Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Cole nomination.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we begin the previously scheduled rollcall vote immediately.

Mr. President, I congratulate Troy Gugel, who is retiring after a remarkable, 40-year career with Micron. Troy's ideas, talents, and experience have contributed to the success of this pioneering Idaho company and shaped the memory and storage technology sector.

Troy, who started with Micron on February 4, 1985, after graduating with a degree in electronics, was part of its transition from a local Boise corporation to an international, premier semi-conductor producer. He started as an equipment repair technician working his way through a series of promotions before going back to school part-time to earn another degree in business management as he moved into more project management roles in research and development. He is concluding his

career as a principal engineer specializing in TPG IE Modeling.

As the company and Troy progressed, he worked under five Micron chief executive officers, starting with Joe Parkinson and ending with Sanjay Mehrotra. Interestingly, Troy went skydiving with Steve Appleton twice when Steve was developing an interest in flying and skydiving. Troy's career spanned the downturns as well as the years of company growth where economic forecasts exceeded expectations. He has been a member of the workforce that has seen the company grow from a computer memory and data storage producer to rise as a leader for producing the enhanced memory solutions for AI-driven technologies changing our world, homes, and lives today.

Throughout his career, Troy has handled important technical tasks, bettered himself through his continuing education, and directly contributed that added knowledge to his field. He also personally contributes to Idaho's leadership in innovation and our State's consistently high ranking in patents held per capita. Troy has a remarkable five U.S. patents related to photolithographic metrology method; unique photolithographic processing technique; immersion photolithographic defect reduction and novel process techniques.

I thank Troy for his enormous contributions of his time and ideas to discovery and development for Idaho and our country. I should also mention that Troy's wife Margaret Ballard is a long-time and greatly valued member of my staff. Realizing that staff service to our constituencies often carries over to family time over the years, I know Margaret joins me in thanking Troy for his steady support. Congratulations, Troy, on an outstanding career of contributions to an essential field of innovation. I wish Troy the best as he embarks on his retirement.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Risch and I be permitted to speak for up to 1 minute each regarding the recent tragedy in our State.

Mr. President, the Senate has important work to accomplish today to prevent a more than $4 trillion tax hike on American workers and families, and we will accomplish that goal. However, while business continues here, life for the North Idaho community of Coeur d'Alene remains at a very painful standstill as we mourn the horrific loss of two firefighters.

Yesterday afternoon, firefighters from Coeur d'Alene and Kootenai County were responding to a fire on Canfield Mountain. Upon arrival, they were ambushed by gunfire. Two brave firefighters were murdered. Another has already undergone surgery for gunshot wounds.

As we continue our work today, I ask my colleagues to join me in sending your prayers for that firefighter's full recovery, for the deceased victims, for their families, and for the entire North Idaho community grieving this heinous act.

As we close, I would like to thank my colleagues from Washington as well as all of you. Many of you have come up and expressed your sentiments today.

I would say even the Federal workers were there, the FBI and others. There was a huge influx of support from those who put their lives on the line every day, and some lost their lives yesterday.

Because of that, I ask you to join us for just a moment of silence and prayer.

(Moment of silence.)

Thank you, Mr. President.

This is something we will hear a lot of today, and this will just be the first shot at it.

The bottom line is, billionaires are going to pay the same amount of taxes after this bill as they paid before this bill. They are going to pay the same amount. This notion about billionaires getting tax cuts at the expense of everybody else is just the politics of class rather than the politics of fear. The rest of the argument is the politics of fear.

The reality is, the reforms we are putting into place are to try to rein in control of wasteful and fraudulent and abusive spending that actually diverts resources away from the people who these programs really deserve to receive.

I urge a strong ``no'' vote against this amendment.

Vote on Motion to Commit

Mr. President, more of the politics of fear. Rural hospitals and providers not only deliver essential healthcare services in their communities but also strengthen local economies, employing hundreds of individuals and supporting regional business development.

Unfortunately, for far too long, some rural hospitals have struggled to achieve financial stability, even with a wide range of targeted payment enhancements. These issues predate the consideration of the reforms that we are including in the legislation today.

Let me be clear. This amendment is intended to derail this very bill. The Finance Committee has a long tradition of coming together on bipartisan issues, like bolstering our rural healthcare system. I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to advance permanent solutions to provide rural providers, from telehealth to innovative reimbursement models.

Today, we need to pass this essential legislation, and I oppose this amendment.

