans, is something that we can't reverse for the future--because the market is a marketplace. It is a marketplace of insurance. If we want to affect this, we should affect it now.

In August, I asked the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee to hold a hearing on how to lower these costs for Americans and find ways to keep people insured and healthy. Unfortunately, the Senate Finance Committee did not even meet in September and did not schedule any hearings to actually even discuss this particular problem.

I would have hoped that there would have been an illumination with our report, as everybody realized these rates are going to get locked in, people are going to make purchase decisions in November and December, and then, as I said, lots of people will just say, ``I can't afford these rates. They're insane, and now I'm going to just drop out of the marketplace. But yeah, I'm still going to get sick, and I'm still

going to cost the hospital and the part of the State that may not even be able to afford it. I'm still going to have uncompensated care costs.''

All of this could have been discussed, and that is why, when we put out the report, we expressed the urgency by sending the same letter-- not a big political letter, but a letter--to the ranking member and chairman of the Finance Committee, but also to the leadership of the Senate, the House, and the President, saying you need to wake up to this problem. This problem is real. It will affect our economy. It will affect millions of people, and it will affect the rest of us by driving up the cost of health insurance.

So I heard Speaker Johnson on the television this morning saying that extending the ACA credits is a December issue. Well, it is not really a December issue if people start, in October and November, making decisions and locking themselves into higher rates or deciding that they are not going to even buy insurance because it is too expensive.

He said, ``Reforms are needed to the program.'' Great. We could have had that discussion in August or September, and we certainly could have it today, but I see no convening. The House isn't even here. I see no convening of people saying, ``Let's get serious about these extensions and the high cost of health insurance.'' Families are relying on the exchange, and these decisions need to be made during this open enrollment period.

I know people are thinking, ``Oh, this is such a geeky issue.'' Trust me: I know that many Americans are frustrated over enrollment periods for health insurance period, okay? They are always challenged by the fact that an employer or this healthcare system--yes, we need to keep working to improve the healthcare system. But right now, we don't want to lose millions of people from the healthcare system just because we don't want to talk about it and somebody wants to talk about it later.

To enroll by December 15, you need to know what the premium costs are. To get coverage starting on January 1, you need to enroll by December 15. So that means you have to know what this situation is all about now. When these insurance commissioners across the country--go back to those rates--started publishing those rates, that is when everybody should have woken up and said, ``What the heck are we talking about?'' Thirty, 40, almost 40 percent in Arizona, 40 percent. What are we talking about?

Insurance commissioners are proposing--oh, by the way, maybe in a few red States, they knew it was so bad they didn't even want to put the information out there. Our report published a lot of this, and people weren't even thinking about it. They weren't even thinking about or letting people put out the information about how high the rates were going to be. So why would you do that? Why not address the underlying issue and say, ``What are we doing about the high cost of healthcare?''

So my colleagues on the other side are so confident. Let's hear what their proposal is. Let's hear what they are going to do--because I am pretty sure the tariffs, the Medicaid cuts, and this proposal not to deal with the Affordable Care Act extension are driving up these rates to extraordinary rates that are going to hurt all Americans by making healthcare more expensive.

So I will just say we didn't even have a hearing in the committee of jurisdiction on the fact that we cut a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system and stripped Medicaid coverage from 11 million Americans. We didn't even have a hearing on that. So, our constituents, Mr. President, should be listened to. We need to address this issue. We want Members to figure out how to make healthcare more affordable for millions of Americans.

The 119th Congress thus far has squandered too much time focusing too little on this issue. We need to roll up our sleeves and focus on immediate, real solutions that impact millions of Americans. Together, we can figure out a way to extend these expiring credits and come up with solutions to lower those costs, and I urge my colleagues to do so as soon as possible. The American people are depending on us to help them not face these enormous inflationary costs.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Wisconsin talking about her own healthcare experience and why those in Wisconsin want to see us take action to help keep insurance affordable.

I rise today because Americans are facing a massive wave of healthcare costs. Those increases are swamping the family budget, and they are hurting our healthcare system by increasing uncompensated care.

But before I did that, I wanted to make a comment on today's HELP Committee hearing with the former CDC Director, Director Susan Monarez, who was fired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy because she refused to rubberstamp what he wanted to have happen.

Dr. Monarez basically confirmed what we already knew today, and that was that instead of basing vaccines on hundreds of years of science, instead the Secretary of Health is trying to replace that with a pseudoscience. He is basically trying to say, instead of 100 years of evidence about vaccines for measles and other childhood diseases, that now a new group is going to come up with recommendations and, thereby, I think, confusing people.

So I am glad that the West Coast Alliance of scientists today put out a statement talking about, what is the science that has been the basis for the United States for several years. Those are important things to understand, but this is an assault on our healthcare system if we don't continue to follow science in the most specific way.

So I appreciate Dr. Monarez basically coming before the Senate today, making sure that people understand that she was fired because she didn't want to go along with this, and I think that she made some important statements today about saying that we need to base science on evidence and not ideology. I agree with that, and I think people in the Northwest want to see this alliance in our State and, in California and Oregon, continue to advocate for good science when it comes to vaccines.

But I wanted to also talk tonight about our healthcare system and the assault on it. Last week, the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner approved a 21-percent increase in the 2026 ACA marketplace insurance premium.

