Floor Statements

Mr. President, with my colleagues Senator Jim Risch, Representative Mike Simpson, and Representative Russ Fulcher, I congratulate five Idaho-connected athletes who competed in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. Qualifying for Team USA is an accomplishment in and of itself, and we commend these five incredible Idahoans for their hard work and commitment that resulted in them representing our great State and country on this world stage.

Now three-time Olympian Chase Josey, of Sun Valley, competed in snowboarding in both the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing 2022, earning 7th place in the snowboard halfpipe, and he earned 6th place in the snowboard halfpipe in the Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang in 2018, before his return to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, where he earned 11th in the halfpipe. He took 5th in the halfpipe at the 2021 FIS Snowboard World Championships, and most recently 12th in this competition in 2025. Team USA notes that Chase's father Bill taught him to snowboard at age 5

on the slopes of Sun Valley. He has since been a strong presence in competitive snowboarding.

Five-time Olympic medalist Hilary Knight, of Sun Valley, has become a mainstay on the U.S. women's hockey team. She brought home one gold and three silver medals in four Olympics prior to the 2026 competitions, where she again helped secure Team USA's gold-medal win. Hilary Knight served as captain of the team and is the new American point and goal- scoring leader for Olympic women's ice hockey. She earned a silver medal in the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing in 2022, following her earning a gold medal in the Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang in 2018, a silver medal in the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014, and a silver medal in the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010. She has had 15 years of participation with the U.S. Women's National Team, helping to earn 10 gold and 5 silver medals in the Women's World Championships. Given her legendary career and leadership that has inspired so many in Idaho and across the globe, her selection to serve as a flag bearer for the closing ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina was a well-deserved honor.

Ryder Sarchett, of Ketchum, competed in alpine skiing in his first Olympic Games, earning 25th in the men's giant slalom at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. Ryder, who began skiing at age 2 and ski racing at age 10, earned 10th at the World Cup giant slalom in Val d'Isere, France, in December 2025. This followed him achieving gold in the men's giant slalom at the 2024 FIS Alpine Junior World Championships in Portes du Soleil, France, with Team USA noting, ``Sarchett became the first American to win the junior world championships giant slalom title since River Radamus claimed gold in 2019 . . .''. He has skied for the University of Colorado Boulder, winning the men's giant slalom at the Utah Invitational and placing 8th in slalom at the NCAA championships, helping his team win the team title by 2 points.

The 2026 Winter Olympics were also the first Olympic Games for Samantha ``Sammy'' Smith, who grew up splitting time between Boise and Sun Valley. She competed in cross-country skiing, earning 19th in sprint classic style in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. Team USA notes that Sammy made her World Cup debut in Norway in March 2023 as the youngest woman in the field by 2 years. She then went on to earn a silver medal in the freestyle sprint at the 2024 FIS Ski Junior World Championships in Planica, Slovenia. Sammy earned multiple top 30 FIS World Cup finishes and the U.S. Nordic Olympic Women Gold Rush Award for her grit and grace beyond race results. She also won the U.S. national championship in the classic sprint in January 2025. In addition to skiing, she is a division I soccer player for Stanford University. Her many soccer achievements include her serving as a captain of the U.S. team at the 2023 Pan American Games, where her team earned bronze.

Another first-time Olympian John Steel Hagenbuch, of Ketchum, competed in cross-country skiing for Team USA. He earned 14th in the men's 10-kilometer interval start free and contributed to his team's 6th place finish in the 4x7.5-kilometer relay. Team USA notes, ``John Steel Hagenbuch has established himself as one of the most decorated collegiate cross-country skiers in recent history while simultaneously competing at the international level.'' His many successes as a skier for Dartmouth include his two-time NCAA championships in the 7.5- kilometer classic, earning United States Collegiate Ski Coaches Association Men's Nordic National Skier of the Year honors, and numerous Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association championships. He also earned bronze in February 2024 in the skate sprint at the U23 FIS Cross-Country Ski World Championships in Planica, Slovenia.

