Floor Statements

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Majority Leader

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the important role that Congress plays in ensuring our economy remains strong, and very important for the American people, to lower costs.

That is why today I am inducing legislation by myself and Senator Grassley. Congress has a duty to ensure that our country remains competitive and leads in the global marketplace. American families rely on our economy for goods and to make ends meet and to provide shelter.

American manufacturers rely on an economy to maintain resilient supply chains, keep production lines open--and that means aircraft from Everett, WA, or cars and trucks from Detroit, MI.

American farmers rely on our economy to keep fields planted-- production in eastern Washington and northern and central Iowa depend on the cost of fertilizer, seed, and equipment.

Small business owners across the country depend on consumer confidence in our economy so that they can keep sales and stay afloat. Sharp increases propose a major threat to that economy.

Inflation and high costs are a threat to stability and prosperity of American

businesses of all size, to our farmers, and to our consumers. We live now in an interconnected world--a global economy--and advances in technology and transportation have brought that world closer and closer together. We have a global economy.

That is why it is so important to have rules-based trading systems that have been in place since World War II, and it is the bedrock of a global economy. That is to have rules. Rules-based trade is essential to have predictable and stable trade and promoting economic growth and development and global cooperation.

No doubt, opening up markets has grown the pie, not just for those economies, but for the U.S. economy. When you establish clear rules- based mechanisms, you can also resolve trade disputes and encourage more investment and more trade.

Businesses need this certainty to move forward with deals, to reach new markets, and grow. But now we are seeing a barrage of tariffs on at least 185 countries.

We cannot have arbitrary policies create chaos and uncertainty. These kinds of chaos and uncertainty kill business investment and make for very challenging stock market assessments of investments for the future based on predictability.

The current approach, in my opinion, is outside the predictable, rules-based system. It is arguable that the current approach is literally a misconstruction of statutory authorities.

But what we know today for sure is that 95 percent of the world's consumers are outside of the United States. That means the global middle class includes almost 4 billion people. Those are markets for American businesses, for farmers to reach to grow and prosper.

According to the World Bank, in the recent decade, trade has lifted 1 billion people out of poverty. My colleagues here, who have worked on deals in the past that opened up markets in places like Chile, Peru, Singapore, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the update of the USMCA, all know that this hard work created economic opportunity.

Our trade agreements helped American farmers export $176 billion in agricultural products last year. They helped ensure that the United States is the world's largest agriculture exporter, with soybeans and corn leading the way as the top export.

I want to return to trade agreements. I want to open up more markets. I want us to have a robust export opportunity for the excellent U.S. manufactured and grown products.

Our trade agreements have ensured that the U.S. remained the second largest exporter of manufactured goods in the world--$2.06 trillion in 2024.

And it is clear today, the United States must be competing hard to win in the race for emerging technologies like AI and quantum. Our foreign adversaries and our competitors are in this global race too.

So that is why economic disruption puts America at risk. Straining ties with trade alliances also put us at a security risk. Trade wars have lasting consequences. Trade wars devastate Americans working families and small businesses and manufacturers.

Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress--gave Congress--the explicit authority to impose duties and regulate commerce, given the far-reaching impact to our national economy that I just mentioned.

As ranking member of the Commerce Committee, and my colleague from the Senate Finance Committee, we both know how much our Nation needs to continue to have interstate commerce and to have foreign commerce.

Since the 1930s, Congress has enacted or directed the President to negotiate trade deals, including authority to negotiate the agreements and impose or adjust tariffs.

But I think these Presidents have used this authority correctly by opening up markets, lowering tariffs, and establishing a rules-based trading system. The current approach, I believe, is creating uncertainty and certainly raising costs unnecessarily.

Businesses rely on certainty and transparency from a rules-based trading system. So how has Congress done on these issues? Well, it is time, I believe, for Congress to reassert ourselves in our constitutional duties.

Article I of the Constitution also gave Congress the power to declare war. The Founding Fathers wanted to prevent any single individual from unilaterally committing our Nation to war. The Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that we had a strong check and balance.

I believe the same check and balance needs to exist now as it relates to protecting our commerce activities and any Presidential overreach that is not a rules-based approach.

Congress, in the War Powers Act, decided to reclaim its authority because they thought a President had overreached. Senator Grassley and I are trying to do the same thing today by introducing the Trade Review Act of 2025.

Trade wars--which frequently trigger sharp price increases, foreign retaliation, and huge shock impacts to our economy--could affect the livelihood of workers, supply chain manufacturers, and hard-won markets that American exporters have wanted to see continue to be open.

I want to thank Senator Grassley for his leadership over many years for American farmers, for the people of Iowa, and for our country. I want to thank him for working with me on the introduction of the Trade Review Act of 2025 that ensures that Congress plays its constitutional role in making sure that, as our Founding Fathers intended, we set the duties and regulate foreign commerce.

This important reassertion of Congress's constitutional role is important so we have a strong voice in trade policy. This legislation, as I said, modeled after the War Powers Act, says that a President must notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing or raising tariffs, provide an explanation of why they are warranted, and an assessment of their likely impact on American businesses and consumers.

Our legislation, though, protects that constitutional authority by also saying these tariffs should be reviewed by Congress for approval or disapproval, and doing so is in the best interest of our country.

I can't tell you how challenging I think competition in a fast-moving information age global economy is. We can't afford a trade war that lasts for 2 or 3 years, leaving our product off the shelves.

We must reassert Congress's role over trade policy and ensure that a rules-based trade system is based on transparency, consistency, and the benefits of the American public.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the important role that Congress plays in ensuring our economy remains strong, and very important for the American people, to lower costs.

That is why today I am inducing legislation by myself and Senator Grassley. Congress has a duty to ensure that our country remains competitive and leads in the global marketplace. American families rely on our economy for goods and to make ends meet and to provide shelter.

American manufacturers rely on an economy to maintain resilient supply chains, keep production lines open--and that means aircraft from Everett, WA, or cars and trucks from Detroit, MI.

American farmers rely on our economy to keep fields planted-- production in eastern Washington and northern and central Iowa depend on the cost of fertilizer, seed, and equipment.

Small business owners across the country depend on consumer confidence in our economy so that they can keep sales and stay afloat. Sharp increases propose a major threat to that economy.

Inflation and high costs are a threat to stability and prosperity of American

businesses of all size, to our farmers, and to our consumers. We live now in an interconnected world--a global economy--and advances in technology and transportation have brought that world closer and closer together. We have a global economy.

That is why it is so important to have rules-based trading systems that have been in place since World War II, and it is the bedrock of a global economy. That is to have rules. Rules-based trade is essential to have predictable and stable trade and promoting economic growth and development and global cooperation.

No doubt, opening up markets has grown the pie, not just for those economies, but for the U.S. economy. When you establish clear rules- based mechanisms, you can also resolve trade disputes and encourage more investment and more trade.

Businesses need this certainty to move forward with deals, to reach new markets, and grow. But now we are seeing a barrage of tariffs on at least 185 countries.

We cannot have arbitrary policies create chaos and uncertainty. These kinds of chaos and uncertainty kill business investment and make for very challenging stock market assessments of investments for the future based on predictability.

The current approach, in my opinion, is outside the predictable, rules-based system. It is arguable that the current approach is literally a misconstruction of statutory authorities.

But what we know today for sure is that 95 percent of the world's consumers are outside of the United States. That means the global middle class includes almost 4 billion people. Those are markets for American businesses, for farmers to reach to grow and prosper.

According to the World Bank, in the recent decade, trade has lifted 1 billion people out of poverty. My colleagues here, who have worked on deals in the past that opened up markets in places like Chile, Peru, Singapore, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the update of the USMCA, all know that this hard work created economic opportunity.

Our trade agreements helped American farmers export $176 billion in agricultural products last year. They helped ensure that the United States is the world's largest agriculture exporter, with soybeans and corn leading the way as the top export.

I want to return to trade agreements. I want to open up more markets. I want us to have a robust export opportunity for the excellent U.S. manufactured and grown products.

Our trade agreements have ensured that the U.S. remained the second largest exporter of manufactured goods in the world--$2.06 trillion in 2024.

And it is clear today, the United States must be competing hard to win in the race for emerging technologies like AI and quantum. Our foreign adversaries and our competitors are in this global race too.

So that is why economic disruption puts America at risk. Straining ties with trade alliances also put us at a security risk. Trade wars have lasting consequences. Trade wars devastate Americans working families and small businesses and manufacturers.

Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress--gave Congress--the explicit authority to impose duties and regulate commerce, given the far-reaching impact to our national economy that I just mentioned.

As ranking member of the Commerce Committee, and my colleague from the Senate Finance Committee, we both know how much our Nation needs to continue to have interstate commerce and to have foreign commerce.

Since the 1930s, Congress has enacted or directed the President to negotiate trade deals, including authority to negotiate the agreements and impose or adjust tariffs.

But I think these Presidents have used this authority correctly by opening up markets, lowering tariffs, and establishing a rules-based trading system. The current approach, I believe, is creating uncertainty and certainly raising costs unnecessarily.

Businesses rely on certainty and transparency from a rules-based trading system. So how has Congress done on these issues? Well, it is time, I believe, for Congress to reassert ourselves in our constitutional duties.

Article I of the Constitution also gave Congress the power to declare war. The Founding Fathers wanted to prevent any single individual from unilaterally committing our Nation to war. The Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that we had a strong check and balance.

I believe the same check and balance needs to exist now as it relates to protecting our commerce activities and any Presidential overreach that is not a rules-based approach.