So what does that mean? It means that our State said that insurance rates could go up. Why are they saying they could go up? Because this is the largest single increase since 2018, nearly double last year's increase. And why are they saying this? Well, they are saying this-- insurers in Washington are saying this because they are pointing to a couple of things: the Trump tariffs, the rising cost of the delivery system, and most importantly, the failure of our colleagues to extend the tax credits that would make health insurance more affordable for about 22 million Americans.

In our State, 80,000 Washingtonians are expected to drop their health insurance coverage because they will no longer be able to afford it. That is a tragedy because we don't want to see people losing health insurance because, when they do, it means there is just a lot more uncompensated care and it means the cost of health insurance goes up for everybody. For everyone else, they will pay an average of $129 more per month, or $1,548 per year, just to keep the same health insurance plan.

So how did we get here? Why are Americans facing this looming threat? When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, the health insurance through Medicaid, the marketplace exchange was now available to millions of Americans. By making coverage affordable year after year, we saw more and more people covered by insurance.

The rate of those uninsured in the United States dropped from 15 percent before the ACA to an alltime low of over 7 percent in 2023. So we basically cut that in half. We cut the number of uninsured in half. We could have done more, in my opinion; there were a couple of things we left on the table that would have lowered that uninsured rate even more significantly.

But today, 44 million Americans get their health insurance through the ACA. That is about one in six people under the age of 65. In our State, it provides coverage for an additional 626,000 Medicaid recipients and nearly 300,000 beneficiaries on the exchange. In 2023, the uninsured rate in our State was just 4.8 percent. So that means people are covered. You don't have uncompensated care, you don't have emergency room visits, you don't have the problems that we are seeing.

So what happens now, though, is that millions of Americans, as I said, are now facing these skyrocketing costs of healthcare. And that is because data shows, when more people have health insurance and our providers spend less on compensated care, the system is more affordable. But according to a Kaiser Foundation study, aggregated uncompensated care dropped by $20 billion in the 7 years after the Affordable Care Act passed. But the tax credits that help make coverage affordable for those who need it the most are essential to driving down the cost for everyone.

So if you don't keep the tax credits, we are now going to face skyrocketing healthcare costs, unless we extend those subsidies. That is the point. We did a good job--we lowered uncompensated care, we lowered the cost of insurance, and instead, now we are facing basically the end of subsidies that we are now going to make that go up and cost all of us.

As I mentioned, I have spoken to many of my constituents. One I just spoke to--Leslie, who has a connection to Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster, WA--she told me that her husband relies on the ACA premium credits to afford his marketplace insurance. Without the subsidy, his monthly premium would increase from $200 to $700 a month, and he will no longer be able to afford his insurance next year. He also needs to have surgery soon, so they are trying to figure out how to get that done fast. And Leslie and her husband run a small business. They don't have the luxury of waiting and paying more just to get basic healthcare in a very rural part of our State. She understands the healthcare system, and she knows that we need to fix this, so she is calling on all of us to step up and get a certainty to the ACA tax credit.

I am worried about the additional 80,000 Washingtonians who are expected to lose access to checkups and preventive care. We know that people without healthcare insurance wait to get care until their condition worsens to a point where they end up in the emergency room. That costs them and everyone else more. And more people will also end up in the emergency department just because they can't afford preventive care or regular services. Treating a patient in the ER can be 10 times more expensive than treating a patient in a normal doctor's office, and these are costs that are being passed along in the form of higher healthcare premiums for all Washingtonians, no matter what type of health insurance they get.

So these Republican policies making it harder for us to hold down healthcare costs should stop. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of the healthcare system has already risen 4.2 percent in the last 6 months, much higher than the rate of inflation. So we see these costs compared to other costs in our system. Obviously, energy costs are rising, but in addition to the cost of food and household essentials, Americans are facing these higher bills in general. I think the Trump administration is ignoring these real life impacts on families.

Congress should be working together to make healthcare less expensive, and we know that we, the Congress, in the Republican-passed bill also created a lot of uncertainty as to the Medicaid marketplace and what is happening, and we already met with hospitals today from rural parts of Washington, that are saying they are seeing the impacts already of that bill--on individuals not having certainty or, in one instance, basically a hospital needed to have some construction work done, and the person who was supposed to provide the construction and the financing of that said, ``Are you really going to have the money to even do this?'' So it is sending a ripple through the entire system.

So we can't afford to go back to a situation we had before the Affordable Care Act, when one of every seven Americans didn't have health insurance. We can't afford the wave of uncompensated care costs that will hit hospitals and, eventually, all of us; and we can't afford the loss of lives and the medical bills that people are seeing every day.

And we need Americans to understand that we should be listening to what they are saying. Seventy-two percent of Americans say they want an enhanced premium tax credit extension. That is those who are strongly in favor and somewhat in favor. That is what the American people are telling us. They want this healthcare to continue just like they want their Medicaid coverage to continue.

So let's do our jobs. Let's quickly act to extend the ACA tax credits. Let's do everything we can to make health insurance more affordable. Let's make a bipartisan effort to show the American people that we hear them, that a very big percentage of them want more affordable healthcare--now, for all Americans, let's get it done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to remind everyone in the United States of America that we have a cleanup obligation at the Hanford Site in the State of Washington and to remind the Secretary of Energy and the Trump administration of a commitment to that part of the United States, to our Nation, and to the cleanup of the most contaminated nuclear site in our Nation. We have an agreement between the Washington State Department of Ecology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Energy, and that is to clean up this site.

