Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last week, hospital leaders from every corner of my State of Illinois came to Washington. What was the reason for the trip? The debate in Washington about the future of Medicaid.

Each and every one of them, from the city of Chicago through the most rural areas in the State, was concerned about the plans by the Republicans in Congress to change the funding for Medicaid. From the South Side of Chicago to Macomb in West Central Illinois, as well as Rockford, 20 miles from the Wisconsin border, and Carbondale, all the way downstate, they came to see me.

These are small, critical access hospitals in rural areas, the safety net hospitals treating the poorest patients and the large teaching hospitals in downtown Chicago. They are all focused on Medicaid.

All of them told me the Medicaid cuts that Republicans have put on the table would be devastating to their hospitals in every corner of my State--devastating to the doctors and nurses that they employ and especially hurtful to the patients and their families.

One told me that it is the only hospital in a 60-mile radius delivering babies. If Republican plans to cut Medicaid go through, this life-or-death care could be out of reach for pregnant mothers.

Another safety net hospital told me they might have to close their doors altogether if the Medicaid cuts happen.

Why? Why would Republicans in Congress even want to jeopardize healthcare and ring alarm bells in hospitals across America? They are trying to ``save $880 billion.''

Well, what is the critical need to save that? To perpetuate the tax breaks of the Trump administration for the wealthiest people in America. Yep, that is the game plan. That is right.

President Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, have asked Republicans in Congress to provide a massive giveaway to the wealthiest Americans, and they want to use Medicaid cuts as the piggy bank.

Let's be clear: This is not a healthcare reform plan to improve our healthcare system or lower costs for families and patients. Nope. Republicans are looking to dismantle the basic Medicaid Program to help the tax cuts for billionaires.

Don't take my word for it. It is not just another political speech. Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a bombshell report. I am sure the Republicans in charge of the House and Senate didn't anticipate this. The Congressional Budget Office reviewed the Republican plans to cut Medicaid and determined the only way Republicans can ``save money'' is by removing millions of Americans from this health insurance, slashing benefits, or cutting access to doctors, nurses, and dentists.

For weeks, Republicans have been adamant that they are only focused on addressing waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. Then comes the CBO report.

I want to agree with the basic premise that, if there is inappropriate spending, fix it. But that is not what is happening here, and I think the Republican majority knows it.

The Congressional Budget Office called their bluff and confirmed that these Medicaid cuts proposed by the Republicans are not about waste or efficiency. They are about restricting access to coverage to patients all across the United States, including in my State of Illinois.

Under Republicans' watch, CBO stated that 13.7 million Americans will have their health insurance coverage terminated. Almost 14 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the Republicans go forward with their plan. What is the acceptable number of constituents losing health coverage for Republicans?

Nationwide, half of all rural hospitals are already in the red, and more than 300 rural hospitals are facing immediate closure, including 26 in Kansas, 22 in Alabama, 21 in Texas, and 9 in Missouri. How many rural hospitals closing in their States are Republicans willing to accept to help perpetuate tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans?

Let me tell you, as a person from downstate Illinois, rural hospitals are the backbone of the community. Not only are they critical places for emergency medical care, but they are the anchors of the local economy.

Speaking of the economy, one of the ways Republicans plan to cut Medicaid is by imposing burdensome, redtape requirements.

Put paperwork in the path of an individual looking for medical care. Pile it up. Make it hard. Pitched by the Republicans as just simply ``work requirements,'' this policy withholds healthcare for eligible patients until they meet overly complex paperwork requirements. It is a failing strategy.

In the States that have tried the so-called work requirements, there has been no increase in employment. The only impact is with patients who are ruled ineligible and kicked off Medicaid because they were drowning in paperwork. What a way to run a country.

Here is an example: A waitress with diabetes misses a paperwork deadline because the forms were sent to her old address. She loses her Medicaid coverage and can't access her medications and is forced to miss work to deal with it.

One analysis determined that approximately 3 million manufacturing, agricultural, and service sector workers could become uninsured under the simply ``Make sure they are going to work'' plan. Who thinks that is a good idea?