Congress, in the War Powers Act, decided to reclaim its authority because they thought a President had overreached. Senator Grassley and I are trying to do the same thing today by introducing the Trade Review Act of 2025.

Trade wars--which frequently trigger sharp price increases, foreign retaliation, and huge shock impacts to our economy--could affect the livelihood of workers, supply chain manufacturers, and hard-won markets that American exporters have wanted to see continue to be open.

I want to thank Senator Grassley for his leadership over many years for American farmers, for the people of Iowa, and for our country. I want to thank him for working with me on the introduction of the Trade Review Act of 2025 that ensures that Congress plays its constitutional role in making sure that, as our Founding Fathers intended, we set the duties and regulate foreign commerce.

This important reassertion of Congress's constitutional role is important so we have a strong voice in trade policy. This legislation, as I said, modeled after the War Powers Act, says that a President must notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing or raising tariffs, provide an explanation of why they are warranted, and an assessment of their likely impact on American businesses and consumers.

Our legislation, though, protects that constitutional authority by also saying these tariffs should be reviewed by Congress for approval or disapproval, and doing so is in the best interest of our country.

I can't tell you how challenging I think competition in a fast-moving information age global economy is. We can't afford a trade war that lasts for 2 or 3 years, leaving our product off the shelves.

We must reassert Congress's role over trade policy and ensure that a rules-based trade system is based on transparency, consistency, and the benefits of the American public.

Madam President, will the Senator from New Jersey yield for a question?

I so appreciate the Senator from New Jersey trying to articulate the urgency of this moment.

I know you have discussed many things over the last I don't know how many hours it is, but it has been many, many hours. You know we just had a hearing this morning related to the markup of the Social Security nominee, and somebody--we are just trying to find out--who is a whistleblower said he was involved in helping DOGE.

We are here today, trying to bring attention to the American public that people are trying to rearrange essential services and contractual obligations--things like Social Security or Medicaid or even Medicare-- by basically saying ``Well, we have this efficiency strategy'' when in reality they are over there with numbers just trying to carve something out of the budget--billions of dollars out of Social Security efficiency or billions and billions and billions of dollars out of Medicaid, which would really come right out of our hospitals, which are saying they don't even think they can stay open.

But this notion of Social Security--I don't know if you have heard that not only are they closing offices and cutting jobs, but they are asking people to reregister.

So my constituent, who they basically said was dead, was not dead. He wanted his Social Security. So not only did they not give him his check in January, they tried to claw back checks from the previous months out of his bank account.

Even though this has gotten national press and attention, you would think that everybody on the other side would be like ``No, that is not what we are trying to do'' even though the President in the State of the Union said all of these people were getting Social Security checks when my constituent is standing in line with less and less staff, trying to get his Social Security. And guess what. They are still at it. As of last Friday, they were still not giving him his Social Security.

So what are we unleashing on America? What are we unleashing that even--and I don't know whether you addressed these Social Security issues in your statements. I so appreciate you emphasizing the urgency here because this is the dismantling of contractual agreements between the American people and the people's body. We are here to represent them and stand up for it, and people are acting like they don't care.

So you are here in an extraordinary athletic achievement. Thank you. It makes your Stanford days look like nothing, right? You have achieved this great, long effort to bring illumination to the American people that they are getting screwed over the fact that these cuts are not some efficient way to deliver better service. In Social Security, they are undermining Social Security.

So have you heard of these cases, the whistleblower issue and others, and do you believe that is what we should be paying attention to and that before we

get a vote on Mr. Bisignano, we should be finding out what whistleblowers are saying and about his involvement relating to DOGE and making sure that Social Security checks are protected?

Will the Senator yield for another question?

I thank the Senator from New Jersey. The issue that I think is not being illuminated enough is the sheer numbers here.

In my State of Washington, 1.4 million people are on Social Security and 1.8 million people are on Medicaid. So you are talking about a big Federal relationship.

You know, I actually worked in the private sector. I can tell you one thing about the private sector: The bigger it gets, usually the more inefficient it gets. It just happens. Big organizations can be inefficient.

So just because the Federal Government is the government doesn't mean that Social Security and Medicaid are fraught with fraud. In this case, my constituent is not even getting his check, and no one is responding. You would think that with all this commotion, that Social Security would want to jump right on it and fix it, but they are not.

The question I have for the Senator from New Jersey is, in my State, I have, as I said, nearly 1.8 million people who are on Medicaid, and the same problem is now where our colleagues are trying to say they are going to get $880 billion out of the Energy and Commerce budget of the House of Representatives when in reality like 90 percent of that money is Medicare or Medicaid. If Medicare is supposedly off the table, then the majority of that is going to come from Medicaid.

So in my State, I am hearing from hospitals that that means they could close. That means essential Medicaid services that are used even in our jails or for fentanyl treatment or Medicaid that is used as an ObamaCare expansion for healthcare that so many literally red Republican States, Republican Governors have said: We want that.

The Governor of Idaho: Yes, we want that.

That is an expansion of Medicaid, and it is successfully working at providing healthcare to millions of Americans.

But now our colleagues are entertaining a notion that they could cut this system. They are not really making it clear, so, again, the illumination of you showing the urgency is like a big flag that we are trying to show to the American people: This is not a drill. This is now. This is happening. The beginnings of it are happening.

Now this debate that is going to ensue is going to be a massive cut into the programs unless the American people wake up.

Now, in your State, are you hearing in New Jersey about the Medicaid cuts, the impacts on hospitals, on the delivery system, on essential services?

Mr. President, before I go to my remarks, I wanted to thank the Senator from Mississippi for that fabulous statement. I really do appreciate his leadership.

I am pretty sure your father served in World War II, as did my father. I think that we continue to echo the lessons that we learned from that conflict.

I thank you for that tremendous statement in support of Ukraine.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to speak in opposition to the nomination of Steven Bradbury. He is nominated to be the Deputy Secretary of Transportation.

When it comes to transportation safety, we don't measure success in dollars saved. We measure success in lives protected and tragedies prevented.

Last week, I met with the parents of Sam Lilley, the first officer of the American Airlines plane that fatally collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter at DCA Airport. Sam's father happens to be a commercial pilot now, and before that, he flew Black Hawk helicopters in the military. He expressed his concern about reports that the Black Hawks are regularly being operated in this busy airspace without the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, commonly known as ADS-B, turned on.

We know that the Black Hawk in the January 29 collision wasn't transmitting. We hope that we will find out later today in the NTSB report what we need to do to fix this problem.

We know that during Mr. Bradbury's first tenure at DOT, he let the FAA create exemptions to permit military aircraft to operate without this key safety technology transmitting. And guess what? The military knew that they had been granted a loophole, but they said it would not be used all the time--only to find out later that the military said they were using the exemption 100 percent of the time.

My heart goes out to the Lilley family and to all the families of the victims of this tragic accident. It didn't need to happen. That is why, last week, I wrote Secretary Hegseth to ask about the Army's letter from 2023 stating that 100 percent of its helicopters fly in the DC area with this ADS-B technology not activated.

We can't afford another light-touch approach at the Department of Transportation when it comes to safety. We cannot. It simply does not matter if you are saving dollars if you are not saving lives. Unfortunately, I believe the President's nominee to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Steven Bradbury, has shown more interest in a light-touch approach that benefits industry, than being a champion for safety.

During his nomination hearing, I questioned Mr. Bradbury about his record as previous general counsel for the Department of Transportation during the first Trump administration. In this capacity, Mr. Bradbury played a key role in orchestrating the rollback of multiple, multiple safety requirements under the guise of advancing a reform agenda.

For example, under his watch, he prevented requirements for truck drivers. There was a fatigue prevention requirement for truck drivers, which he loosened. Vehicle safety recall investigations reached an alltime low, and meanwhile, road fatalities increased.

Under his watch, there were a number of rail safety requirements that were also waived. The Department of Transportation withdrew its two- person crew rule. This was a rule that people had recommended after derailments in the United States and in Canada, including a runaway oil train in Quebec in 2013 that derailed and killed 47 people. And during this same time period, the main line derailment rate increased, all during Mr. Bradbury's tenure.

Perhaps, though, the most troubling of all, is Mr. Bradbury's watch during the rulemaking on what is called a safety management system for aviation manufacturers like Boeing. Just 9 days after the first 737 MAX crash in 2018, which resulted in 189 deaths, there was a rule that said--being proposed--that the safety management system should be a mandatory requirement--not voluntary. Don't tell an industry that has to manufacture planes, ``It's okay, you can voluntarily comply with some of these rules.'' No, no, we need requirements that manufacturers must meet.

As my colleagues on the Commerce Committee know, a safety management system rule for aviation manufacturers would have instituted a comprehensive process for analyzing, predicting, and ultimately mitigating risk. The safety management system is considered the gold standard now around the world. If you want to have safety, you have a safety management system. It is a more robust process.

And I question how Mr. Bradbury, at DOT, after the Indonesian 737 MAX crash, didn't see or understand the need for critical information and analysis that a safety management system would have put in place, particularly because the FAA continued to let the MAX plane fly, and part of the process in question is whether they considered the critical analysis that Boeing had done to allow the plane to fly and what the FAA's role was.

So following the tragedies of both 737 MAX crashes, the Commerce Committee, led by then-Chairman Wicker, launched an investigation into the crashes to find solutions and prevent the disaster from happening again. But what did Mr. Bradbury do? Did he work with the committee to improve safety for the flying public? No. No, he did not.