Right now, there are 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste being stored underground in World War II era tanks. These 177 waste storage tanks are over 80 years old, so definitely beyond their life design. Some of these tanks are leaking over 1,000 gallons of waste in a year into the ground. So this waste is making its way to the Columbia River, which supplies drinking water to nearly 30,000 residents in the Tri-Cities.

The Federal Government, as I mentioned, is legally and morally obligated to clean up the dangerous mess it left on the sprawling Hanford Site. We know this part of our U.S. history and the effort that men and women made during World War II in an unbelievable timeframe, but it also left us with a huge obligation to clean up the nuclear waste. The Tri-Party Agreement guides the Hanford Cleanup schedule and the goals that need to be met to complete this mission. Our current Energy Secretary, if he is thinking about ignoring these commitments to science or the Tri-Party Agreement, he needs to rethink that.

This couldn't come at a worse time. In just 6 weeks, for the first time, the removal and treatment of radioactive waste that has been stored in these tanks and in the ground for 80 years will begin to be processed. This process, called vitrification--a process that other countries, like France and Japan and Germany have all successfully achieved--is basically taking the radioactive sludge and turning it into a stable, storable glass. That is what the skilled workers at the Hanford Site have been working on for years--years, years--really-- literally 23 years and about $24 billion in taxpayer money to build a vitrification plant that supports 3,000 jobs in the Tri-Cities to get this post-World War II job done.

When Secretary Wright testified in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he said, ``Senator,'' speaking to me, ``I can't overstate how critical I think it is to finish the job, finish the cleanup at Hanford. Hanford gave a lot to this country, and we left a mess that needs to be cleaned up.'' He went on to say, ``I am firmly committed to continuing our obligations and our moral obligations to clean up the mess that was left behind in your state.''

So I had a chance to ask the Secretary about this, and that is why news this week that somehow, maybe in October, we are not going to start the vitrification plan--we are not, after 23 years and $24 billion going to actually start the process of taking the radioactive waste and turning it into this glassification process, so we can once and for all dispose of it.

I know that the people in the Tri-Cities are very anxious about this situation because the vitrification plant, as I said, was supposed to start on October 15. You don't have to go far back--well, actually, maybe you do have to go far back several Energy Secretaries--to look at what happens when it comes to Hanford cleanup. Every time a new administration comes in, somebody looks at the amount of money that it takes to clean up nuclear waste that has been stored in tanks and says, ``This costs too much. We ought to be able to do it cheaper.''

So I would say to our current colleagues over at the Department of Energy, you need to look at history and think twice. Secretary Abraham, Energy Secretary, formerly U.S. Senator from Michigan, said that he was going to fundamentally transform cleanup with an accelerated cleanup plan in 2002. This represented the most dramatic shift in a cleanup strategy since the original Tri-Party Agreement between the U.S. Government and those agencies that I mentioned. He claimed that he would save $50 billion on cleanup. Guess what? It didn't work. It just delayed the cleanup and cost taxpayers more money.

Secretary Bodman, he inherited Secretary Abraham's unrealistic promise, and he failed to address the fundamental technical problems emerging at the waste treatment plant--problems with hydrogen gas build-up, pulse jet mixing, nuclear critical risk, and identified during his tenure, but not adequately addressed--creating a legacy of, really, technical debt that would cost billions of dollars to resolve.

I can say to my colleagues, I got to a point that I said, I am for an Energy Secretary for life, or until they clean up Hanford, because that is how technical the job is and leaving it every few years to a new Energy Secretary and administrators, to me, was part of the challenge. Also during the Bush administration, when Secretary Bodman was there, they tried to shortcut the cleanup process by saying we could just grout the waste.

So, obviously, you can't just pour concrete on high level nuclear waste, on a toxic brew, and then just leave it in the ground--so many, many challenges there. Despite Secretary Chu's Nobel Prize-winning credentials and genuine commitment to scientific rigor, he failed to overcome the systematic problems at Hanford.

Secretary Moniz, a physicist Secretary, attempted to work around the waste treatment plant's technical problems. His framework for tank waste cleanup--including sending some waste to New Mexico and a partial treatment within the tanks--were approaches that essentially abandoned the original cleanup strategy without demonstrating the alternatives would be faster and cheaper. I am sure there were people over at OMB that probably egged on these ideas, thinking that somehow they were going to save money. They didn't. They didn't even work.

Secretary Perry achieved no significant breakthrough in addressing Hanford's cost or schedule problems. The single shell tanks continued to deteriorate, with Tank B-109 actively leaking during his tenure. That is radioactive waste leaking. The waste treatment plant remained plagued by technical problems and schedule delays with low activity waste facilities not operational, despite being nearly complete.

Energy Secretary Brouillette probably did the best job I have seen in my tenure. He--this was in the last Trump administration--he and his Deputy Secretary Dabbar really focused on project management and got the low activity waste facility finally dialed in and on track--so literally created the facility to treat the waste.