The Idaho Olympians we are honoring and their teammates often overcome significant injuries and other setbacks to continue showing up day in and day out to prepare, improve, and prevail. They are extraordinary examples of consistency. They make the choice over-and- over-again not to push snooze on their dreams but get up and keep moving forward. We commend them for their hard work and thank them for their representation of our great State and Nation in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. Congratulations, Olympians.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, reserving the right to object to what I expect to be a unanimous consent request with regard to S.J. Res. 95, the resolution seeks to overturn a Trump administration IRS notice providing simplified guidance on applying the corporate alternative minimum tax to partnerships. The corporate alternative minimum tax is a fundamentally flawed, Democrat-enacted book minimum tax. Not one single Republican voted for it.

As Republicans predicted, the book minimum tax has proven to be highly complex and burdensome. Even President Biden's own Treasury Department acknowledged its dizzying complexity. They waived penalties related to it for 2 full years due to the ``continued challenges'' of compliance.

The Trump IRS notice at issue today reduces compliance burdens, making it easier for businesses to calculate their liability. Democrats gave Treasury extremely broad discretion to implement the tax, including on complex issues like how it should apply to partnerships. The notice is within the Treasury's authority, but the Democrats dislike the outcome.

Approving this resolution would revive ambiguity, inviting audits, litigation, and significant compliance costs. Therefore, I register my objection when the unanimous consent request is made.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

My colleague's proposal offers nothing new. The Senate has already rejected a so-called clean 3-year extension of the enhanced COVID credits in December. None of the reasons we rejected this measure then have changed. Perpetuating a fraudulent, failed system without reforms is not a solution. Declining to offer consumers more choice and control over their healthcare is not a solution. Handing insurers an additional $80 billion of taxpayer money is not a solution.

Both sides agree that the costs of healthcare are too high. We knew that years ago when these credits were created and again when they were extended, but rather than fix that problem, the credits only exacerbated the underlying issues that are driving up the costs. We cannot continue to rely on the same broken policies to fix those systemic problems.

In December, Senator Cassidy and I proposed to begin the process of true healthcare reform. Directing funds to HSAs controlled by patients instead of insurers would spur competition, prevent fraud, and reduce costs. Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle rejected this proposal. Each side knows what the other side cannot accept. A real solution must respect those boundaries and chart a new path forward.

Unfortunately, today's repetitive proposal fails to do so, and for those reasons, I object to the request.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise in opposition to S. 3229, the No Tariffs on Groceries Act of 2025.

The reason groceries are so expensive is because during the last administration, inflation got totally out of control. We all know the grocery prices went up then. That is when the inflation rates were in double digits. I think at one point, they got over 20 percent.

Where is the inflation rate today? My colleagues on the other side would like to try to duck the fact that the reason grocery prices are so high is because of the inflation that was caused under President Biden's administration when we blew the top off of growth and the prices. Today, the inflation rate is at 2.7 percent, close to the Federal Reserve's target for our economy. That is just a fact that we have to recognize and deal with.

Now, this bill seeks to exempt articles of food from the President's IEEPA tariffs. I agree with my colleagues that tariffs generally should be targeted as much as possible to avoid harm to Americans. We also should consider more exemptions to harms arising from potential unintended consequences, including exemptions for unavailable natural resources.

The administration agrees. In November, the administration excluded a number of food items from the reciprocal, India, and Brazil IEEPA tariffs. By all accounts, the administration is working to identify similar exemptions in other active trade negotiations. I strongly encourage the President to pursue productive courses of engagement with U.S. stakeholders in doing so, but voting for one-off exemptions on the Senate floor in isolation of a larger negotiating strategy and broader stakeholder concerns like this bill S. 3229 asks us to do now, does not facilitate a predictable process for our negotiators or for any broader segment of stakeholder engagement.

Therefore, I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes before the scheduled rollcall vote.

Mr. President, we spent a lot of time this week talking about the problems of our healthcare system: Premiums are rising; hospitals are struggling; and out-of-pocket costs are out of control.

These problems are not new. And, frankly, notwithstanding all of the rhetoric of my colleagues from the other side, the fact is, these enhanced premium tax credits that we are debating today, if they were extended or not extended, are not going to change the fact that premiums are skyrocketing. They are skyrocketing because of the failure of our current healthcare system.

These problems were used to justify ObamaCare in the first place, and ObamaCare has progressively made them worse. Americans did not keep their doctors, as was promised under ObamaCare; Americans did not keep their insurance plans; and their premiums did not go down. In fact, ObamaCare premiums have risen at roughly double the rate of employer- provided healthcare plans since their inception.