He basically thwarted Senator Wicker and the committee's efforts to get the information about what the FAA had done. Make this clear here today: Our colleagues need to hold the FAA accountable. If you don't hold the FAA accountable as the oversight body, fat chance the FAA is going to continue to do its job as aggressively as it needs to.

So Senator Wicker's office said, ``Mr. Bradbury intentionally withheld relevant information requested by the committee.'' He made our investigation very hard. In fact, Senator Wicker later said, ``He deliberately attempted to keep us in the dark. And by that I mean our investigations, our staff, our committee, and me.''

Now, I have great respect for my colleague Senator Wicker, but the Bradbury findings, in stymieing us as a committee to do our oversight job, gives me serious questions about his level of transparency.

The families of the 737 MAX crashes wrote to Chairman Cruz last month to express their concerns about Mr. Bradbury's role in obstructing the committee's investigation into the crashes that took their loved ones' lives. They also voiced concern about Mr. Bradbury's role that led to the delays in holding Boeing accountable to implementing a true mandatory safety management system.

Now, during his hearing, Mr. Bradbury suggested that the rule ready to be proposed by the previous Trump administration that made it mandatory for manufacturers to have a safety management system was held up because some small businesses didn't want to meet that requirement.

Do we not believe that businesses are going to object to some rules? They do. They do all the time. But that doesn't mean scrapping the rule altogether, which is exactly what happened as far as the mandatory requirement.

Well, lucky for the consumer, our committee, in the aftermath of these two crashes, got legislation passed that said, ``Yes, you have to have a mandatory safety management system, and you have to, FAA, put that rule out.''

Now, Mr. Bradbury was still serving as general counsel and acting Deputy Secretary of the Department. You would have thought now that he has gotten a directive by Congress to put out this rule, he would have said, ``Hey, we have one. We have been debating it for a while, but now we have had two crashes. It is really clear that the safety culture needs to be upgraded. Everybody agrees, all experts, this is the great system. Let's implement it.''

But he didn't. He didn't move forward, even after Congress mandated it. And after Mr. Bradbury's confirmation hearing in front of the Commerce Committee last month, the families of the 737 MAX crashes released a statement saying his testimony purporting to prioritize aviation safety, ``Shows a complete disregard for the 84 people who died in plane crashes in the United States in the last month.''

Mr. Bradbury's troubling record doesn't stop just with transportation. During his time at the Department of Justice during the Bush administration, Mr. Bradbury authored what we know now as the widely known torture memos, justifying the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques.

The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility reviewed these memos and raised doubts about ``the objectivity and reasonableness'' of

these legal analyses. DOJ also found evidence that Mr. Bradbury's legal analyses ``were written with the goal of allowing the ongoing CIA program to continue.''

Mr. Bradbury, then, at the Department of Justice, was writing rules that fit the outcome that he wanted, instead of looking objectively at what the American people needed. These legal opinions were contrary to what this Nation stands for.

Later, the Senate refused to confirm Mr. Bradbury as Assistant Attorney General during the Bush administration, and Congress passed the McCain-Feinstein amendment to the 2016 NDAA, codifying the illegality of those torture methods--those very torture methods that Mr. Bradbury said were okay.

We passed a law to basically change what this guy's legal opinion was because it was so bad. And so now, when the Senate is asked to provide advice and consent on Mr. Bradbury's nomination to be Deputy Secretary of the Transportation Department, I think you should look back at what happened then. Two of our Republican colleagues voted against his nomination because of the torture memos. They rightly concluded that he was not right to fit in the Department of Justice role.

I am saying today, what do you need to know? He didn't fight for strong safety rules at the Department of Transportation before; he is not going to fight for them now. It is really clear that our aviation safety system needs strong leadership at the FAA, not someone who is going to write the rule to fit business, but write the rule to fit safety.

As if these issues weren't concerning enough, there is another issue. During his confirmation hearing, I asked Mr. Bradbury, ``What about the conflicts of interest that appear to be mounting between Elon Musk and the FAA?''

I thought, a smart lawyer could really give guidance to the Secretary of Transportation, give guidance to the FAA Administrator, the acting one, and could say, ``These are the ways in which Elon Musk should not pass go, would be a conflict of interest, would be a problem at the FAA, given that there are already issues that are really clearly in front of us.''

So I said, ``Tell us. Tell us. Where do you think those conflicts of interest exist?'' Of course, at the hearing, he kind of demurred, and I said, ``You know what, Mr. Bradbury, you can give me for the record where exactly do you think there's a conflict of interest.''

But he didn't just evade my questions; he basically said that he thought that it was an excellent idea to have Elon Musk and SpaceX making changes to the FAA air traffic control system. In fact, he said that he didn't ``see the potential for a conflict'' with the SpaceX employees having access to the FAA.

Of course, we know now that three SpaceX engineers were recently hired as special government employees at the FAA and were immediately granted conflict of interest waivers by the Trump administration so they could work on matters at the FAA. Why? Because they had ``direct and predictable effects upon the financial interests of SpaceX.''

So in other words, the Trump administration conceded that conflicts of interest do exist, and they are going to let them happen anyway, and they went to get a waiver. The conflicts of interest for Mr. Musk and SpaceX at the FAA is obvious.

Let me just say, though, first, you can have all sorts of broadband solutions, including satellite solutions. But when you are talking about the air traffic controller system, that kind of system is inferior to fiber. Why? Because of speed, capacity, cost, weather, all sorts of issues. And when there is chaos, we need certainty and predictability.

So we are seeing a conflict play out right before our eyes. According to a Bloomberg report, one of SpaceX's engineers who was granted a conflict of interest waiver recently told the FAA that SpaceX planned to send 4,000 Starlink terminals to the Agency. For what? We are still trying to find out.

The FAA already entered into a $2 billion contract with Verizon in 2023 to upgrade its telecommunications network. But Mr. Musk's own tweet suggests he wants to cancel the FAA's contract with Verizon. He is saying that they are failing. He wants them to use his product instead.

And yet, Mr. Bradbury apparently doesn't even see the potential--he doesn't even see the potential for the conflict of interest.

It doesn't stop with Starlink as a broadband supplier. Just last week, SpaceX's Starship heavy lift rocket malfunctioned and broke apart over the Caribbean before it reached orbit. Dangerous debris fell from the sky. The FAA smartly halted flights in the area to ensure safety, and thankfully, no one was injured. The FAA initiated an immediate investigation into SpaceX to determine what happened. The investigation presents another clear conflict of interest.

As we know, Mr. Musk doesn't think FAA safety rules should apply to him. Last September, the FAA fined Mr. Musk and SpaceX for failing to comply with specific requirements in its launch license. Afterwards, after getting fined, Mr. Musk made a spectacle, calling for the firing of the FAA Administrator.

That is right, the FAA fined him, and then he called for the FAA Administrator--oh, wait, wait 1 second, the FAA Administrator that passed this body 98-0, because everybody here thought he was going to do a great job.

But Mr. Bradbury doesn't think Elon Musk has a conflict of interest, but Elon Musk can basically say to the President of the United States, ``Fire the FAA Administrator that we all said we thought would do a good job.''

Now, we all know Mr. Whitaker wasn't going to stick around without being backed up for the safety work that he was doing. And now, we don't have a Senate-confirmed head of the FAA. Why? Because Mr. Whitaker didn't want to stay around if everybody was going to let Donald Trump do whatever the heck he wanted when it came to the FAA. All this because Musk got fined for violating safety rules.

So I really don't understand what Mr. Bradbury doesn't understand that he can't write down on a piece of paper where real conflict of interest exists.

We need new leadership in the Department of Transportation so that we can continue to stand up to safety issues. I do not believe Mr. Bradbury is that person.

Mr. Bradbury sees bureaucratic hurdles when other people see safety safeguards. He sees redtape where we see lifesaving protections. He sees the objective of having a light-touch FAA, and we see the objective of having safety be the primary purpose--because you can't win at aviation if you don't win at aviation safety first.

Ask the people of the Pacific Northwest. The catastrophes of the MAX crashes not only lost lives; they cost billions of dollars. So not adhering to safety is hardly a winning economic solution.

So Mr. Bradbury hasn't shown us the leadership on safety. He has not shown the fidelity of upholding the law, of even respecting Congress. He has not shown us the courage that it takes to stand up and make sure that safety is implemented. And the consequences of putting the wrong person in place are measured in human lives, not dollars--human lives.

The Boeing 737 MAX families know this--yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the Ethiopian Airlines crash that claimed 157 lives-- family members like Javier de Luis and Nadia Milleron, who have now oriented their lives around making aviation safer. I so appreciate their advocacy, but the people at the FAA should be doing the same.

I urge my colleagues to vote against the nomination of Steven Bradbury.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to support Senator Cruz in our efforts here to pass the Coast Guard bill. Chairman Cruz and I worked diligently on this bill in the last Congress with many of our colleagues.

Unfortunately, the clock ran out, and we are here today to pass this important legislation. We hope our House colleagues will just take this up and pass it as well. The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 provides the tools that our Coast Guard needs now to protect our shores, keep our maritime moving, and the Coast Guard and its responsibilities need the support of this legislation.

All in, the Coast Guard is responsible for facilitating over $5 trillion of maritime commerce in our waterways. The Coast Guard is also the sole operator of icebreakers in our polar regions, and they are our primary force charged with the stopping of pirate fishing from China, Russia, and other dark fishing fleets that are stealing American fishing jobs. The issues in the Arctic are real, and we have highlighted them many times, and this bill will help address that.