This facility that is set to be open--apparently now, someone is calling into question, ``Maybe let's not open it''--after 23 years and $24 billion and all these problems and all these mishaps of every Energy Secretary listening to probably a lower staffer, saying, ``There's a way to do it differently,'' somehow, somebody is following in the same apparent wrong-headed idea that somehow you don't have to turn on this plant and we shouldn't move forward. I know that we must continue our obligations at the facility.

I know that we can't walk away from this commitment. I know that the vitrification process has been proven scientifically, and unless there is a problem at this plant, we need to move forward with the production of waste to glass that people have been counting on for years. We cannot put another generation of Washingtonians or Tri-Citians or U.S. citizens, leaving this kind of waste without a solution--we can't change course.

We need to stay the course and get this project done. I hope we will be having an opening and that we can finally say, ``We have treated this waste and are ready to remove the rest of the waste in the tanks.''

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to acknowledge the passing of a friend, a great Washingtonian, Bill Neukom--one of the most thoughtful and caring human beings I have had the pleasure of working with and knowing.

Bill was a legendary leader in technology who made incredible contributions and helped pave the way for the innovation economy. As a philanthropist later in his life, he cared deeply about making the world a better place. His efforts will have longstanding impacts on his adopted home in the Pacific Northwest and also on his beloved native Bay Area and the world at large.

As Microsoft's first general counsel, Bill played a pivotal role in the story of the company's unparalleled business success. Those in the industry know the extraordinary engineering challenges the company overcame through genius and tenacity, providing the operating system for the world's first mass-marketed desktop computer and beating all the competitors to the Holy Grail and making that operating system multitask--a milestone that laid the technological foundation that would serve the world's needs for decades to come and so many more yet to come. Bill was part of that.

People who are inside the company know the important legal roles that he played and know that the challenges they face would not have been able to be overcome without Bill's contributions. Consider the accomplishments that came on his watch in the early days, being a small tech startup, and then he served as the chief counsel to one of the world's most valuable and important companies.

In 1980, Microsoft signed perhaps the most advantageous business agreement ever. And at a time when few even knew what software was or could fathom how it would have monetary value, Bill Neukom argued and successfully defended the once-controversial notion that software was copyrightable. Now, of course, that is a bedrock principle that continues to provide the foundation for innovation in our economy. There are certain levels of productivity that we have all achieved because of it.

In confronting these incredible challenges, Bill always came through for his company, for his friends, and through incredible work in his community. He also was instrumental in embedding philanthropy and public service into the company's culture, launching programs such as the Microsoft Giving Campaign and Libraries Online. And I remember that at one point in time, Bill once considered running for public office.

I am so glad that we all got the benefit of his contributions in the private sector and from his philanthropy. He continued to make those public contributions after leaving Microsoft, and he cofounded the World Justice Project, an international civil society organization that works to advance the rule of law around the world--such an unbelievable impact. As a result of his generosity and his intellect and resources, many organizations benefited.

He took on leadership roles in the American Bar Association, serving as president and earning the ABA Medal in 2020 in recognition of his career contributions.

Bill gave back to educational institutions that meant so much to him. He served as trustee at both Dartmouth and at the University of Puget Sound, and he made significant--significant--contributions to the University of Washington and to Stanford and to numerous other community causes.

Bill and his family founded the Neukom Family Foundation, supporting education, the environment, justice, and public health. One of his lasting legacies is his family foundation, which helped establish and grow the Wild Salmon Center.

Many of my conversations with Bill over the last several years have been about that very Northwest icon, the Pacific Northwest salmon.

This organization focuses on long-term, science-driven, and collaborative

solutions to protect and restore iconic salmon runs. And I know that Bill, as a fisherman himself, was always very interested in how we could use this science to better improve our outcomes.

When I first met Bill--everybody would remember him because he wore his unique bow tie. It was part of his personality. But when you met him, he was also a person of unbelievable kindness, and that always, always stayed with him.

I remember many times, in my role in the Commerce Committee, calling him up and asking him for advice about critical issues, and he was always there to tell me that these are the three people I should call and consult. I always found that so interesting, given his great intellect and his great ideas--he always wanted me to reach out to more people.

He was an avid golfer, a fly fisherman, and I often saw him at airports on his way to one of those great, beautiful places in the Pacific Northwest.

But many Americans might know him for his other passion, and that is baseball. I personally prefer the Seattle Mariners, but Bill, growing up in the Bay Area, had a childhood love that brought him into ownership and participation as a leader of the San Francisco Giants. Under this leadership, the team improved on the field, going from 72 wins in 2008 to 92 wins and a Major League championship just 2 years later. I happened to go to a game with him in the Bay Area, and, again, his love and passion for the success of that team was undeniable.

We are going to miss Bill Neukom. We are going to miss his warmth, his laughter, his kindness, his contributions, his intellect, and just an unbelievable chapter of Northwest history that he participated in. And I know all of his friends and colleagues at Microsoft will also miss him.

I want to say a special outreach to his family, particularly his wife Sally--I know this is a very hard time--and his 4 children, 14 grandchildren, and 2 brothers Davidson and Daniel.

We all were so privileged to know Bill. We are all so grateful for his contributions to all of us in the Nation and certainly for what he did in the Pacific Northwest.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, while we are waiting for our colleague to come, if I could make remarks.