Our Democrat colleagues have only had one response to these skyrocketing premiums: more spending, which they claim is going to stop premium increases. It, in fact, facilitates greater premium increases.

Without ever winning a single Republican vote, they created the Obama premium tax credits, expanded them to all Americans--to Americans of all income levels--and then extended that expansion. These credits did not reduce costs and did not reduce premiums. All they did was shift the cost to taxpayers and help insurance companies to continue to hike premiums higher and higher.

Democrats know that ObamaCare has failed. They themselves have said so on this floor. But with a deadline quickly approaching again--a deadline that was set by my own Democrat colleagues--they say we have no choice but to extend this failed policy one more time on these premium tax credits. This is a policy they could not even make permanent when they controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. Even so, their only offer is more spending.

They call their plan a clean extension. A 3-year extension of this program with no reforms, costing hard-working families $83 billion, with tens of billions of dollars going to insurance companies and fraudsters, is anything but clean.

Twice on this floor this week Republicans have offered the Democrats a unanimous consent to have a temporary extension of these premium tax credits with needed reforms to address waste and fraud and abuse that is rampant, and twice this week that has been rejected.

The Government Accountability Office recently uncovered how embarrassingly easy it is to game this ObamaCare subsidy system, with the Wall Street Journal calling it a ``Mecca for Fraud.''

Even the Washington Post recognized that ``ObamaCare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.''

Fortunately, we have another option. Instead of the minority leader's $83 billion extension, which would do absolutely nothing to reduce fraud and would keep driving premiums higher, Senator Cassidy and I have offered a fiscally responsible proposal that will reduce premiums, save taxpayers money, and give Americans control over their healthcare. Our bill provides prefunded, patient-driven health savings accounts for Americans enrolled in qualified ObamaCare bronze and catastrophic plans.

Importantly, low-income Americans will still receive subsidies for those ObamaCare plans through the permanent portion of the premium tax credits system. Americans who choose this option will have both insurance coverage and help paying for their remaining out-of-pocket costs--all without giving insurance companies a reason to enroll them in plans without their knowledge, as has occurred for years.

Our bill also fixes an error in the original design of ObamaCare by funding the cost-sharing reductions that it mandated, reducing benchmark premiums by 11 percent. Let me point that out. That piece of our proposal will reduce premiums by 11 percent.

The minority leader's plan is not going to pass. But if just a few of my Democrat colleagues will join us in voting for our bill, we can put this crisis behind us and lay the groundwork for true reforms.

For instance, Senator Wyden and I remain intent on getting our bipartisan pharmacy benefit manager reform to the President's desk. We have many other bipartisan agreements on needed healthcare reforms that we need to move forward on.

The choice before us is clear: We can continue with business as usual and extend the same policy that has brought our healthcare system to the point where every Member of this body admits that it is broken or we can try something different. We can change the incentives that ObamaCare gives insurers to drive premiums higher and put our confidence in Americans to make the best decisions about their own healthcare.

If we fall off the Democrat-created subsidy cliff, it will not be because we did not have a different choice.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, tomorrow, this Chamber will have the opportunity to chart a new path forward on healthcare in this country.

Senators will be given the choice to extend the Biden COVID bonuses for another 3 years or to support healthcare reforms that will actually expand options, reduce premiums, and give power to patients instead of insurance companies. Both sides agree that the cost of healthcare is too high, but we need to address the root causes of the explosive increase in healthcare costs rather than mask them with unsustainable spending.

We are told that the expiration of the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies is a crisis and that there is no time left to do anything but extend them. If there is a crisis coming, it is entirely of the Democrats' making. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle created the premium tax credits as a part of the ObamaCare system because they did not trust their own policy to make healthcare insurance affordable without shifting the burden of paying for it from enrollees to taxpayers. When the original premium tax credits failed to bring down premiums, they enhanced the tax credits. Then, when that did not work, they extended the enhancements.

They did all this without a single Republican vote. They also chose the current expiration date that they now say must be changed. They created the very cliff that they now oppose.

Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have had years to offer serious suggestions on how to reform the ObamaCare subsidies. Yet every time that deadline approaches, we are told there is no workable option except to extend them again. It seems that these subsidies were never truly meant to be temporary, but they should be.