Passage of this measure now will enable us to further provide the Coast Guard additional assets like icebreakers, hopefully in the upcoming reconciliation bill, and the Coast Guard also helps stops the flow of illegal drugs in the maritime environment. This legislation also strengthens each of the Coast Guard's missions and authorizes a 30-percent budget increase to support that workforce.

I noted the President last night talked about shipbuilding in general. We are enthusiastic about that mission. I know that in budget reconciliation, people are already, the chairman of the committee, talking about the Coast Guard and $20 billion to help us recapitalize our Coast Guard fleet. Replacing the aging and inadequate equipment, from icebreakers to offshore patrol cutters to heavy weather boats to MH-60 helicopters and C-130 aircrafts are all important.

But beyond the modernization, there are other things. It includes in Base Seattle, the homeport to our Nation's current icebreakers, the future heavy icebreaker fleet, and the needs for the Arctic Nation that we are, now defending against Chinese and Russian aggression. The bill also reauthorizes the Puget Sound Whale Desk for another 2 years, which helps ships steer clear of our cherished orca and whale populations. It also increases collaboration between Washington Tribes and the Coast Guard. And the bill invests in critical safety programs. We are very proud of all of that.

But one of the most important things in the bill is, obviously, dealing with the workforce--making sure that we have access to medical care, housing, and behavioral health and to deal with what we know in 2023 was a decades long, uncovered, sexual assault and sexual violence coverup in the Coast Guard.

Operation Fouled Anchor identified 62 substantiated incidents of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment perpetrated by at least 42 individuals. The Coast Guard took action on only two of those subjects.

Due to the lack of oversight and the Coast Guard's mishandling of this, these individuals were allowed to retire, some at the grade of commander, with full benefits, and they received no punishment. That is unacceptable.

In 2023 December, former Commandant Schultz admitted to withholding information from Congress and stating that, ``He made this decision, and he stands by it.'' That is why, as chairman and working then with Senator Cruz and their oversight efforts, we did everything we could to make sure that this story came out and that we address it in this legislation.

This issue of failure to do this is--this is why we need transparency, this is why we need to make sure that we continue to address our workforce issues in the Federal Government.

The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 would strengthen authorities and programs to hold perpetrators accountable, enhance investigative and legal processes, improve victim recovery services and access to care, as well as boosting training.

These reforms would extend the Coast Guard protections available to members of the Armed Forces in general, in the whole Department of Defense, and it establishes a comprehensive prevention training and reporting requirement to address the issues identified in our investigation.

Moving forward, we have more to do to support the Coast Guard. They needed our help with their assets, and they need access to shipyards. This morning, during the Commerce Committee, I said I would work with my colleagues on all the shipbuilding efforts to help us meet our key global shipping competitiveness issues, to ensure that American farmers and manufacturers have access to global markets, and to make sure that we continue to invest in the best people for the Coast Guard.

To do that, we have to pass this legislation and get it on to the President's desk.

So I thank my staff Nikky Teutschel, Melissa Porter, Lila Helms, and all of the committee staff that worked on this bill. And again, thank the chairman, Chairman Cruz, for bringing this bipartisan measure to the floor today.

Mr. President, I rise to speak today on important public policy issues related to my State's economy and appreciate the opportunity to follow our senior Senator, Senator Murray, who is articulating the impact of some of these so important public policy issues on the State of Washington.

Trade is the lifeblood of the State of Washington and our economy. Farmers in my State export $7.5 billion worth of agriculture products a year. That was the number from 2023--$7.5 billion. So anytime somebody starts a trade war, I guarantee you, you are going to get our attention.

Under the President's trade war, the farmers in my State are going to be the first victims. Trump said to our farmers yesterday on Truth Social, ``Tariffs will go on external products on April 2. Have fun!''

Have fun? Have fun? When retaliatory tariffs strike our farmers, just as they did in the first Trump administration, it is not going to be fun; it is going to be a nightmare for our farmers. And many of the farmers in my State worry that they will be able to farm at all.

It is not like they are going to lose farmland. There are rich people, billionaires, software executives who will buy farmland. We are going to lose farmers. I know this because we have already been through this trade war, with many of my farmers struggling to overcome the damage that was wrought during the first Trump administration.

The last time we went down this road, we lost the apple market because

of retaliatory tariffs. We had a $120 million market that basically collapsed, practically overnight, in India. And I traveled to India and worked hard over several years to lift those tariffs, and now, we finally are back growing our exports exponentially, but the market still isn't fully recovered, and now, people are questioning what is going to happen next.

I heard from a grower in my State who said, ``The alarms in ag are sounding. The band has stopped playing, and the last lifeboats are leaving the ship. We cannot endure another cycle similar to the one that was started seven years ago when tariffs were first put in place. And without meaningful, long-lasting solutions, you may very well be looking at the last generation of farm families.''

That is just one of my constituents. He doesn't sound like he is having fun. These family legacies, built on generations of work, cannot be lost in a trade war. You can't get them back once they are gone.

I hope my colleagues will slow down on this tariff tirade. Under article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to set duties and regulate foreign commerce. However, Congress has spent the last 80 years delegating its tariff authority to Presidents.

You can say, okay, well, that might have been okay because previous Democrat and Republican Presidents worked to lower tariffs and to open up markets. I have voted for many of those trade agreements. But this President, I believe, is abusing this authority. He calls it an emergency. He is using the trade wars to supposedly force countries to do things like changing their border policies.

I believe it is time for Congress to start taking back some of that power and considering how we are going to protect the family farm.

We know this--that in my State, families are paying more for groceries. They are paying more at the gas pump. They are paying more for electricity bills. And they are seeing the stock market plummet because, as businesses grapple with Trump's unnecessary trade war, businesses are concerned about the long-term impacts of the supply chain and the cost of those tariffs.

The American people want to see the administration tackle inflation and the high cost of everything. When President Trump was on the campaign trail, he talked about inflation. He said, ``Starting day one, we will end inflation and make sure that America is affordable again and bring down prices on all goods.'' Well, I don't think that is what is happening today.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board put it well this morning when they wrote: ``Trump takes the dumbest tariff plunge.'' I agree. We don't need to be doing this.

These tariffs are attacks on groceries bought by every American. Canada is the largest exporter of meat to the United States, while 77 percent of fresh vegetables are imported from Mexico and 11 percent are imported from Canada. So costs are going up on every American who is buying, and that means they will also buy less.

The tariffs on Canada and Mexican goods that President Trump is planning would cost American families an estimated up to $2,000 per year. According to Anderson Economic Group, tariffs could raise the price of a new car as much as $12,000. I am pretty sure nobody has extra money for a new car.

Housing costs--one of the biggest drivers on inflation, but President Trump's tariffs would drive up the cost of construction material, making it even more expensive to address our housing shortage, slow our new home construction, and one analysis found that tariffs could push home construction up by 4 to 6 percent over the next 12 months.

I can tell you, we already have expensive housing in the Northwest. We can't afford another 4 to 6 percent. And the tariffs also create supply chain disruptions, making it harder to find alternative sources of materials, delaying projects that are already underway, and these short-term sticker shocks will put long-term pressure on housing affordability, making the problem worse--not solving it.

Just last week, when people want to talk about GDP and where this is going, it was amazing that the Atlanta Fed was forecasting GDP growth over 2 percent for the first quarter of 2025. That is literally what this line here was discussing, that the consensus was 2 percent, and even the Fed was weighing in on that.

But we can see when we got to February, we fell off a cliff. We fell off a cliff. And why? Because now the Atlanta Fed is saying we had one swing of 5 percent in just 1 week. And now, this drop is the representation of a cliff that President Trump is pushing the American economy over.

So you can see they are going down to negative--not just zero growth, but negative. We can't afford that, and we can't afford the stock market dropping 700 points yesterday.

The only way that we can work together is that if my colleagues here will start talking about these tariff issues. We don't need to weaken our institutions here; we need to strengthen them. And our colleagues need to work together to resolve these issues.

I would say, too, that as my colleagues start to plan how we deal with these budget issues, that we should also keep in mind that some of the cuts that these Agencies have been facing are really the cuts to some of the most technical jobs the U.S. Government has.

Whether you are talking about NOAA or the National Weather Service or the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation or the U.S. Department of Agriculture--they have all been targeted for reductions. These Agencies are critical to our economic growth and to our security. And at a time when we are seeing more extreme weather events or more floods or more wildfires, why shouldn't we be investing more in weather forecasting, not less?

And when you look at NOAA workers who support our commercial and recreation and Tribal fisheries--they employ 1.7 million people, including thousands in the State of Washington. Why would you cut specialized workforce that are helping support the growth of GDP? Because you want to basically cut those technical workers at the same time you are putting on tariffs?

In 2023, the National Institute of Health awarded $1.2 billion in highly competitive grants to the State of Washington--65 different organizations. This supported 12,000 jobs and generated $3 billion in economic activity. But DOGE wants to cap the overhead expenses of research. University of Washington Medicine tells me that this would leave them with shortfalls and that they might have to stop clinical trials that are underway. You can't just stop medical research like it is a faucet.

Once halted, the research, the data, the clinical trials, the patients, the laboratories, the equipment, all that led to innovation-- will be lost. You think you just turn that back on? You know, these kinds of ideas sound great, but they are not well thought out. It is literally throwing tax dollars away.

Tonight, my guest at the State of the Union will be Dr. Paul Lange from the University of Washington. With support of Federal funding, Dr. Lange helped develop early detection tests for prostate cancer. Because of these tests and other treatment breakthroughs, we have seen a decrease in the death rate from prostate cancer. From 1993 to 2022, it dropped by one-half--significant progress.