Vote on Motion to Commit

Madam President, Republicans are restoring integrity to the Medicaid Program by closing loopholes and preventing States from exploiting Medicaid Federal match rates. States' provider taxes for nursing homes and immediate-care facilities are not phased down under this bill.

Additionally, the bill repeals the harmful Biden administration's nursing home staffing rule that would have forced the closure of nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Vote on Motion

Mr. President, Republicans are strengthening Medicaid and setting it on a more fiscally sustainable path by targeting waste, fraud, and abuse.

This bill does not take Medicaid away from children, the elderly, the disabled, or the medically frail, adults caring for children and elderly relatives, or any recipient the program was originally designed to help. It increases eligibility for home- and community-based services, which will increase access to mental health or substance abuse disorder treatments.

If this motion were adopted, it would delay a vote on this bill and stand in the way of Republicans' efforts to prevent a $4 trillion tax hike on working families and deliver additional tax relief to the middle class.

I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion

Mr. President, no decision has been made about tariffs in this bill. More importantly, none of the President's tariffs rely on any authorities made from a prior reconciliation bill or are contingent on this bill.

We can and should have a debate about the precise approaches, including how best to incorporate tariff policy, but this is not the appropriate vehicle to have a serious debate on trade.

If adopted, this motion would commit the whole bill to a delay and stand in the way of our efforts to prevent a $4 trillion tax hike on working families and deliver additional tax relief to the middle class.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Motion to Commit

Mr. President, Democrats contend that they want to increase and extend the child tax credit and ensure that big corporations and the ultrawealthy pay their fair share.

Despite the rhetoric behind these claims, I remind my colleagues that Republicans created the child tax credit, expanded its availability, and doubled the amount of the credit in the TCJA, which we are working on tonight.

This bill not only makes that doubled child tax credit permanent but also increases it, providing significant relief for families. In addition, as a result of the TCJA cutting taxes for, overwhelmingly, the majority of Americans, with the middle class receiving the largest proportional benefit of these cuts, Republicans made the Tax Code more progressive, not less. The legislation before us makes those tax provisions permanent.

Americans deserve more than empty platitudes. They deserve meaningful tax relief and meaningful results.

Vote on Motion

Mr. President, going back to endless subsidies is not sensible energy tax policy. Allowing adversarial nations and the industries that have been fairly industrialized to benefit from incentives intended to benefit Americans is doubly unfair. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Amendment No. 2717

Mr. President, supporting an all-of-the-above energy policy does not require excess subsidies to certain technologies, as has been the case in the years since the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

This bill ends the mistake of endless subsidies for favored energy sources. Phasing out subsidies from mature industries is prudent and responsible.

Americans have been paying for these subsidies for decades, and it is time these industries compete on a level playing field.

This bill provides American businesses of all kinds broad-based incentives to grow and hire, including businesses that generate energy and produce the products that help them to do that.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Vote on Amendment No. 2719

Mr. President, continuing to subsidize mature industries is wasteful, and this bill, instead, focuses on broad-based incentives for all businesses.

I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Vote on Amendment No. 2564

Mr. President, first of all, let me thank my colleague from South Carolina Senator Graham for his very kind words. I return the same kind of compliments to him for his great work in helping to build this bill and get us moved to this point.

I am going to make just a few remarks right now in response to some of the allegations and mischaracterizations that my colleagues on the other side have made about how this bill has been structured in terms of its evaluation and its scoring. And then, later, I will come and give a much longer speech--I am sorry, sir--on the bill itself.

Mr. President, the things that were said this morning just have to be responded to. First of all, it was said that the reason that we are going to increase the debt ceiling in the bill is because we are spending so much money and driving the deficit up.

Well, first of all, our bill drives the deficit down, not up; and, secondly, the reason we are dealing with the debt ceiling in the bill is because, under the previous administration's operations, the debt ceiling has already been breached. It was breached on January 2, and we are limping along with extraordinary measures--that is what we call them here in Washington--to try to keep the government funded until Congress can extend the debt ceiling.

This has nothing to do with President Trump. It happened before he even was sworn into office. It has nothing to do with this bill. It has to do with the profligate spending that drove us into a breach of the debt ceiling on January 2.

Secondly, my colleagues on the other side tried to characterize our choice of the current policy baseline as a gimmick and said it has never been done before.