We do not have to go along with their last-minute extension this time at the cost of $83 billion. Even our Democratic colleagues recognize that our healthcare system needs reform. Leader Thune recently quoted many of them here on the Senate floor.

They said:

We did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.

They also said:

Now, right now, we have a broken health care system.

And it is not just the rising premiums that prove that ObamaCare is broken. We cannot ignore the pervasive fraud in this subsidy program. The rules governing eligibility for these

credits are often flaunted. In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that the rule barring people who can access affordable insurance through their employers is ``barely enforced.''

Based on the Government Accountability Office's recent audit, income and citizenship verification rules are being ignored too. Of their 24 fake applications for enhanced tax credits, 22 are receiving subsidies despite submitting falsified paperwork or no paperwork at all. One of their applicants even received an email specifically confirming his income verification was approved even though he never submitted any proof of income in the first place.

The law prohibiting dual enrollment in ObamaCare and Medicaid was broken 1.6 million times last year.

Of course, unscrupulous insurance brokers have been signing people up for ObamaCare plans without their knowledge of them or their consent for them. Alarmingly, insurers make the most money through these fraudulent credits because they retain the money even if no payments are made on behalf of the patients.

As just one example, more people are signed up for zero-dollar premium ObamaCare plans in Miami-Dade County than there are low-income people living there. One woman in Miami said she had been paid five times by brokers to enroll in ObamaCare plans.

These are not isolated incidents. This year, 6.4 million Americans were improperly enrolled in enhanced ObamaCare subsidies at a cost of $27 billion. The true cost of fraud was likely even higher because the GAO also found in its report that tens of billions of dollars of subsidies in 2023 had not been reconciled to the enrollees' incomes, meaning they could have misrepresented their incomes to qualify for bigger subsidies.

This is the program our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are prepared to extend without changes, without even changing the policies that are generating fraudulent abuse.

We can't afford to do that. We cannot afford the $83 billion pricetag of their proposal, and we cannot afford to tacitly consent to this fraud nor can we afford to tell the hundreds of millions of Americans who are insured through means other than ObamaCare that we are not interested in their rising premiums.

While Republicans did not create this crisis--we did not create ObamaCare; we did not create these subsidies; and we did not create this expiration date--we do have plans to address it.

Senator Cassidy and I introduced a sound plan earlier this week. Our bill, the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act, is based on an idea endorsed by President Trump and many of our colleagues whereby Americans, not insurance companies, should control their own healthcare spending. Americans could use the permanent, original premium tax credits to purchase qualified bronze plans with a health savings account attached. They would then receive monthly contributions into that health savings account totaling $1,000 to $1,500 per person in the family annually.

Instead of lining the pockets of big insurance companies, like these subsidies, our HSA contributions would help patients pay expenses not covered by their insurance plans.

When patients can control their own care, they can seek the most appropriate treatment options for their individual circumstances, incentivizing care providers to compete for patients by improving prices and care outcomes.

Our plan would also provide funding for cost-sharing reduction payments, which will reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income patients, save taxpayers money, and--get this--reduce premiums for benchmark Marketplace plans by 11 percent.

Additionally, our bill would ensure Federal health funding is spent for the benefit of Americans by strengthening citizenship verification requirements and discouraging States from providing taxpayer-funded healthcare to those who are not legally here and are not citizens of the United States.

Some of our Republican colleagues have offered plans of their own this week which are also worth considering as we move to the future. We welcome bipartisan cooperation on these proposals as with the pharmacy benefit manager reforms I recently introduced with Senator Wyden and many of our Senate Finance Committee colleagues.

But we must not simply kick the can down the road yet again. Every time we spend tens of billions of dollars for unsupervised and poorly designed subsidies, as our colleagues are asking us to do once again, we worsen the healthcare crisis that we all want to solve, and we do nothing to stop the explosive increase in premiums.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week, we are going to spend a lot of time discussing problems with our healthcare system. To do that, we need to understand just how we got here.

Concerns about the rising healthcare costs are not new. In 2009, Democrats highlighted shortcomings in the American healthcare system as proof that the Federal Government had to intervene.