That is why we need research dollars to save lives. Similarly, Washington State University researchers actively test on novel drug treatment for advanced prostate cancer at Sharma Lab. If its work is disrupted, they say that ``risk potentially is high, not being able to replace data, and endangering the ultimate viability of potentially lifesaving treatments.''

There are lives that might not be saved because of these budget cuts. So it is time that Congress gets involved, that we fight for the science that we believe will save lives, move our country forward and grow our GDP, and help our farmers by stopping these trade wars, and putting our farmers back in charge of growing an economy for the future.

I hope that we don't cut ARS funding that USDA depends on. I hope that we will give hope to our future constituents and the growth that we need to grow our economy instead of cutting our opportunity.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, starting last week, the Trump administration began firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees. Today, we had a hearing in the Commerce Committee to talk about what kind of a key Deputy Secretary we need at the DOT, and we asked questions about this.

But what is perplexing is, while the American people were watching in horror as a Delta Airlines plane flipped over on the Toronto runway, President Trump was focused instead on purging dedicated FAA employees from the Federal workforce, something that I believe makes us less safe in the skies. Among those fired were aeronautical information specialists, legal instrument examiners, telecommunication specialists--all of whom played a key role in supporting the work of air traffic controllers.

In fact, there was a story today in Politico. The headline is, ``Air traffic controllers cannot do their work without us.'' That is a quote from the article. And inside the article, a statement, reading from the article, ``One of the people last week let go was an aeronautical information specialist, a member of a team outside Washington whose job it was to create maps and highways in the sky, the pre-planned routes that pilots control and controllers use to guide airplanes.''

So it is very perplexing that we have had these accidents, and now, we have an administration that wants to cut people at the FAA. This headline here refers to the fact that the last Trump administration actually blocked safety rules, and that is what today's Commerce hearing was about for the No. 2 person at the Department of Transportation, the people that served in the first Trump administration, and why did they block these safety rules?

In fact, some of these safety rules, which would have required manufacturers to have better safety, were written and proposed by the FAA--but when the Trump administration came in and then 9 days after the first MAX crash--somehow, the rule that was set to move forward was pulled.

So now, we are seeing an administration that is being, in my mind, thoughtless to the incidents that we have now seen in aviation and saying it is okay to cut people at the FAA. I disagree.

The administration has said that it is no big deal because it is 1 percent of the workforce. Now, I know the objective is to give a $4 trillion tax break to corporations and ultrawealthy people, but I don't understand how making the skies less safe helps you in that agenda. It doesn't. The individual lives and safety of the American people are worth way more.

These people that got fired are not just a bunch of junior hires, no--one news report stated that ``More than 130 of those eliminated held jobs that directly or indirectly support the air traffic controllers. They support the facilities and the technologies they use to keep the planes and their passengers safe.''

So you are going to tell me that a telecommunication specialist who supports the maintenance of key communications technology used by controllers is not important to aviation safety?

Are you going to tell me that the legal instrument examiners who ensure that the pilots are medically fit to fly are not important to aviation safety? Are you going to tell me that the air traffic controllers--the same workers that originally were not exempted from the administration's hiring freeze, but then, only after the fatal collision at DCA put a spotlight on the issue, they finally exempted controllers from the freeze.

Most astonishing of all, though, is that the administration has let go of aeronautical information specialists who evaluate and prepare navigational charts and helicopter routes used by both controllers and pilots.

Now, we have just had this midair collision in the DCA area, and what was it about? A route that didn't seem to be a decision somebody had made to let these planes fly too close together? Made no sense.

How did that route get approved? Who at the FAA said it was a good idea to allow the Department of Defense to fly in the same air space as a plane landing on runway 33 at DCA airport?

So mapping helicopter routes in a busy air space, I think, is critically important--and not somebody who should have been fired this week from a job.

Our aviation system is not a place where you can shortchange workers. This SMS rule proves it. This rule, which would have mandated that manufacturers of aviation implement a Safety Management System, constantly approving on analytical basis, is critical information about how to maintain safety. But it never got implemented.

So I am concerned that an administration that in the previous Trump years thwarted the safety rule and now is firing people at the FAA after these crashes are going to continue to erode the aviation safety net.

Surprisingly, after the helicopter crash with the CRJ from American Airlines--there was a lot of discussion about how and why a military helicopter would be in the same space as a CRJ regional jet trying to land in DCA from Kansas. One of the questions asked was, why was there not this Next Generation technology that would allow the helicopter to be detected? This included a DOD helicopter in the DCA collision incident.

The issue is that the controllers needed this information, but in an exemption done in the Trump administration, gave them an exemption to do this. And this week, we find out in a letter that they never, ever use ADS-B as a way to help us in our navigation safety.

Air traffic controllers themselves know that these firings are anti- safety. Ken Greenwood, a constituent of mine in Washington State, who is a former air traffic controller, wrote me on Sunday about how important these workers are. According to him, he said, ``These technicians and engineers maintain every piece of equipment that keeps our flying public safe, keeps radars and instrument landing to air traffic controllers on automation. FAA technicians undergo years of specialized training to maintain critical missions and systems and cannot be replaced quickly. In the 35 years since I began my controller career, we have

never, never had a surplus of technicians or engineers.

``To the contrary, it's a challenge to keep them in these jobs. Once our aviation system infrastructure is compromised, it takes decades to take it back, and money will not be saved and lives may be lost.''

I thank Mr. Greenwood for his service. I hope the administration is listening. I hope that you figure out now is not this time to shortchange aviation. Unfortunately, right now, we don't even have a confirmed FAA Administrator. They are critical to this job. We had a strong Administrator, Mike Whitaker, who was confirmed 98-0 by this body. But that didn't matter to Elon Musk, who went after Administrator Whitaker because he dared to fine SpaceX for not following the rules, and as a result, the FAA now does not have an Administrator at one of its most critical points in decades.

All the firing of employees and dangling resignations and trying to get people to resign to save money to give a tax break of $4 trillion to corporations and the ultrawealthy is not what we should be doing.

We should be working hard on aviation safety. We should not be rolling back safety rules. We should be enforcing safety rules and implementing them as fast as we can that says this body, this body knows that aviation safety is a priority.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the nomination of the President's nominee to run the Department of Commerce, an Agency that is charged with a broad mission and a lot of complex issues that affect many sectors of our economy.

The next Secretary of Commerce will have to deal with a wide-ranging, growing list of issues, from trade and export controls, expanding broadband, weather forecasting, patent issues, export controls on AI, and figuring out some of the most thorny issues related to how we move our country forward, generally, in commerce.

So it is fair to say that if the Commerce Secretary doesn't get it right, the American people and our American economy pay the price. Unfortunately, I believe that Howard Lutnick, the President's nominee, isn't the right person for this job at this point in time.

Now, Mr. Lutnick and the President have made it very clear that one of Mr. Lutnick's key responsibilities will be for trade policy and the tariff policies that the President supports.

In my conversations with Mr. Lutnick and before his Commerce Committee hearing, he made it very clear that he intends to be very enthusiastic about the President's plans for tariffs.

When he talked about tariffs, I don't know if he knew how much the U.S. economy was going to start paying the price. Talking to people throughout my State, I can tell you it is not lost on us, being a border State with Canada, how much this might affect us in oil and gas, in lumber, electric power, and many other issues of economic activity.

Mr. Lutnick was for, as the President said, the expanded taxes on imported steel and aluminum and across the board tariffs on China. As a result, China announced retaliatory tariffs, and other countries also promised to retaliate, too.

That is why, when the Seattle Times ran just recently this story about the tariffs, I really understood exactly how Washington businesses were feeling. That they know that one, this creates uncertainty, and they know that it raises costs.

Now, I come from one of the most trade dependent States in the Nation. That is because we grow a lot of agriculture products that go to overseas markets, we make airplanes that go to a lot of overseas markets, we have a lot of software and software development. So the majority of companies and the majority of employees in our State basically are involved in things related to making and growing U.S. products that are shipped to overseas markets.

My constituents want to see inflation come down, and they want us to lower costs, not increase them. Now that President Trump is teasing out even more tariffs in the coming days on autos, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, it is going to drive up costs for consumers.

Another newspaper in my State, the Spokesman-Review, hardly a liberal bastion in the State of Washington, also did a pretty big story about the trade and tariffs, and what they put in a headline: ``Trump and Inflation.''

I can tell you this, we can't afford inflation. We want prices to come down. Whether that is on housing or whether that is on pharmaceuticals or whether that is on food prices, we know that tariffs can increase prices.

So the Commerce Secretary, who is going to be involved in driving and responsible for this tariff impact, is not someone I want to see in this job. The Secretary of Commerce's job is to expand exports. I think with 95 percent of consumers living outside the United States, it is time to try to reach a process where we can get more products into those markets.

I am also very concerned about how America maintains our competitiveness in an international marketplace if things are more expensive, particularly manufacturing. My State has been a great beneficiary of a renaissance in manufacturing for a whole lot of reasons, but because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure bill, and the IRA bill. And all of those gave people a chance to bring supply chains back to the United States, start growing middle-class jobs in the United States of America again, and lowering costs.

That is why we worked so hard on the CHIPS and Science Act, something that was voted on here in a bipartisan fashion, led by then-Commerce Secretary Raimondo, in a process that ultimately awarded billions of dollars to advance the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry here--in total, negotiating 32 deals across 22 States.