My colleague, I so appreciate Senator Murray and Leader Schumer out here speaking on these important issues. But as a committee who has thought a lot about storms lately, we are not just putting PBS at risk here, we are putting millions of Americans who depend on local media for lifesaving information at risk. And what is in this rescission request is really making sure that public broadcasters don't have that ability, at least in 20 States where they have emergency plans.

So what happens is that NPR manages the Public Radio Satellite System. They receive emergency alerts. They tell us to get out of the way. PBS operates the Warning Alert and Response Network, which then transmits over 11,000 emergency alerts alone last year, a 30-percent increase from the previous year.

So why are we talking about cutting off emergency alerts? That is 11,000 times these stations were warned to tell people that their lives were in danger. Let me explain what PBS's warning system means for American families in plain English. When emergency managers, such as someone at FEMA or the National Weather Service or local officials hit send on a lifesaving alert, it normally travels through wireless carriers' infrastructure to reach cell towers.

But what happens when there are cyberattacks or those infrastructures are crippled, when the fiber lines don't work or they are cut in a storm, when disaster like fire or flood or hurricane knocks them out? What happens to the communication infrastructure then? Well, that is what PBS WARN does. It fills in.

PBS stations also on the radio, through the airwaves, because they don't have to rely on physical infrastructure, they basically communicate to more than 340 PBS stations nationwide. These stations, running on backup generators, are built to broadcast through disasters. I mean, I think if anybody has got any history to them, they realize that there has been lots of lifesaving information over the airwaves.

So local infrastructure, like TV receivers, local regional facilities, grab that alert signal from the PBS broadcast, no internet required, and they get the information out to us. This system and these critical alerts are the primary thing that we use in the Nation when everything else goes dark.

That means that every PBS transmitter becomes a backup lifetime line for emergency alerts, ensuring that warnings about tornadoes, fires, floods, and evacuations reach your cell phone in seconds.

Just think about that. If you have this flood we had in Kerrville and you don't have a communication system, the PBS system is the one that sends the alerts because they have gotten it through the airwaves.

This administration--and my colleagues now--want to pull the plug on this. Just look at yesterday's alerts alone on flash flooding in North Carolina, in central Texas, in Arizona, a statewide missing person alert in Kentucky, a tornado warning across Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin and dozens more.

Why would we want anybody to miss a disaster alert? It could even be about boiling water and making sure that you have the right water. These are all important communication systems, and they are important when cell phones and the internet don't work. On November 30, 2018, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake shook southcentral Alaska. In Anchorage, roads split apart, buildings crumbled, power lines snapped, cell towers went down within seconds, and people panicked as they tried to reach loved ones. The internet failed, but Alaska Public Media never stopped broadcasting. Operating on backup power, they immediately activated their emergency protocols.

As the aftershocks, including a 5.7 tremor, continued to rock the region, APM provided real-time updates on road closures, school evacuations, and tsunami warnings. They broadcasted which bridges had been damaged, where emergency shelters had opened, most critically assured isolated communities that the help was on the way. For thousands of Alaskans, that familiar voice on radio was their only connection to vital information during the most terrifying memories that they have had. In a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News, one person wrote:

Commercial radio may be helpful down south, but rural

Alaska is different.

Pick any rural Alaskan community with exposure to these

dangers, and you will find

probably that they don't have a commercial radio station.

They probably do receive the NPR station.

``In rural Alaska,'' they continued, ``there is no market

driven solution to ensure emergency broadcasts are available

in a disaster that recurs on a 100 year scale time.''

So it is not just Alaska that has this problem. Consider what happened in Kentucky during the historic tornadoes in December of 2021, when the devastating EF4 tornado carved a 160-mile path of destruction on one of the longest tornado tracks in our Nation's history. WKMS Public Radio became the sole source of news for thousands of Kentuckians.

As the tornado ripped through Mayfield at 9:30, destroying the town's candle factory with 110 people stuck inside, commercial power failed across western Kentucky. And those cell towers toppled; the internet connections vanished. And WKMS kept broadcasting on a backup power, guiding search and rescue teams through darkness. It is time that my colleagues understand that, in the words of station managers, ``In these kinds of moments, your emergency radio or your car radio is literally the only thing to have to get you any news or a lifeline.''

I ask my colleagues, please do not cut off emergency broadcast funding. How could you possibly think that is a wise idea in the events that we are facing in our Nation?

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about President Trump's costly trade policies and the damage that it is causing American manufacturers, businesses, and a family budget. Tariffs will cost an average household at least $2,300 in the year 2025. And according to an analysis by the Syracuse Post Standard newspaper, ground beef, chicken breast, butter, milk, and more products are being made more expensive this year than last year.

In fact, ground beef alone is 20 percent more expensive, an average of $5.98 per pound. The Joint Economic Committee found that ground beef is at the highest price point since the data first became available in the 1980s.

A recent survey of the Association of Washington Businesses found that 48 percent of businesses in my State have experienced the impact from tariffs.

Mr. President, I would like to enter the survey into the Record: https://www.awb.org/wp-content/uploads/AWB_Employer_Survey_ 041725.pdf.

Of those businesses' studies and analysis, 76 percent say tariffs have raised their costs. Forty-five percent say tariffs have disrupted their supply chain. Twenty-one percent have had customers cancel orders. More than 1/3 of the companies already raised prices for customers. Fifteen percent are laying off people and making plans to do so more.