President Obama told us how to judge his healthcare plan. He told us that Americans would be able to keep their insurance plans and their doctors, and he also told us that insurance premiums would go down. As everyone knows, these predictions did not come true.

But there were signs from the start that ObamaCare would not work, which is why not one single Republican voted for it. That is also why the Democrats created the premium tax credits in the first place. They did not trust the one-size-fits-all nature of ObamaCare to lower costs and expand options.

Instead of decreasing, over the last 15 years, ObamaCare premiums have increased over 220 percent. A family of four pays $10,000 more for coverage today than they did before ObamaCare, and their deductibles have doubled. Insurance providers have dried up, and rural hospitals are struggling. ObamaCare has undermined healthcare in America.

In 2021, the Democrats again decided that premiums were too high and that a Federal response was necessary. But rather than fix the structural flaws in ObamaCare, they created an even bigger subsidy with fewer guardrails to entice more people into a broken program. Not only did they make the subsidy bigger, they made everyone eligible, regardless of their income. So families making $600,000 a year began to qualify. Democrats also temporarily eliminated reviews to confirm accurate payments and allowed individuals to continuously enroll throughout the year.

Because those changes were made under the premise of responding to the pandemic, the enhancements were only supposed to last for 2 years. But before they expired, the Democrats extended them for 3 more years-- again, without a single Republican vote.

With those expanded subsidies again about to expire--and by the way, on a date set by my Democrat colleagues--the pattern has become clear: Democrats respond to rising premiums by throwing taxpayer dollars at the problem. Their supposedly ``short-term'' fixes only drive premiums higher and make the problem harder to solve, leaving us with apparently no choice other than to do the same thing again and again and again.

ObamaCare is broken, and throwing good taxpayer money after bad policy is not going to fix it.

The enhanced premium tax credits account for only about 4 percentage points of next year's projected 20 percent increase in insurance premiums.

Let me say that again. These enhanced premium tax credits that we are talking about only account for about 4 percentage points of next year's projected 20 percent increase in insurance premiums.

Extending them will not solve the crisis. What it will do is cause tens of billions more dollars to be paid directly to insurance companies without improving patient care or choice. With taxpayers footing the bill, these subsidies give insurance companies every single reason they need to keep hiking premiums.

Even the Washington Post just yesterday explained in their words that ``Obamacare subsidies make it too easy to scam the system.''

Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that 1.6 million Americans were enrolled in both Medicaid and ObamaCare plans. This year, 6.4 million Americans were improperly enrolled in the enhanced premium tax credits, at a cost of $27 billion. Another 12 million subsidized plans reported no claims in 2024, suggesting that many of them were opened on behalf of people who did not even know they were insured.

Because insurance companies receive the subsidies regardless of whether a plan is used, there is no incentive on their part to check the enrollment status. In 2024, $35 billion was paid out for these unused plans.

My colleagues in the House asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the fraud surrounding the ObamaCare tax credits. Their findings, the findings of the GAO, were shocking.

The GAO created fake identities and attempted to enroll them in ObamaCare plans. All four of their fake applicants in 2024 received a subsidy. This year, 18 out of 20 fake applicants received subsidies.

GAO also found tens of thousands of cases of apparent identity theft and hundreds of thousands of cases where insurers or brokers changed people's plans or enrolled them in new ones without their consent.

Perhaps worst of all, they found that over $21 billion worth of subsidies--nearly one-third of all subsidies paid in 2023--had not been double-checked against enrollees' income. That means that there was nothing stopping these enrollees from misrepresenting their incomes to receive higher subsidies than those for which they were eligible.

Ultimately, it is not just the taxpayers that are hurt by this fraud, although taxpayers should not be on the hook for it to begin with; the other Americans who rely on Federal health programs suffer as these program dollars go to waste.

Republicans addressed some of these program integrity issues in the One Big Beautiful Bill--the Working Families Tax Cut Act--when we tightened eligibility and verification standards for Federal healthcare programs, but no degree of oversight and enforcement is as effective as addressing the basic incentives in the system that result in fraud.