So I know that the Presiding Officer knows all about this as a member of the Commerce Committee, but there are many States that were the beneficiaries of these investments and are helping us bring even more of the domestic supply chain back to the United States.

We learned during the chips crisis that even the cost of a used car went up $2,000. That is because chips were at a shortage, car industries, trucking industries couldn't even get enough chips to make and ship cars, and then the consequence was even used cars went up $2,000.

So we don't want to recreate that again. We want a Commerce Secretary who is going to fight for the CHIPS and Science investment that has already been made in the electronic manufacturing process in the United States and keep the semiconductor industry right here.

But unfortunately, Mr. Lutnick, before the committee, would not commit to standing by the commitments of the term sheets the Department of Commerce has already signed.

In fact, before he has even been confirmed, Reuters last week said the administration started telling companies that they might even revisit these agreements that have been signed. So let me be clear, these are awards to critical States like Texas, New York, Ohio, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and now, the President is saying he is going to revisit those signed contracts.

Delaying these projects also means we are delaying bringing the supply chain back to the United States, that we are making it harder for the United States to be competitive in an industry that is critical for us to lead, not just on the most advanced chips, but continuing in the manufacturing of semiconductors overall.

In his Commerce Committee nomination, Mr. Lutnick also heard from members of both sides of the aisle about their support for the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act. These are amazing initiatives that brought coalitions of people together to catalyze new economic engines, in some cases in the most rural parts of the United States. Why? Because it is so expensive to do innovation in Silicon Valley, in Boston, and even in some parts of my State.

So the whole point was to continue to make investments in test bedding and scaling technology, so the United States would not lose out. And these awards have been made, but Mr. Lutnick also refused to commit to honoring those agreements and putting many of those issues at question.

I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue to push for these investments. But today's nominee, if he is confirmed, is also going to be overseeing the Bureau of Industry and Security, which implements export controls and dual-use technology, and have both commercial and military proliferation applications.

That means you couldn't find a person whose day job is going to be more serious on export controls than Mr. Lutnick's. And yet, Mr. Lutnick, in the conversations that we had before the committee, I don't believe gave the committee a full understanding of what he was going to do to protect these interests.

In fact, the administration has already almost abandoned something called the AI Safety Institute, which is widely supported, literally by practicably everybody in the AI sector, and would help us remain a leader. This is the kind of standards that we would expect to be set and the kind of controls that we would hope would help the United States not have some vital technology exported outside the United States.

But we also questioned Mr. Lutnick on his background with stablecoin. Mr. Lutnick and the stablecoin that he has been involved in has been considered a very good tool for the cryptocurrency system, but a target of very illicit funds. Some estimates are that Tether accounts for as much as 60 percent of billions of dollars of illicit activities, by people like North Korea, Southeast Asia, Mexican fentanyl pushers, cybercriminals--and all because of stablecoin.

Now, Mr. Lutnick has an incredible personal story, losing his parents at a very young age and also the tragedy that befell Cantor Fitzgerald when terrorists struck.

So I know that Mr. Lutnick knows about terrorist organizations and has probably been affected for the rest of his life over that tragedy. But in the committee, when we were trying to get him to understand why we in the Federal Government put on sanctions against countries and we want to hear a Commerce Secretary say, ``We agree

with those sanctions, we are going to fight for those sanctions, we are going to fight anybody who tries to get around those sanctions.''

We asked Mr. Lutnick about ways to address that fact that maybe some large amount, $19 billion of Tether's funds, might be illegal, illicit transactions, he said he thought that in the future, a software AI solution would help stop that.

Well, I was hoping that Mr. Lutnick would be more aggressive than that. I would hope that he would help the United States in moving on something today that would help give more transparency in the cryptocurrency market. I support, as the Presiding Officer does, moving forward on cryptocurrencies. But I also believe that there should be some transparency and certainly should be a fight against people who use that for illicit activities.

I also asked Mr. Lutnick something about the U.S. sovereign debt futures, something that I know that he was involved in as it related to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and putting up a competitive bid. It was a notion of, how do we settle futures? How do we in the United States--if Mr. Lutnick's future company was doing business with the London Exchange, settle any kind of--let's say we don't raise the debt ceiling and we had a crisis here, what would the United States do? Not unsimilar to what we did in 2009 after the 2008, basically, recession of our economy.

These similar questions came up in the Finance Committee, and I found that the Treasury nominee before the committee answered those questions correctly. But Mr. Lutnick said that he still thought that his idea of settling with a foreign country, which I think puts the United States second, above England, is not something I would be willing to do, but I think he was willing to continue to move forward.

So those things, an answer about how we will catch up with the money laundering in the future with an AI solution, and how the settling on the foreign exchange, also left me with some concerns. But when we come to NOAA, which is 60 percent of the Commerce budget, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, when asked for the record, ``Should NOAA be dismantled, as called for in Project 2025?'' Mr. Lutnick would only say he will figure it out once he is confirmed.

We needed a bigger commitment to NOAA. NOAA already supplies a big, important aspect of what we deal with, with weather forecasting, tracking extreme weather, hurricanes, wildfires, managing our fisheries, operating ships that conduct important charting for national security. Mr. Lutnick gave very tepid support for NOAA.

With 60 percent of the budget and so much now at stake, as the White House every day says they are going to cut staffing and cut programs, Congress wants to be assured that a nominee is going to fight for the Agency that he is there to represent, that he is there to fight for their core mission that they provide in important services.

So I am urging my colleagues to not support this nominee and hope that we all can work together to continue to say how important NOAA's management of our fisheries are, how important it is to protect U.S. fishermen from Russian and Chinese illegal fishing and deception and trade practices that are hurting our consumers, and protect accurate weather forecasting for all Americans.

Now is our chance to stand up for these essential services; your constituents depend on it.

I thank the President and--oh, I would, just one more thing.

The aviation news that continues to roll out, I want to give my thoughts and prayers to those who have been affected by the Minneapolis to Canada flight for Delta Airlines.

We have now had the DCA incident and this incident and obviously one in Philadelphia. I would just say this: Now is not the time to cut FAA staffing. Now is the time to ask questions about what can we do to further enhance aviation safety. What can we all do, knowing that we have suffered from a door plug accident and from two MAX plane crashes.

And while we passed legislation to address those MAX crashes, we still have work to do. And we passed an FAA 5-year reauthorization that helped us get more air traffic controllers.

It is critically clear to me that we need these air traffic controllers, and so we have to make these investments. We should be working together, right now, on aviation. The most important thing? Let's work together for the benefit of the flying public to come up with the best solutions that we can implement in aviation safety.

Taking a broad brush and just cutting people out of the FAA, when oftentimes they are the people that are helping you get that safety, is not what we should be doing right now.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to share my deep concerns about entrusting our Nation's ability to respond to another pandemic, our world leading medical innovation infrastructure, the ability of women in my State to choose a medical abortion, and continued research for healthcare of millions of Americans, putting that in the hands of the HHS Secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy.

We all agree that our healthcare system could be reformed. It can be bloated; it can be maddening. Too many people have gotten the dreaded letter from an insurance company telling them: ``Sorry, your procedure isn't covered.'' And if you don't have insurance, you avoid that doctor visit, and you pay out of pocket, or maybe you wait until you end up in the emergency room and have to deal with medical debt. And we all know the cost of prescription drugs are too high.

We agree that we are spending way too much and that we need better outcomes. So you only have to look at the health outcomes of virtually every other industrialized nation to know that they spend less and get better results. But rather than choose a new leader for the Health and Human Services Agency that would lead us down that better path, President Trump's nominee would get us stuck in conspiracy theories that would cost us lives.

The nominee has been a purveyor of disinformation. As my colleague from Rhode Island just mentioned, sowing doubt about lifesaving vaccines, he said, ``[ . . . ] the COVID 19 was a bio-weapon that spared Jews and the Chinese [ . . . ].''

Achieving better health outcomes, both today and in the future, happens when we follow science--not conspiracy theories, but science. I happen to represent a very innovative science State, and right now, it is a choice about innovation versus the skepticism represented by this nominee.

Instead of speeding up innovation, under Mr. Kennedy, we would be taking a risky step backwards. The COVID pandemic showed us, in my State, one of the first--actually, the first in the Nation known cases of a COVID-19 case.

And 5 years ago this month, some of the first deaths occurred in my State. Sadly, there were many more. And trust me, I came back here to Washington, DC, and people talked as if business was usual, all the while it was spreading across my State.

Ultimately, this pandemic killed more than 1.2 million people, and it devastated our economy, it had an impact on our children's education, and it has long term healthcare effects on millions of survivors.

Now, we are at the possibility of the beginning of another crisis, the avian flu. This crisis is yet another reminder of the importance of medical research and collaboration. But these two stories were on the front page of the Seattle Times just yesterday, the cost of eggs skyrocketing, caused by the avian flu, and the proposed cuts to NIH.

Now, what do people not understand? Does it make sense to cut science at the time we might have another pandemic? Does it make sense to continue to cut the collaborative efforts of research? This Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University is on the frontlines of the avian flu.

One of my institutions is on the frontline. They test animals from across the State so they can be identified and stop the flu from spreading. And we want to cut those dollars?

Americans already see the impact of the avian flu every time they go to the grocery store, and now, people in Seattle and Spokane are saying it costs $7 for a dozen eggs. Some stores are limiting how many eggs you can buy.

So, as you can see, this issue is on the top of mind of constituents, and they want to know what kind of leadership we are going to provide here in Washington, DC, to lower costs, particularly at the grocery store, but to also lower costs in healthcare. Putting someone in charge who is a skeptic of medical science in response to the avian flu is just wrong. It is a catastrophic mistake for America's healthcare.