So, Mr. President, I rise to say that this important information needs to be considered by my colleagues. We need to be more involved in this trade debate.

American manufacturers are also seeing higher input prices, driving up the cost of production. More than half of all goods imported into the United States are manufacturing inputs, and they have highly integrated supply chains--supply chains that now are being made weaker. Tariffs are a tax on those products in your supply chain--think about aluminum or steel or other components--a tax that economists will tell you is ultimately going to be borne by the consumers.

Take one company, a Japanese-based parts manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in June, Marelli. It was hit with an additional burden of 25-percent tariffs on the auto parts. Why should you care in the United States about this Japanese company? Because it is a major supplier of car interiors, lighting parts for various cars, like Chrysler and Dodge and Jeep vehicles built in the United States of America.

So automakers are on a roller coaster, and major car companies have reported the tariffs are expected to reduce their annual earnings by billions of dollars. And then what happens? Would you see the rise of costs domestically? Experts are predicting $3,000 per domestic vehicle and potentially $10,000 more for an imported vehicle.

It is not just autos; the Wall Street Journal reported that John Deere is considering production changes and price increases for farm equipment because of an additional $500 million cost in tariffs. And according to the Copper Development Association, copper consumption for AI data centers is expected to jump to an outlandish demand, but building AI centers will cost more in the United States than any other country because of the Trump tariffs. So we know that we are building an AI infrastructure, but why are we making tariffs put that at risk? And just yesterday, the President threatened more tariffs on pharmaceutical products.

So, Mr. President, it has been 170 days since President Trump took office promising to bring back U.S. manufacturing by imposing steep tariffs, and it has been 90 days since the President promised we would see 90 deals in 90 days. I am not sure where those deals are. I am not sure whose deals he is talking about, but I know this: We are now 90 days later, and it seems that we have had all the pain of higher prices, and it seems that we haven't seen any comprehensive trade deals.

So we cannot have an endless summer of tariffs and price increases. We need, as a body here, to make sure that we are holding the President accountable on the trade turmoil that is hurting small businesses. Every day, families face higher grocery prices trying to buy a new or a used car or a new home.

And yesterday, the President also sent a letter to 14 countries. Today, he sent seven letters and basically threatened higher tariffs. In fact, one of those countries, South Korea, is a country that we have had a close partnership and been an ally with for decades. I visited them and our American troops in South Korea and have seen them guarding the demilitarized zone--DMZ--with North Korea. And most of the U.S. tariffs on South Korea were eliminated or significantly reduced under a trade agreement passed by this body: the U.S. free trade agreement with South Korea.

So the KORUS agreement was concluded in 2007 and ratified by the Senate in 2011. So why are we overturning with an ally that we work together to defend our interests in the region? Why are we tariffing them when we passed a free trade agreement here in the U.S. Senate?

So I know the President thinks he is going to get comprehensive trade agreements. We haven't seen them, but we have seen the costs go up. It is time to say no more extensions. It is time for Congress to get involved in this issue. It is time for all of us to say the tariff chaos is hurting small business.

That is the issue. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 97 percent of U.S. importers are small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. They deserve to have this chaos stopped.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues. I want to thank the Senator from Illinois for helping to organize this today. I thank my colleague from Oregon and my dear colleagues from the Commerce Committee Senator Welch and Senator Baldwin.

We are here today to talk about an essential safety issue--it is really public safety--and somebody is trying to masquerade it as a fiscal responsibility issue.

The proposed rescission of $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting isn't just an attack on NPR and PBS; it is a reckless--reckless--endangerment of 13 million Americans who depend on these stations for lifesaving emergency information. When the floods rise in the Southwest or wildfires rage in the West or hurricanes barrel down on the Atlantic or gulf coast, public broadcasters are often the only lifeline connecting families and rural communities to the crucial emergency information. This isn't hyperbole. These are the facts.

Consider what happened in Kentucky during the historic tornado of December 2021. When that devastating storm carved one of the longest tornado tracks in our Nation's history, WKMS public radio was often the sole source of news as the community suffered widespread power and communications outages. So families huddled in the dark and relied on battery-powered radios to receive lifesaving information. Without WKMS, many would have been completely shut off.

Look at Hurricane Helene just last year. Half a million Americans lost power across the Southeast; the internet failed; cell phone towers went dark, but Blue Ridge Public Radio kept broadcasting, providing the most reliable information when alternative sources simply would not function without electricity.

Even in the aftermath of the unthinkable situations that happened this past week in Texas, Texas Public Radio stayed on the air to provide updates on severe weather alerts, recovery efforts, and to help the community mourn and rebuild together.

The numbers are a sobering story as 79 radio stations and 33 TV stations across 34 States will probably have to shut down if these cuts are enacted.

This chart shows the impacts that people are saying we have from our most vulnerable fire situations coming up. I think these are this year's numbers. That is in red. Our most vulnerable tornado--well, the Senator from Illinois knows this well. All of this in the light color, in the green, shows a very high--relatively high tornado risk. Then the last, our blue coastal areas, show a relatively high or high risk for hurricanes.

What do the black dots represent? What do the dots represent in each of these areas? Radio stations that will no longer exist if this rescission comes into power. If you cut these programs, you are going to lose the revenue from these radio stations and risk their being shut down.

Now, why would we do that?