I appreciate that some of my Democratic colleagues have finally acknowledged these issues, but the fact remains they have not offered any ideas on how to solve them. Extending these expensive, fraud-ridden subsidies for another 3 years with no reforms--I repeat, no reforms--is a nonstarter. Continuing to pour billions of dollars more into the pockets of big insurance companies and fraudsters will not lower healthcare costs for American families, especially when you consider that the vast majority of Americans are not insured through the ObamaCare Marketplace and are therefore not even eligible for these subsidies in the first place.

Senator Cassidy and I have a different plan. The motivating principle

is simple: Patients should decide where their healthcare spending goes, not insurance companies.

In line with President Trump's call to direct money to patients instead of insurance companies, this approach builds on the success of the Working Families Tax Cut Act, which expanded health savings accounts and their eligibility to be paired with more affordable insurance plans.

These prefunded, patient-driven accounts will help Americans pay for the out-of-pocket costs that are making healthcare unaffordable. Our plan would take some of the money that otherwise would be spent on the COVID bonuses and direct it to health savings accounts attached to ObamaCare bronze or catastrophic plans as monthly deposits totaling $1,000 to $1,500 per year. Families can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policies without waiting for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions. Because families want the best value for their money, they will seek out the most appropriate treatment. Over time, this should result in lower healthcare costs as providers compete for patients.

Our plan would also fund cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which mitigate out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees, reducing premiums by over 10 percent and saving taxpayers money. I will repeat that. Our plan will reduce premiums by 10 percent and save taxpayers money. These cost-sharing reductions would finally change the notion that Americans should simply accept ever-escalating premiums as the norm. In contrast, the Democrats' temporary COVID bonuses do not lower costs or premiums at all. They throw billions of dollars at insurance companies, up to 20 percent of which can go into profit and overhead. Our plan avoids that issue and empowers patients to control their own healthcare.

We cannot transform our broken healthcare system overnight, but we can make real progress. We still have a chance to enact reforms that will do more than paper over the cracks in our healthcare system. We should take that opportunity instead of making the enhanced premium tax credit mistake all over once again. It is time to lay the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their healthcare choices and making quality healthcare more affordable.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, with my colleagues Senator Jim Risch, Representative Mike Simpson, and Representative Russ Fulcher, we congratulate Dennis Miotla, who is retiring from his position as Chief Operating Officer and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Infrastructure Programs for the U.S. Department of Energy's, DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, after 35 years of service.

Throughout his extensive career in nuclear energy, Dennis Miotla has served in a number of leadership positions as he has contributed significantly to guiding nuclear operations. Prior to his current position, Mr. Miotla was the Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy. He previously served as the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. Mr. Miotla also served as the Deputy Director for Nuclear Facility Operations, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Operations, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Power Deployment. Additionally, he was the interim manager of the Department of Energy's Idaho Operations Office where he had full responsibility for DOE operations at Idaho National Laboratory, INL.

Dennis has also worked for the National Nuclear Security Administration and at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, PA. As Dennis said about himself, ``About 50 years working in various positions in nuclear energy. I think I have pretty much seen it all and done it all.''

His extensive and remarkable work in the field of nuclear energy has understandably been recognized. He is a two-time recipient of the Presidential Rank Award for his outstanding performance in the advancement of nuclear energy programs.

Dennis is generous with his time as he cares deeply about the legacy of Federal service and is invested in those who choose that path. He is known at DOE, the Lab, and the nuclear industry for his leadership, mentorship, and sarcastic humor. He has taught many the importance and intricacies of the Lab's research, and his patience and guidance are deeply appreciated by many who have worked with him.

Dennis' years of service and dedication to nuclear energy and INL have helped support the current fleet of reactors and will help ensure continued research into advanced nuclear reactors, facilitating their commercialization and deployment in the private sector. His contributions are significant. Thank you, Dennis, for lending your knowledge, know-how, direction, and vast experience so extensively to advancing nuclear energy and shaping future leaders in this important field. We wish you all the best on your well-earned retirement.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, one thing needs to be made really clear. We have all this talk about how we have an urgent crisis, and it can be totally fixed if we just accept the demand of my colleagues on the other side that we extend the temporary COVID tax healthcare premium enhancement that occurred during the COVID crisis.

This is what needs to be made clear: Insurance premiums are skyrocketing, not because of a temporary small COVID premium support passed during the COVID crisis. They are skyrocketing because our healthcare system is broken and needs to be fixed. And we have been asking to negotiate about this for years, and intensely over the last few months.