Yesterday, House Republicans spent Mother's Day scheming on how to advance these Medicaid cuts, finally releasing a copy of their legislation so we could see the detail. It is as catastrophic as we feared. It is the largest cut in Medicaid in the Nation's health history, ripping health insurance away from millions of Americans in every single State.

But it is not too late for a few Republicans--and it only takes a few: four in the House, four in the Senate--to step up and say they don't want to be part of this, if they will stand up and say: No, we will not risk the healthcare for millions of Americans as bargaining chips for billionaire tax breaks.

Medicaid provides health insurance for 1 out of every 4 people in my State of Illinois--3.4 million people, including 1.5 million children. Medicaid pays to deliver half of all the babies in my State--half of them. Two-thirds of the seniors in nursing homes depend on Medicaid. If Medicaid is not helping to pay for that nursing home or care for seniors, what is going to happen to grandma, grandfathers, those that are affected by it? It is the largest funder of opioid addiction treatment.

Remember the image of Elon Musk--the richest man in the world-- laughing gleefully as he danced around a stage with a chain saw in his hand? The richest man in the world was laughing out loud about his chain saw cuts to Medicaid. Well, these cuts are no laughing matter for that rural hospital worried about having to close its mental health services. They are no laughing matter for the pregnant woman forced to drive more than an hour to deliver a baby because the local hospital shuttered its obstetrics unit.

Wipe that smile off your face, Mr. Musk. We are talking about life- and-death healthcare for America's working families.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand) and the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand) and the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, the U.S. Department of Justice is a powerful Agency. The Attorney General heads it. Throughout the United States, there are over 90 U.S. attorneys who are the Federal prosecutors--a powerful position, a position that can make or break an individual or a corporation. Two of the most important and the most powerful are the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia.

I come to the floor today to speak in opposition to the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans: Closely examine this nominee's record.

Ed Martin's commentary and affiliations leave no doubt that he is unqualified to serve as the top Federal law enforcement individual for our Nation's Capital City. Nearly every day, new, disqualifying information surfaces.

Recently, ProPublica published a troubling report detailing Mr. Martin's conduct in multiple cases involving Eagle Forum, a conservative organization which has its roots in my home State of Illinois, formally led by well-known activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Within a year--within a year--of Mr. Martin becoming the head of the Eagle Forum, the board of directors of that organization fired him, in 2016, and they stated the reason: mismanagement and poor leadership.

A majority of the board also filed a lawsuit to bar him from any association with the organization. Instead of arguing his case in court, according to the ProPublica publication, Mr. Martin secretly orchestrated a social media campaign attacking the presiding Illinois judge.

Ironically, that judge, John Barberis from Madison County, IL-- directly across the river from St. Louis--was the only Republican judge sitting in that county at the time.

Mr. Martin went so far as to buy a laptop computer for a former colleague so that she could attack the judge on Facebook and ghostwrote posts for her.

Mr. Martin, who seeks to be the top Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, urged her to ``turn up the heat with others'' on the Facebook page of this judge and to ``[c]all what [the judge] did unfair and rigged over and over'' again--Mr. Martin's instruction to his colleague.

This outrageous effort to intimidate a judge is a clear violation of ethical

norms and professional rules of conduct. It led to more than $600,000 in legal settlements or judgments against Mr. Martin or his employers.

In the Eagle Forum lawsuit, a judge held Mr. Martin in contempt of court, citing his ``willful disregard'' of a court order that barred him from interfering with the organization.

Remember, this is the President's choice to be the head U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and he is being held in contempt of court for willful disregard of a court order that barred him from interfering.

A jury found Mr. Martin liable for defamation of Phyllis Schlafly's daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori--a jury decision finding him liable for defamation--for, among other things--he shared a post on Facebook falsely claiming--listen to this--Mr. Martin shared a Facebook post falsely claiming that Anne Schlafly Cori should be charged with manslaughter in her mother's death.

Mr. Martin also has a disturbing history of downplaying the January 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. He has made it a habit to attack the law enforcement officers who protected the Vice President, who sat before this Chamber, Members of the Senate, Members of the House, thousands of staffers, and visitors.

Those law enforcement individuals put their lives on the line for me and for all of us, but Mr. Martin doesn't see it that way.