For me, in the central part of our State, I guarantee you that I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it in Yakima, WA, where KDNA serves the surrounding community that has a high risk of wildfires. Northwest Public Broadcasting maintains 24-7 fire coverage from May through October, tracking blazes that threaten lives and property, and they have expanded coverage especially to address wildfire communication gaps for Spanish-speaking northwesterners. This is a big agriculture section of our State, and we want to ensure that everybody receives the alerts regardless of their language.

What the President's rescission ignores is that public broadcasters serve as the official resource in at least 20 States' emergency plans. The NPR manager--they manage the public radio satellite system-- receives emergency alert systems that are fed directly from FEMA. That means they are part of our emergency response. PBS operates the warning alert and response network, which transmitted over 11,000 emergency alerts last year alone. That is a 33-percent increase from the previous year. Let me repeat that: Eleven thousand emergency alerts went out. That is 11,000 times that these radio stations in these areas I am talking about warned people about dangerous and life-threatening risk.

In Oklahoma, this March, the public broadcaster issued 65 fire alerts across 13 counties in just 10 days, and 6 evacuation orders were transmitted. KOSU operates the system at a cost of $751,000 annually, with the CPB providing crucial support. This is similar to funding like local-focused media in the Alaska Rural Communications Service, Northwest Public Broadcasting, or Harvest Media in the Great Plains. It would cost local broadcasters more than double of CPB's current contribution to replace these critical services.

So this isn't smart budgeting. It is definitely penny wise and pound foolish. These will cost lives instead of saving dollars. Rural communities face

the greatest threat. We know that. We just learned this even more this past week with these horrific tragedies. When a severe storm knocks out power, when tornadoes approach, when cell phones fail, when battery- powered car radios don't work, we need to make sure that there are radio stations that do.

Since 1975, Congress has recognized that public broadcasting requires stability to serve communities effectively. So this isn't a partisan issue; it is a practical issue. We need to say that we are going to save public radio. When the next disaster strikes--and trust me, it will. I live in a very disaster-prone part of the United States, with all sorts of issues, from fires to volcanoes, to tsunamis, to floods, to lots of things. We need to be able to access potentially lifesaving information.

So I urge my colleagues to reject these dangerous rescissions and make the investment here that is helping us save lives across the United States.

I yield to my colleagues.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak in opposition to the nomination of Bryan Bedford to serve as the FAA Administrator--the Federal Aviation Administration. Everyone knows that the FAA is at a critical point in its history. The tragic midair collision that we had in DC on January 29 took the lives of 67 people and made it clear what was at stake to all of us.

The National Transportation Safety Board, in their subsequent findings earlier this year, said that over 15,000 close calls took place around DCA over the past 3 years alone, demonstrating that we and the aviation industry have much more work to do to raise the safety bar.

The FAA and its workforce are facing historic challenges. Within weeks of the DCA crash, the Trump administration fired hundreds of FAA officials, including technical operations staff who help make it possible for air traffic controllers to do their jobs and specialists who design FAA route flight maps.

With air traffic system outages and a clear directive from Congress to implement stronger safety regulations, career officials with decades of aviation experience have been pushed to leave. Just to be clear, I am referring to the fact that we passed an FAA 5-year authorization, and we said we need stronger safety regulations, and we need more hands-on experience, not shortcuts for the individuals that are helping us implement safety plans.

As a result, senior leaders at multiple FAA lines of business have already left or are in the process of leaving, and the FAA has lost about 3 percent of its workforce--more than 1,200 employees--to the deferred resignation program.

An FAA presentation obtained by the Wall Street Journal in May revealed that the FAA is internally sounding the alarm about the impacts from those staffing shortages. The presentation warned that the Agency's ability to work on runway safety, process medical clearances for air traffic controllers, and fulfill its statutory and regulatory requirements were all at risk.

The next FAA Administrator will have an overarching mission that will be a huge challenge: ensuring the United States remains the global gold standard for aviation safety. And in order to keep 2.9 million commercial airline passengers safe each day, the next Administrator must prioritize investing in the FAA safety workforce.

These challenges underscore why we should have an Administrator who is willing to strengthen the safety standards, instead of seeking ways to get around them. When we look at the record of aviation safety, Mr. Bedford has been on the frontlines, obviously working in the aviation sector, but also in a frontline effort to roll back safety reforms and unravel the regulatory framework that has made the United States the gold standard.

Since 1999, Mr. Bedford has been the president and CEO of Republic Airways, one of the largest regional airlines in North America. And for over a decade, he has consistently fought to change the FAA's 1,500- hour rule, which is a key safety provision that was implemented in 2013 following the tragic crash of a regional jet--Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, NY, that killed 49 people.

The rule sets strong pilot training and first officer qualification standards to ensure that both pilots have the appropriate experience to react to in an in-flight emergency. Instead of recognizing how this rule was developed through the public debate and notice and comment period, Mr. Bedford has called it arbitrary. That means the FAA went through a very big process, but Mr. Bedford thinks that was ``arbitrary'' and ``does nothing to further the goal of increased flight safety.''

Mr. Bedford has then led a trade association that spent millions of dollars lobbying against the 1,500-hour rule and other pilot training policies, including as recently as the first quarter of this year. And in 2022, Mr. Bedford's company petitioned the FAA for an exemption from the 1,500-hour rule. That effort failed, but as head of the FAA, he will be in the very job that he basically tried to lobby to say, Let's weaken safety standard rules.