Let me give it some real specifics. This demand that my colleagues on the Democrat side are making, even if it were true that all of it was an impact--that letting it expire would be an impact on premium increases, which is not accurate--even if all of it were to be impacting premium increases, it is only 4 percent of the premium support. It is only 4 percent of the premium increases that are coming.

So we have the entire U.S. Government shut down because we won't concede to a demand that we spend another $100 to $350 billion in premium supports because the premium expansions are coming, resulting from a broken healthcare system that we can get no engagement on in negotiating.

Congress has a timely, bipartisan obligation to reopen the government. The proposal offered by my colleague on the other side of the aisle does not address that. The Senate has now voted 14 times--14 times--to end this shutdown.

My Democrat colleagues claim to be taking a stand to make healthcare more affordable. While we may disagree on the merits of those individual policies, everyone in this Chamber shares that goal. In fact, as a part of the clean CR that we have voted on 14 times to extend critical Medicare and Medicaid programs, we would have increased payments to rural hospitals, we would have provided access to telehealth services for our seniors, and we would have offered our seniors the option to receive hospital-level services in their homes.

But, no, not unless we agreed to spend $350 billion or $100 billion-- the current request is around $100 billion--not unless we agree to spend billions of dollars extending what were made temporary by my Democratic colleagues when they controlled the Senate.

They were made temporary because they were intended to get us through the economic difficulties of the COVID crisis. And, again, they relate to only 4 percent of the premium increase that is coming. And yet it is said that we can solve the entire premium increase problem today by just doing this. Not true.

Because Democrats will not join Republicans in reopening the government, these programs that I mentioned, just a moment ago, have lapsed. These programs have lapsed, disrupting care for millions of Americans.

Premiums are going up dramatically for all Americans, and not just those enrolled in Obamacare.

Despite the confusion that has been created here, the original ObamaCare subsidies don't expire. Let's make that very clear. The only thing expiring is temporary COVID-related enhancements that the Democrats themselves made temporary.

The Democrats are the ones who set the expiration date that we are debating today.

Even without extending these COVID enhancements, taxpayers will spend $1 trillion over the next 10 years subsidizing ObamaCare premiums. So let's not tell the American people that the American Government is going to stop subsidizing the failed ObamaCare premium system. Over $1 trillion is going to be spent subsidizing it. We need to address that problem. We cannot spend our way out of rising premiums.

If my colleagues want to have a conversation about reforms that truly

lower costs instead of masking the problems with a $100 to $350 billion taxpayer-funded patch, then Republicans are willing to have that conversation.

Leader Thune has made this point clear. In his own words, he said:

I am willing to sit down with the Democrats.

And I join him. I am also willing to sit down with the Democrats to discuss the growing unaffordability and unsustainability of ObamaCare. It is a system they created, but I am happy to hear them out.

I am still quoting Leader Thune:

Heck, I am even willing to give them a vote, which we have

offered and offered and offered. But there is one condition:

End the Schumer shutdown.

I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I

pay a ransom. Period.

That is the end of the quote from our leader, Leader Thune.

For these reasons, I object to my colleague's request.

I yield the floor.

Senator Welch, would you yield briefly to me?

Senator Welch, first of all, I appreciate your acknowledging that we do want to work together. I would hope that you would acknowledge that we are working together to try to find solutions.

This notion that the fact that we haven't had a hearing--it is because we haven't gotten to the point where we have legislation before us to have that hearing on.

But I just would like to make two points. No. 1, once again, open the government. No. 2, even if we agreed to your request today, all of those people you talk about who are going to get hit with premium increases are going to get hit with premium increases because this temporary COVID premium enhancement support was never intended to be and never was the foundation of what is driving--or did deal with the foundation of what is driving premium increases.

Everybody in America is going to get hit with a massive premium increase, and it is not going to be changed if we give an extension for that 4 percent that goes to this enhancement. It could be like maybe a tiny bit different in some ways and in some places, but I doubt it would make a dollar's difference in most cases.

Let's get the government open, and let's continue real negotiations to solve this problem. We mutually have talked. We mutually know that there are things we can work on to get this solved.