Now, I will admit my State is a global leader in medical innovation. From research, to biotech, to getting drugs to the market--in 2023, the National Institutes of Health awarded $1.2 billion in highly competitive grants to 65 different organizations in the State of Washington.

This supported about 12,000 jobs and generated close to $3 billion in economic activity. So, yes, we know a little something about global health and innovation. But we know something else, Mr. President, the kind of research we are talking about here is the kind that saves lives, and this, ultimately, is about making an investment in saving the lives of people.

Last Friday, when the Trump administration announced it was reducing

crucial funding for NIH grants, you are talking about our medical institutions that need this to build services and equipment and train the next generation of researchers.

For example, as I mentioned, Washington State University with avian flu, they actually help pay for backup generators. These generators keep the systems working in case of a power outage so the pathogens can't escape. So if you cut the institution and you cut the lab, who is going to pay for these overhead costs? Or will they have to cancel their research or stop training the PhD students?

So, this week, a court stepped in and blocked the NIH head count cuts for now, but believe me, people are afraid that their life's work will be gone.

At the University of Washington Medicine, they are testing treatments for kidney disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and pediatric cancer. So, if the so-called DOGE cap goes into place, these are programs that will see a shortfall.

They tell me they have to stop admitting new patients to clinical trials, that they will have to scale back. And we can't just start and stop medical research like a faucet. Once these people leave, the programs are stopped. It takes a long time to get them started. Once halted, the research data, the clinical trial, the patients, the laboratory, the equipment that led to those innovations will be lost.

Now, if you ask me, that is throwing taxpayer dollars away. When you have an opportunity to cure a disease that affects millions of people and can save taxpayers billions, but somebody is arbitrarily going to cut these NIH funds, thinking they are saving the American people? They are not saving them. They are causing harm.

Cutting NIH and scientific research funding have consequences for every State in this Union. North Carolina is home of the famous research triangle and receives about $2.2 billion in NIH funding. Texas is home of Baylor College of Medicine and receives about $1.85 billion in NIH funding.

As a country, we should be working together to do more research, create more jobs, and decide what are the lifesaving science and medical innovations that we want to invest in and are represented in a budget process here in the U.S. Senate--not the arbitrary decisions of someone who hasn't even been elected to make these decisions.

But the risks don't stop at our medical labs. Republicans are proposing to cut $2.3 trillion in Federal Medicaid funding so the administration can afford to lower taxes on some of the most extreme wealthy Americans.

More than 1.8 million Washingtonians are enrolled in Apple Health, Washington's Medicaid program. So that is one in six adults, two in five children, three in five nursing home residents, three in eight people with disabilities. I am not confident, Mr. President, that Mr. Kennedy understands how critical this process is and the provisions of Medicaid are to people in my State.

We know that we had this debate before and only because a very small bipartisan group of Senators helped save Medicaid from a crazy block grant idea that would have taken a very big building block out of our healthcare delivery system. Thanks to all my colleagues on this side and those on that side who stood up for that and said block granting was the wrong idea.

Well, believe me, they are at it again. There are those who think to give the tax break to corporations, somehow you are going to get it out of the hide of these very individuals that are counting on Medicaid.

I do not believe Mr. Kennedy will stand up to President Trump and be an advocate for those who rely on Medicaid. I know my constituents know what is at stake with this vote, and they know that our healthcare delivery system is about science, it is about innovation, it is about making the investments to keep Americans healthy. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join my colleagues--I thank the Senator from Nevada for her great comments in articulating why we want to have a budget process here that recognizes the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and to say that a budget process that tries to exclude us is not what our Forefathers had in mind.

That is one of the reasons I strongly oppose this nomination to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget for Russell Vought. The administration, like every one before it, has had the opportunity to propose a budget, set overall policy principles, and propose spending and policies. This administration does not have the power to wave a wand and erase legally authorized and appropriated funds.

The Constitution is very clear here: Congress and the administration, together, agree on appropriations. They agree together when we pass laws and what we want to do to govern. And people should be able to rely on current laws until those laws are changed.

That is how governing works, and we are here to represent the people who want to see the certainty and predictability of laws that we have passed. Regular review of programs and congressional oversight, as my colleague from Nevada just mentioned, those are valuable things, and we can continue to make reforms in thoughtful and transparent ways.

We should not allow unaccountable political actors, though, to have unfettered access to our constituents' most sensitive data without safeguards on how that data is protected, their rights, and conflicts of interest, or how that data might even be used against them.

I am for a very strong national privacy law to protect our consumers, and one person I don't want a spying on us is the U.S. Government. So I don't take lightly somebody getting access to accounts and information, storing it, moving it around, sharing it with other people. I don't care if they are 22 or 42, I am not for the government doing this kind of thing without oversight.

Taxpayers--I am not even for the government spying on U.S. citizens, just to be clear, I am not for that. But this is just data collection. Data collection. Who is it going to? What are they doing with it? How much are they going to use it?

So taxpayers, they rely on us for service, and they don't want to believe that somebody is looking around in these accounts. Even our own personnel management system got hacked by the Chinese. How do we know that there are safeguards for what these individuals are doing with our most personal information?

But the havoc that has been caused by this nominee's strategy is just absurd. Today, I met with a group of farmers who were talking about how they grow and process export products.

They told me, because USAID operations were shut down, their products were stuck on a dock in Houston, they don't think they are ever going to get delivered, and they sure as heck don't think they are going to get paid.

Is that what we want to do? Tell our farmers that they have a contract to grow a product, to have them delivered, and the shipment is on its way, and now, you are going to leave it on a dock because you think you have a bright idea of way to shortcut Congress?

Over 1.8 million Washingtonians rely on Medicare, and they shouldn't have to be worried at any moment of the day that somehow that that is not going to be paid for. But that is what happened when Washington State Health Care Authority was frozen out of the Medicaid portal and the healthcare payments were not being made.

My colleague also just addressed that. The portal eventually got turned on after the huge volume and outrage. Really, outrage by the public forced the administration to say, ``Stop this silly attitude that you can stop payment yourself.'' They forced them to turn the portal back on and pay the Medicaid bills.

But Washington State is also home to community health centers. They are nonprofit entities that serve the medically underserved population. Part of me is thinking, this is really an attempt to steal money from our constituents, just to pay for a tax bill.

Literally, somebody thought they were going to come in here and make a very fast move and basically turn off payments to people who are really poor and in very challenging situations and turn off payments so they could take the money and put it into a tax break for the rich later on.

That is absurd. It is absurd. It is not even legal. We were told by some of these healthcare centers that they were blocked from transferring Federal funds to those needed in their hospitals. In other words, cutting off funding that would be helpful to saving lives. These health centers provide care to more than 1 million people in our State, over 360,000 of them. And there are children, agriculture workers, and veterans, and the fact that these medical systems work to help all of us provide primary care is exactly why we shouldn't turn off a system.

I got a call from someone in Pierce County to tell me about her son Tobias, who is 36 years old. He was recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma and is one of the youngest people who has gotten the diagnosis. They are absolutely terrified about the risk of losing cancer research dollars. She said she couldn't wrap her mind around it:

This insane and cruel road that we are all on now with this

new administration.

These are the stories from my constituents, they want to know what is going on in their lives. It is not a parlor game, it is not a think tank exercise. It is their lives.

For one of the hospitals in my State, Island Health in Anacortes, the funding freeze means they couldn't fill a contractual agreement to pay for surgical technology. They were under contract to pay no later than 30 days after the receipt of the equipment, which is currently being shipped to them. So the first time this community was going to realize the benefit of some technology that was going to help them provide better outcomes through less invasive

procedures, lower the infection rate, and shorten their recovery time. But they don't know--the funds are frozen, the people of Anacortes could have to wait, and they may not even get the delivery of that care--because OMB created uncertainty. They created it about the funding, without thinking through the consequences. Multiple hospitals are worried about caring for their patients. Olympic Medical Center on the peninsula serves about 80,000 patients. They said to me, even small changes in the Federal grant spending will have detrimental impacts to their facility and to their community.

A Federal funding freeze just exacerbates their ability to deliver care that has been authorized, appropriated and promised--promised to the operation of our healthcare system. How could people be so heartless to try to turn that off?

Andrea Downs, the executive director for Citizens Against Domestic and Sexual Abuse, which is the only domestic violence and sexual assault agency for Whidbey Island, said they operate a center and a shelter. She said the funding freeze impacts about half of their funding. Portals, not getting paid, no processing, no time. She said ``not being able to access our grants for the remainder of this fiscal year would have a crippling impact on our organization.''

One, Walla Walla/Tri Cities based nonprofit, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, is also concerned about Federal grants that they receive that support housing needs of people who live within the region. And they are also worried about the accountability of care that comes with the Medicaid funds.

But probably nothing said it more clear to me than when I heard that Elon Musk and DOGE wanted to get their hands on the FAA. What should a man who is regulated by the FAA--his launch facilities are under the FAA's authority to keep us safe. They need to know and coordinate launch rocket times and to not have people just launch a rocket whenever they want.

We already know the painful experience of these accidents on the Potomac, of not having a system overseen with enough input by air traffic controllers. But Mr. Musk was fined, and he didn't like the fine. He basically went after the FAA Administrator, who decided to step down instead of serving with this administration. Now, Mr. Musk wants his hands on the FAA to tell them what to do, probably in retribution for the fact that they said it wasn't safe to launch at that moment. This is a clear conflict of interest.