He was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 when he posted on social media, and I quote word for word what he said on January 6 about what was going on in this insurrection in the Capitol. Here is what he said:

Like Mardi Gras in DC today; love, faith, and joy. Ignore

#FakeNews.

In August 2023, he excused violence by January 6 rioters, saying:

We have to have less judgment on somebody who hits a cop.

Ed Martin, seeking the U.S. attorney's post for the District of Columbia, said of the January 6 rioters:

We have to have less judgment on somebody who hits a cop.

He continued:

I've seen people hit a cop and that doesn't make it the end

of the world.

Ed Martin, the top law enforcement officer in the District of Columbia--that is his quote.

He had the audacity to call Michael Fanone, a 20-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department who was nearly killed on January 6, ``a fake cop.''

``[A] fake cop.''

This disgusting and dangerous rhetoric puts at greater risk officers who already put their lives on the line every day to protect you and me and our families. This lack of respect for law enforcement is inconsistent with his goal to be the presiding U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

According to Mr. Martin, January 6 rioters who beat the cops are ``patriots''--his word; ``victims''--his word. He has also attacked prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases.

Incidentally, until he was selected for this position, he had never been a prosecutor. The top position in the U.S. Department of Justice in terms of U.S. attorneys--the District of Columbia--the man for the job never had any experience as a prosecutor.

He has also attacked the prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases. What does he call those prosecutors? ``Terrorists.'' His word. He said:

I shun them. I ostracize them. . . . These are despicable

people.

Ed Martin.

Just as alarming, Mr. Martin has close ties to Timothy Hale- Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter and Nazi sympathizer.

Look at this picture. In 2024 alone, Mr. Martin interviewed Mr. Hale- Cusanelli at least five times. In one of these interviews, Mr. Martin said:

Tim Hale is an extraordinary guy. I have gotten to know him

really well. I'd say we're friends.

Friends with a Nazi sympathizer. This is who the President believes should be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Ed Martin now claims that despite these five interviews that we know of, he was not aware of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's anti-Semitic commentary or penchant for donning a Hitler mustache until after he had presented him personally with an award last July.

But Mr. Martin's own words demonstrate the opposite. Just weeks before this award ceremony, where Martin gives this man who dresses up as Hitler an award, Mr. Martin excused his dressing up as ``goofing around'' and claimed he is being ``smeared and slurred'' by allegations of anti-Semitism.

Documents filed in Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's criminal trial, he was a January 6 rioter, show that he has a long history of saying horrifying things. Let me give you one of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's quotes, this man who was referred to as an ``extraordinary leader'' by Ed Martin.

Here is what he said:

Hitler should have finished the job.

Hale-Cusanelli. He also claimed that he ``would kill''--this is so disgusting. I hate to put it in the Record, but it has to be. He also claimed he ``would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn't need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.''

This is the person that Ed Martin, the would-be prosecuting attorney for the District of Columbia, called ``an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader.''

In a letter sent to the Judiciary Committee opposing Mr. Martin's nomination, 11 separate national Jewish organizations, representing more than 1 million people, wrote that Mr. Martin's associations are ``not only dangerous--they reveal a pattern of behavior incompatible with the responsibilities of a US Attorney, a role meant to uphold justice and [to] protect all communities, including Jewish Americans, from hate and extremism.''

On top of all of this, Mr. Ed Martin has failed to disclose to the Senate an unprecedented number of required requests for information. Of approximately 2,200 writings and remarks that he was required to submit to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he omitted at least 700--over 30 percent of his known record.

This includes his failure to disclose that he made nearly 150 appearances on networks funded and directed by the Russian Government, and interviews on Infowars--do you remember the term ``Infowars''?-- hosted by a man named Alex Jones, the rightwing conspiracy monger who falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre of those little kids was false.

Just yesterday, my Judiciary Committee discovered more than 300 additional items that Mr. Martin failed to provide to the committee. This is the fifth time that Mr. Martin will be required to update his disclosures to the committee. This nominee is treating the Senate's constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on his nomination with utter contempt.

Just to put this in context, omitting over 700 items, we discovered 300 more that he failed to disclose, in the previous history of the committee--all the staff have looked closely--when it comes to omissions, Mr. Martin wins the trophy permanently. Why? Because the most in any previous case before was fewer than 10, his is over 700 failures to disclose before the committee.