I am just asking my colleagues on the other side to quit trying to blame Republicans for the premium increases that are coming and say: Let's get the government open, and let's get together working to solve our healthcare crisis.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise in opposition to S. 3072, the No Coffee Tax Act.

The bill seeks to exempt from the President's IEEPA tariffs only a single commodity--coffee.

I agree with my colleagues that tariffs generally should be targeted as much as possible to avoid harm to Americans.

We also should consider more exemptions to address the harms arising from potential unintended consequences, including exemptions for unavailable natural resources. The administration agrees.

The very recent trade deals with Cambodia and Malaysia explicitly exempt coffee and some other mostly unavailable natural resources from the reciprocal tariffs. By all accounts, the administration is working to identify similar exemptions in other active trade negotiations. I strongly encourage the President to pursue productive courses of engagement with U.S. stakeholders in doing so.

Voting for one-off exemptions on the Senate floor in isolation of a larger negotiation strategy and broader stakeholder concerns, like S. 3072 asks us to do so now, does not facilitate a predictable process for our negotiators or for any broader segment of the stakeholder engagement.

Therefore, I object.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled rollcall votes: myself for 5 minutes and Senator Sullivan for 10 minutes.

And Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call in relation to the Dunlap nomination.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 88, which would terminate the trade deficit national emergency.

I agree with my colleagues that tariffs should be more targeted to avoid harm to Americans. I made precisely that point at a Finance Committee hearing in May.

We should consider more exemptions, whether for unavailable natural resources, capital equipment, or other key inputs.

It is equally important that enforcement guidance provides the clarity that U.S. companies need to comply with the tariffs and make critical business decisions.

Similarly, as the administration continues to negotiate with our trading partners, I appreciate that my colleagues, as well as our constituents, may be nervous about what comes next. However, at this juncture, this resolution is counterproductive to helping American families and businesses of all sizes.

It is no secret that, for decades, countries around the globe have raised tariff and nontariff barriers against Americans and against American businesses and have raised the cost for Americans and American businesses without response by the United States. President Trump is now responding and saying these countries need to take down their tariff and their nontariff barriers and deal with us in fair and free trade.

The President's negotiations are bearing fruit. President Trump already announced new trade deals. Just today, because of his negotiations, President Trump announced that China has agreed not to implement its rare earth export controls. China also agreed to address the flow of fentanyl and to purchase soybeans.

Other deals are, hopefully, forthcoming.

Consequently, S.J. Res. 88 is counterproductive to the progress already made by the President and the new gains he can still achieve in the ongoing trade negotiations.

On April 30, the Senate rejected this same resolution for these reasons, and I urge my colleagues to reject the resolution for these same reasons again today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 77, which would terminate the fentanyl national emergency declared with respect to Canada.

I agree with my colleagues that tariffs should be more targeted to avoid harm to Americans. I made precisely that point at a hearing in the Finance Committee in May.

We should consider more exemptions, whether for unavailable natural resources, capital equipment, or other key inputs.

It is equally as important that enforcement guidance provides the clarity that U.S. companies need to comply with the tariffs and to make critical business decisions.

Similarly, as the administration continues to negotiate with our trading partners, I appreciate that my colleagues, as well as our constituents, may be nervous about what comes next. However, at this juncture, this resolution is counterproductive to helping American families and businesses of all sizes.

What my colleagues across the aisle have not discussed is the ubiquitous tariffs and nontariff trade barriers that our small businesses and large businesses alike face across this globe from countries that are not allowing fair trade to happen with the United States, and the cost of that is being borne by the American people-- small businesses and large businesses alike.

The President's historic trade negotiations recognize that this cannot continue, and nations across the globe need to reduce their tariff barriers and their nontariff trade barriers to American companies and American citizens.

The President's negotiations are bearing fruit. President Trump already announced new trade deals with major trading partners, including the United Kingdom, Japan, and the European Union. Other such announcements we expect to be forthcoming.

And I urge other trading partners of the United States to reach similar deals.

Consequently, S.J. Res. 77 is counterproductive to the progress already made by the President and to new gains he can still achieve in the ongoing negotiations with our trading partners. Let's truly get a balanced, fair playing field in trade.

On April 30, the Senate rejected the joint resolution of disapproval of IEEPA-based reciprocal tariffs for the same reasons. I recommend we do the same thing today and reject this resolution.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.