The effort that Mr. Bedford tried when he was in the private sector failed, but as I said, as the head of FAA, he could hold power over the Agency to weaken what has become a very bedrock 1,500-hour to help us make sure that both pilots and copilots are appropriately trained.

My colleagues and I gave Mr. Bedford multiple chances in our Commerce Committee nomination hearing to tell us that he, if confirmed, would not weaken that rule, but he repeatedly refused to give us an answer or commitment. To me, that was the evidence that I needed to understand, if the 1,500-hour rule, which has been in place since the Colgan Air tragedy, could be at risk if Mr. Bedford were confirmed.

Mr. Bedford would not commit to recusing himself from ruling on his own company's exemption request from the 1,500-hour rule for the entirety of his 5-year term as FAA Administrator. In other words, he could decide to grant his own company an exemption, the same thing he tried to do when he was in the private sector lobbying the FAA.

Mr. Bedford's hearing testimony was so concerning that the Colgan Air Flight 3407 families have publicly opposed his nomination. These are families who have become the bedrock of safety. They move forward with their lives, but they also come to Capitol Hill each year to protect aviation safety standards.

The families said that Mr. Bedford's clear aim to weaken the 1,500- hour rule ``sends the wrong message to every American passenger and every family that has ever boarded a domestic flight.''

This represents, I think, a very big challenge for us right now. Too often, carriers operating under tight profit margins and resource constraints focus on reactive measures rather than proactive safety improvements. What we need is a proactive Administrator. We need somebody who is fighting for the safety improvements to prevent

the accidents in the first place. And at this critical moment, we need an FAA Administrator who will break from this reactive safety culture and provide the proactive safety leadership that we need to prevent problems before they happen.

Even Captain ``Sully'' Sullenberger, the pilot who performed the Miracle on the Hudson, is also opposing Mr. Bedford's nomination. Captain Sullenberger recognized that Mr. Bedford ``is not willing to uphold the critically important pilot experience requirements put in place in 2010 that have been so effective in ensuring the safety of the traveling public.'' He went on to warn that:

With the nomination of Bryan Bedford to be the FAA

Administrator, my life's work could be undone.

I am sure that Captain Sullenberger understands the importance of having two pilots. At a hearing before the Commerce Committee, when I asked him about the 1,500-hour rule, he said:

In an emergency, you really don't even have time to talk.

The two pilots both need to be doing their jobs and doing it

well.

So Mr. Bedford has also signaled an openness to something else I have concern about, green-lighting a single pilot on commercial flights. This is a real issue. The FAA's European civil aviation authority counterpart EASA is thinking about certifying extended single pilot operations on commercial aircraft. That means it is being debated in Europe and could be debated in other places. That is right; they are debating whether to have just one pilot on a long-haul flight.

In 2019, when Mr. Bedford was discussing the emerging technologies underpinning single pilot operations, he said:

Does it work? It works. Can it work highly, reliably, and

safely? I think it can.

Well, you don't have to be an expert in understanding the risk of flying with just one pilot. In the past, aviation incidents have been documented by the NTSB--the National Transportation Safety Board--and they have cited that pilot incapacity or mental health emergencies as justifications for requiring two pilots on a commercial flight.

I don't care how good the technology is; if an emergency happens, we need two well-trained pilots on the flight deck at all times. Mr. Bedford has been given many opportunities to talk about these past statements and how he sees the world. But again, he did not do so.

When his company sought an exemption from the 1,500-hour rule in 2022, they championed diversity initiatives, saying they would have ``no adverse impact on safety.'' But when asked by Senator Lujan at the committee if he thought so-called ``DEI'' policies contributed to the collision near DCA earlier this year--which President Trump baselessly alleged--Mr. Bedford said he had ``no earthly idea.'' This inconsistency is troubling.

So we need to make sure that we are selecting a nominee who has a track record of supporting a proactive FAA. Mr. Bradbury, the Deputy Transportation Secretary, is implementing ``10-for-1`` policies-- meaning Agencies must eliminate 10 regulations for every new one. DOT officials can now face disciplinary action if they don't comply with the administration's decision not to enforce certain regulations. The Washington Post has characterized this move as ``a chilling effect on enforcement.'' And as I said earlier, DOT inspectors and investigators will fear that they could be fired just for doing their job ensuring the safety of the flying public.

We don't, Mr. President, need a light touch. We need to make sure that while industry concerns are heard, they shouldn't be the dominant factor. The FAA needs to implement the gold standard for aviation safety.

There are many critical tasks ahead, including implementing a safety management system at the FAA and ensuring that Boeing, after the 737 MAX crashes, also implements its required safety management system. I want to make sure that an Administrator is not going to try to halt that rule, but will get that rule implemented, so that we know that manufacturing and the FAA are making the flying public safer every day by doing their jobs properly.

So, Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to please reject the nomination of Mr. Bedford. I think we need an FAA Administrator who makes really tough decisions that put the priority of the flying public first.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I stand with my Idaho colleagues. This is a very tight-knit community between Washington and Idaho. Many Washington police and responders participated in yesterday's activities.

Our hearts go out to the people of Idaho. Yes, we want a moment of silence to remember these firefighters.