Mr. Ed Martin has his own history of making his own discriminatory comments. He baselessly called his fellow panelists on CNN ``black racists,'' and he later claimed, with no evidence, Mr. Martin said, ``[I] got fired because of the crazy Black ladies on CNN that demanded I be fired because I didn't take their nonsense.''

The fact that Ed Martin feels the need to note the race and gender of the people who cross him speaks volumes about his character. And in a speech that Martin did not disclose to the Judiciary Committee, we discovered he made the following statement:

You're not racist if you don't like Mexicans.

Just last year he said in an interview:

You show me a Jewish American--

Ed Martin said--

who feels good about the Democrat Administration, and I'll

show you someone who is not really Jewish.''

How dare Ed Martin pass judgment on someone else's religious faith?

The serious concerns about Ed Martin's nomination have only been heightened by his conduct as an interim U.S. attorney. One of his first official acts after his appointment was to

fire numerous prosecutors simply for handling the January 6 cases that were assigned to them.

He has also baselessly threatened to investigate numerous nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, lawmakers, and others simply because he disagrees with them politically.

The top prosecutor in the Nation's Capital should be focused on fighting violent crime and terrorism, not threatening our First Amendment rights.

Mr. Martin's record makes it clear that he does not have the temperament, the judgment, or the experience to be entrusted with the power and responsibility of being U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

I urge my Democratic and Republican colleagues to oppose his nomination.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker),

the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock), and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, before I make my remarks, I want to join my colleague, Republican colleague from Wyoming in a salute to our military and appreciation for all they have given to America.

It is a touching story. I know he spends so many holidays visiting with Wyoming Guard troops stationed around the world, and I didn't know he carried his father's World War II dog tags with him. That is an indication of his love and respect for his dad, and I want to join in those sentiments.

But though the military commitment that people make is a unique commitment because you say that you will risk your life for this country, there are many other commitments that can be made in public service which make this a greater Nation too.

AmeriCorps

Mr. President, for more than three decades, AmeriCorps has strengthened communities across the United States. From rebuilding homes to providing rural healthcare, tutoring kids after school, cleaning up after natural disasters, AmeriCorps supports our most underresourced communities. My Republican colleagues represent communities that benefit from AmeriCorps whose members serve in their State.

For decades, AmeriCorps has had bipartisan support, which it deserves, but last week, unfortunately, the Trump administration pulled the rug out from under these community organizations by eliminating their funding--eliminating. Organizations like the Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House in East St. Louis, IL, my hometown, which provides meals to members of all ages of the East St. Louis community--they were left scrambling after the President's announcement eliminating AmeriCorps.

Right after the funding cuts were announced, Reverend Gaston, the CEO, met with workers who serve as drivers for the center's Meals on Wheels program.

For many of the senior citizens in that town and around the country, Meals on Wheels is literally the only physical contact they have with the outside world. It is a moment in the day that they look forward to with great anticipation. It is more than just food.

The night before the drivers were set to deliver meals, Reverend Gaston had to tell them, ``There [is] nowhere to go.'' He added that those workers would not get paid, even though they had worked earlier in the day.

The East St. Louis community is located in a food desert, which means members like Ayshia, who takes care of her grandfather, have come to rely on the center's food pantry for healthy options like fruits and vegetables. I know; I was just there 2 weeks ago.

Last month, eight dedicated AmeriCorps members worked in the center's cafe to offer a safe place for the community to eat a hot meal. Today, because of Trump's cuts, the tables are empty.

Camille, who is Lessie Bates Davis' program director for AmeriCorps shared that she has 120 days to close out the program. After that, even she will be left without a job.

While Camille is concerned about her own future, she has also shared how overwhelming it is to tell people that

she doesn't know the path forward, especially because she is a leader in the community.

Other programs across Illinois are feeling similar impacts. Take Lukas, an AmeriCorps member who has worked at the Boys and Girls Club in Livingston, IL, providing students with a safe place to learn and play after school. He won't get paid because of the Trump cuts, but he plans to continue to volunteer unpaid because of the impact on his community without people like him. He is feeling very bad for the young kids he knows so well.