We can do better than this. We are here to work together. We are here to work across the aisle. We are here to pass a budget. We are here to appropriate and, as an authorizer, to set those authorizations and work with our appropriators.

It is not for a nominee to set a game plan of how to take money out of the lives of individual families that are counting on that payment or structural organizations that are charged with serving our communities on something as important as health or law enforcement, and it sure isn't turning the keys over to somebody who has already been fined by the Agency to try to then undo the Agency's oversight of his own personal business. There couldn't be a clearer answer here. Turn down this nomination. Let's get back to working together, working collaboratively.

There are lots of ideas that we have to work on government efficiency, lots of ideas that could produce billions of dollars in savings, produce better care for our constituents, and move our country forward. And, oh, by the way, let's not also continue to cut funding for all the authorized programs that these nominees basically said that they supported. That is why we voted for some of them because they said they supported current funding, whether that is the Department of Transportation or other places. But now, the mastermind of how to short circuit, pull the plug out, pull out the safety blanket, give it to the rich is on the way for a vote here.

Please vote no.

I yield the floor.

On behalf of farmers who deserve to be paid, I vote no.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about export strategies, collaboration, and American principles.

Madam President, no one likes to be left behind. I know somewhere people think there is this, ``I win, you lose,'' mentality. But what happened to ``let's grow the pie'' instead of just hoarding a few pieces that are left. Growth, not contraction, is the right solution.

The world is more connected, not necessarily just because of globalization. We are now more connected because of technology, and nothing we are doing is going to stop that. The speed of information is empowering anyone with an internet connection aided by the brain of an AI app to get answers and ideas hundreds of times faster than ever before.

Do we need new principles for the information age? Rules the world and we should strive to adhere to? I definitely agree that the answer is yes.

But, Madam President, I thought we were for capitalism.

Yes, capitalism in the information age needs better rules so markets aren't distorted because markets need to be properly policed and they aren't right now. And I believe that the U.S. should aggressively define the rules in the information age.

I believe in a technology NATO--a model of key democracies and key sophisticated technology countries, defining the rules of the information age and telling anybody who wants to follow that, we will give you a discount on our technology, instead of those who are advocating to buy from people who have a government backdoor. Or even in today's analogy, where you allow somebody to have a government backdoor to your technology.

Madam President, capitalism is still the largest, smartest export America wants to export. We want open markets, and we want more people to sell to 95 percent of consumers who live outside the United States.

Now, it is clear not all the world community is down with capitalism, especially places like China or North Korea. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to advocate for it.

What has U.S. advocacy for capitalism done to grow and stabilize the world? I would say immeasurable, immeasurable, immeasurable, immeasurable progress. In fact, the period from the end of World War II to the early 1970s is considered one of the greatest eras of economic expansion in world history. In the U.S., gross domestic product increased from $228 billion to just under $1.7 trillion in 1975. So whether it was Germany, Japan, South Korea--we have brought about a world economy because the shiny American dream was worth chasing. So whether

it was setting market rules, growing exports, investing in innovation-- this is the poster child of what the United States of America has been about. It has not been a story about contraction; it has been a story about growth.

The impacts of the U.S. economy can't be ignored, but to out compete our adversaries, we need coalitions, not go-it-alone strategies.

Why do we fear this if we think our principles are correct? But somehow, the current administration thinks that we have been hurt more than we have been helped in this global equation, and they want us to believe that somehow there is a win-win situation on tariffs that they can deliver on.

The American people are demanding leadership here in Washington. They want us to work together. They want us to have the best interest of the country at hand. My guess is they think that on a global basis, too. I know my farmers do. Farmers, always the big potential loser in a trade war, want us to work out better economic opportunities for their future. But there are those in this administration who think we can close our borders, chill trade with tariffs, and somehow make time stand still.

Well, I got news for people, the information age has blown a hole in that theory, even if there was justification for the time stand still theory before the information age. You just cannot drop anchor in the middle of this storm. You need to get to a stable harbor and create an opportunity for the future. And trade, Madam President, not only grows economic opportunity, it helps change culture, and there are some cultures that are worth affecting.

It is better to have a job than be attracted to join a terrorist organization. It is better to create economic stability than fueling poverty and migration. And tariffs are a distortion of markets. Tariffs mean we disagree. It very rarely means the disagreement will be resolved quickly. It usually means people will retaliate, and the escalation of that retaliation will hurt consumers so much so that eventually someone will blink.

The payers in this dispute, though, are never the government leaders. No, it is the workers who lose their job. It is the family that pay higher costs. It is the community that loses their economic activity and tax revenue. And that is why it is so important in this day and age that we talk more about the three Cs: collaboration, coalitions, and capacity building.

Capacity building gives us the ability to accelerate innovation. Trust me, one thing I know about traveling in my State--I am sure it is true in other places, too--innovation is not only in the DNA of Americans, it is the history of our country. Whether electricity, aviation, or the internet, credit goes to the United States of America for innovation and inventing future economic opportunities, not just for us, but for the entire world.

But now, we are in an innovation race defined by AI and quantum. And according to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. generative AI may increase gross domestic product between $2 and $4 trillion per decade. Boston Consulting estimates that quantum computing could generate $850 billion in annual revenue by 2040.

So are we going to focus on those things? Winning the races? Or are we going to allow a contraction that hurts everyone?

Obviously, going all in on AI and quantum can help ensure that our country maintains both economic and military advantages, but we definitely have to collaborate with like-minded nations who also want to grow AI and set the rules, if you want to beat China's ultimate Belt and Road Initiative--DeepSeek.

So what do we do about the domestic impacts of trade? Well, I can tell you some sure dont's right away. You don't abolish the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, designed to protect impacted workers from trade, which is what has happened with the other side of the aisle. We need to be intentionally upskilling workers to help them in impacted sectors. I have met and talked to so many Americans. They are smart, talented, hard-working, striving, and they only ask for one thing: opportunity.

If you bet on them, they will do the rest. I often think of two major shifts in workforce policy in the United States. World War II, where we didn't have a workforce, and the women showed up in the factories and delivered production. And when the men returned from World War II, and everybody wondered what the economy of the future would be, and we gave them the GI Bill, and they created it.

So we don't cut workforce training. We invest in 2-year skill training programs at our high schools. We make sure that we turn to apprenticeships. We return to the skilling of the jobs that are needed today. You also don't cut export programs like the State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) or the Export-Import Bank.

But what do you do? Well, let's go back to those three Cs: collaboration, coalition building, and capacity building.

We will bring more high-wage manufacturing jobs back to the United States, fostering the investment landscape by continuing on the path of the CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, those have put real investments in the United States of America and have started us on the path towards growing the middle class again. But we need to continue to invest in science.

We need a robust R&D tax policy for inventors and manufacturers, and we need to help our manufacturers with capital investment, equipment modernizations, to help them with their factories. I have seen this in places like Madison, ME, or Longview, WA, where we helped revitalize a longstanding paper industry into new opportunities for the future.

So how do we deal with China? Well, they aren't playing by the rules. They are manipulating and flooding markets, but I guarantee you that just a fear of China is not the answer, and solutions like collaboration and coalition building are critical, particularly in the information age. China does have the largest gross domestic product, about 19 percent of global GDP.

In the global economy, the U.S. represents about 15 percent. But if the United States works to create markets with like-minded partners like Japan, Europe, and the UK and builds a coalition of like-minded democracies grounded in the rule of law, we can flip the script and have a market representing 34 percent of global GDP.

And if we take the next step and expand coalitions to include partners like Canada, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and India, then we are looking at a market that, instead of China's 19 percent accounts for almost half, 47 percent of global GDP.

So why aren't we focusing on that economic opportunity? A lot of people say, Well, that is not the America of today, but I am pretty sure Ben Franklin, about the time he was focusing on electricity, also went to France and helped to build a coalition essential for the founding and continuation of our country. So don't tell me it is not in our DNA to do this. There is so much more we could and should do working with our allies.

Obviously, I mentioned a few--research and development in artificial intelligence, commercializing quantum, scaling, safe, affordable fusion technology. And there are many Members of Congress who were working on these bipartisan ideas. But we have to remain competitive, and we cannot allow this debate about tariffs to take us off our historical course as a nation.

As I mentioned, we mapped out how to get investment in the United States of America, and now, we need to follow that with the training and skilling of American workers. As the AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Microsoft President Brad Smith at a recent meeting in Seattle agreed, we need to train and skill 500,000 electricians for the United States. Why can't we here agree and accelerate that? I am not even sure we can agree on the acceleration of air traffic controllers, and we have every reason to get that done.

Last week, I spoke about additional investments the United States needs to make in Panama, Latin America, and others to link and modernize bilateral agreements that help us counter China. And as I mentioned, I believe in an aggressive EXIM Bank investment to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative.

Free trade agreements are a way for us, not tariffs, to gain the leverage we want. South Asia could play an important role in this coalition building,

particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. But I want us to go further. I want us to understand that U.S.-led negotiations in a Middle East free trade agreement to build on the momentum of a cease-fire in Gaza could further stabilize that region, along with making investments in other programs. It is tragic that the administration fails to understand the important role USAID plays in global capacity building.

How will we know that strategy works? Well, I suggest we will know when we are growing the middle class in the United States of America again. The bills we have passed in investing and allowing us to innovate faster are on their way to doing that. Let us not have a trade war disrupt that and dismantle what has been history after history lesson of economic success of this Nation, fighting for open markets, capital opportunities, and investing in the ingenuity of America.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.