Well, they should have been more careful in their words because the current policy baseline is currently utilized in the current CBO baseline for many spending programs. In fact, many spending programs-- about $2.5 trillion of spending programs--are measured under the current treatment which the Democrats have been using for decades to make it so they don't have to count spending increases as an increase in the deficit.

They are correct that that policy has never been applied to taxes before, because it was not intended to apply to taxes. That ruling and that system that was set up was intentionally designed to favor tax increases over spending cuts and to force Congress to increase taxes and increase spending. It was a strategy to achieve what we all know as tax and spend.

And no matter how they try to cover it over, today, in their debate, it comes down to this: They are furious that we refuse to raise taxes in America by $4.3 trillion on Americans; and they claim that our refusal to raise your taxes, America, is going to run up the deficit because they can't get $4 trillion more of your tax revenue into their pockets.

Well, the first failure of that rationale is, if you believe that you give them $4.5 trillion by letting them raise your taxes again, if you believe they are going to use that to pay the debt down, let me tell you, there is not a tax increase that I have seen in this Congress, in my lifetime, that was used to pay the debt down. It was used to increase spending. It is called tax and spend, and it is that bias in our scoring system that we are fixing today. We are fixing it so that current policy is how you treat taxes, just like you treat $2.5 trillion of spending this year in your scoring system. We are evening the balance board between taxing and spending, and America should breathe a sigh of relief that, finally, we are fixing our scoring procedures so that we don't have a built-in drive to increase taxes.

Let's put it another way. One of my colleagues said that even children can understand the difference between a trillion dollars and zero dollars. I think they can also understand that if you don't raise taxes, you are not changing the Tax Code; you are making it bring in the same revenue that it brought in before. You are not increasing the deficit; you are protecting their wallets.

The bottom line here is very simple. I think every American--at least 90 percent of them--intuitively understand that the refusal to let your taxes go up by $4 trillion is not a deficit increase. You are not responsible. Us keeping your money in your pocket is not making you responsible for increasing the deficit. Deficit increases come when Congress keeps spending your money and never ever controls its spending. The problem is not a lack of revenue; it is too much spending.

So let's make it clear. This is not a gimmick. The gimmick is the one that has been used for all these years. We are making a balance between the treatment of tax and spend so that those taxpayers in America have at least a fair chance against the rules of this Chamber.

Now, one other point that I think needs to be made here is there was a lot of talk on the other side--and then I will stop and bring in my longer speech later. One other point that needs to be made here is that it was suggested that this has never been done before, even on taxes. Well, there is a President named President Obama, who faced a similar situation like we face today. Only, then, he was President when a huge tax cut that President Bush had accomplished was expiring. And all of those tax cuts that President Bush had been able to achieve were going to go away, and everybody's taxes were going to go up. And President Obama said: No, I am not going to let that happen.

So he put a bill out on the floor to stop those tax increases from happening. And he was attacked, actually, for increasing the deficit by not letting taxes go up. And President Obama, through his OMB Deputy Director, said that keeping tax policy current should be scored under a current policy and that his act in letting those tax increases be kept in place should be scored as current policy, not as a tax increase.

So you have got one of your own Presidents from the Democratic Party saying that letting existing tax law stay in place and protecting against huge tax increases on the American people is the appropriate approach to take; that current policy--and those are their words--is the way we should treat tax policy.

So I say to everybody in America who has been hearing all the politics of fear about what we are doing here in running up the deficit: You need to remember that only in Washington, DC, is the refusal to raise your taxes an increase in the deficit. And we are not going to let that happen.

I yield the floor.

I also have to thank my incredible staff who have foregone sleep over the past several months to provide timely, indispensable insight, facts, legislative text, counsel, and so much more. Without them, we would not be at this point and ready to deliver this much needed growth-focused policy for the American people.

I ask unanimous consent to have the names of my entire Finance Committee staff printed in the Record.

Mr. President, even with all that and all that we accomplish in this legislation, there are dozens of additional good ideas, smart policies, and commonsense reforms that we were not able to include today. I commit to working with my colleagues to advance those goals as well as we move forward. But today's historic legislation is more than a good start and will pay dividends for American families.

Extending good tax policy, delivering targeted relief, and reining in wasteful spending, as achieved in this bill, is the best way to restore economic prosperity and opportunity for all Americans. I look forward to getting it to the President's desk as soon as possible.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9 a.m. on Monday, June 30; that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate resume consideration of Calendar No. 107, H.R. 1; further, that the leaders be recognized and, following their remarks, all debate time on Calendar No. 107, H.R. 1, be expired.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of my colleagues pursuant to the relevant debate time limits under the Congressional Budget Act.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion to invoke cloture on Mr. Ken Kies, who is nominated to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the Treasury Department.

The Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy is the senior adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury for analyzing, developing, and implementing Federal tax policies and programs.

Mr. Kies is eminently qualified for this position. He has a total of 47 years of experience as a tax attorney, covering every aspect of the Internal Revenue Code. Mr. Kies has also been involved in every significant piece of Federal tax legislation since 1981.

If confirmed, Mr. Kies will be a valuable partner in our efforts to prevent a $4 trillion-plus tax hike on American families and businesses and to deliver additional tax relief for middle-class workers and families.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in advancing his nomination.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion to invoke cloture on Mr. Rodney Scott, who is nominated to serve as the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP.

CBP's mission priorities include countering terrorism and transnational crime, securing the border, facilitating lawful trade and travel, and protecting revenue.

Mr. Scott is well-positioned to lead CBP in fulfilling these important priorities. He has nearly three decades of relevant experience, including serving as a chief patrol agent in the U.S. Border Patrol and as the associate chief in CBP's Office of Anti- Terrorism. At his nomination hearing, Mr. Scott said he ``would leverage [his] experience to empower the men and women of CBP to do what they were hired to do--safeguard every American by providing secure borders and keeping trade and travel moving.'' I know that if confirmed, he will do so.

I thank Mr. Scott for his commitment and for his responsiveness throughout this nomination process. I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me today in voting to advance Mr. Scott's nomination.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion to invoke cloture on Mr. Gary Andres, who is nominated to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS.

The Assistant Secretary for Legislation at HHS serves as principal adviser to the Secretary with respect to all aspects of the Department's legislative agenda and congressional liaison activities. The office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation also informs Congress of the Department's views, priorities, actions, grants, and contracts.

As a veteran of Capitol Hill, Mr. Andres knows how to implement a successful legislative agenda and will be a valuable partner to Congress at HHS. In addition, Mr. Andres has experience in the Legislative Affairs offices of previous Republican administrations, which will serve him well in this position.

At his hearing, Mr. Andres also committed to prioritize timeliness in responding to questions from Members. I thank him for this commitment and look forward to working with him, if confirmed.

Qualified nominees for this position in prior administrations normally receive widespread bipartisan support. I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me today in voting to advance Mr. Andres' nomination.

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the confirmation of Congressman Billy Long, who is nominated to serve as Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS is responsible for helping American taxpayers understand and meet their tax responsibilities, and enforcing the law with integrity and fairness.

However, the Agency has been plagued by inefficiencies, outdated systems, and low employee morale, despite an influx of funding.

At his confirmation hearing, Congressman Long pledged to refocus the IRS on its primary mission to collect Federal taxes and placed an emphasis on prioritizing IT modernization and improving customer service.

He also stated unequivocally that politicization has no place at the agency.

American taxpayers will benefit from these initiatives, and I look forward to working with Congressman Long to ensure they are implemented, if confirmed.

I also thank Congressman Long again for his time spent working through the Finance Committee's rigorous nomination process.

Despite accusations to the contrary, Congressman Long made clear in both verbal and written responses that he

worked as an independent contractor when performing tax consulting work for Capitol Edge Strategies. He never worked at White River or anywhere else on Native American Tribal tax credits.

With respect to contributions made to his Senate campaign, Congressman Long has stated repeatedly that he followed Federal Election Commission guidelines.

I am confident that Congressman Long is equipped to lead the IRS as Commissioner. I encourage my colleagues to join me in advancing his nomination.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to discuss Senator Whitehouse's request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Protecting Seniors' Data Act of 2025.

I agree with my colleague that Federal Agencies must take all necessary steps to safeguard the personally identifiable information entrusted to them by the people they serve.

Along these lines, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, SSA, who was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans last month, has spent his career protecting personally identifiable information. He has also committed to doing the same as Commissioner of the SSA.

However, legislation is not needed to request a Government Accountability Office, GAO, audit on a specific topic of interest.

Additionally, the Comptroller General, who leads the GAO, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year that GAO is already conducting a review of DOGE's access to agency systems, including at the Social Security Administration.

During his testimony, the Comptroller General also stated that GAO will issue public reports to the Congress on its findings from these reviews.

For these reasons, I object.

I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum calls with respect to the Hooker and Marks nominations.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.