Another constituent Ann is an AmeriCorps program director at Severson Dells Nature Center in northern Illinois in Rockford. Ann shared that one alum of AmeriCorps was inspired to serve this country by joining the U.S. Coast Guard after working in his community as an AmeriCorps volunteer and member in the nature center.

To use Ann's words:

AmeriCorps members are the best of us and have collectively

served this country.

I urge my Republican colleagues to fight against this administration's senseless attempts to eliminate such small amounts of funding that have such incredible positive impact in their communities, as well as my own. Don't sit by in silence.

As if cutting funds from AmeriCorps wasn't enough, last Thursday, in the dead of the night, President Trump signed an Executive order trying to end Federal funding for National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting. As it currently stands, only 1 percent of Federal funding goes directly to NPR and PBS.

It is a marginal expense in comparison to the amount of good it does. They provide news coverage, lifesaving emergency alerts, and educational programming for our kids. While President Trump falsely claims that the public media is ``biased and partisan,'' he is wrong. Public media provides local communities with unbiased and nonpartisan news coverage, especially in rural and smalltown areas where a newsroom often is working off limited resources.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress since 1967. For more than 50 years, Congress has provided funding on a bipartisan basis for Public Broadcasting. By doing so, we have ensured the independence of the public media system and provided an opportunity for a longstanding public-private partnership in service to all Americans.

President Trump's attempts to silence the media he does not deem acceptable should be responded to on a bipartisan basis. We must be united to let this President know that silencing a reliable news source is unacceptable in modern America. We have come to expect this kind of censoring by dictators and fascists, but we don't expect it in the United States.

Countries like Russia and China spend billions of dollars trying to undermine our news and spread disinformation; and cuts to free, untampered public news are not the way to fight off their advances.

As soon as I learned about the proposed cuts, I spoke out on the need for Congress to respond, to save these important institutions. And what was the response of my Republican colleagues? Silence. Crickets. It is the ``Silence of the Lambs.''

My Republican colleagues cannot afford to stay silent any longer. We must work in a bipartisan manner, continue to work to stop these funding cuts and prove to the American people that we care about our local communities and everyone's access to free, unbiased broadcasting. We must continue to allow NPR and PBS to provide essential news, information, and lifesaving services to the American public. Democracy cannot survive in silence.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, I didn't agree with former President George W. Bush on a lot of things, but I have repeatedly given him credit for making the United States the world's leader in stemming the HIV-AIDS epidemic in some of the poorest parts of the world. That was 22 years ago.

The program is called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR. PEPFAR and its companion effort, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, dramatically curtailed the AIDS epidemic that was ravaging many parts of the world. PEPFAR alone has saved more than 26 million lives.

Thank you, President George W. Bush.

Both of these programs provide retroviral drugs for those with AIDS, allowing them to continue to live productive lives and prevent the spread of the disease at childbirth. They have been so effective that many have forgotten just how devastating AIDS was in many parts of the world, at one point killing more than 2 million people every year and leaving 14 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries, life expectancy had dropped to 20 years.

A few years ago, we took a look at the nation of Malawi. PEPFAR and the Global Fund Program increased the number of Malawians living with AIDS and receiving treatment from 5 to nearly 90 percent.

Thank you, President George W. Bush.

These programs are not only the right thing to do but also highly effective examples of American soft power and, until recently, a stark contrast to what China and the other nations of the world were doing. So imagine my reaction to the Trump administration's decision at the highest level to gut this lifesaving, bipartisan program under the heartless tutelage of the President's unelected billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world--never elected to anything; gleefully, senselessly dancing on stage with a chain saw so he can gut programs just like President Bush's PEPFAR.

It has been estimated by experts that the gutting of USAID could jeopardize the health of more than 20 million people worldwide, including 500,000 children.

What a contrast. Republican President George W. Bush will go down in history as a caring man who symbolized what the United States means to the world: a giving, caring people who have helped so many poor people in other nations, many of whom will never visit, and put them in a position where they can survive.

The Trump administration says that no programs were actually cut, just paused. The reality is far different.

Any of us who have raised a family can remember when that baby needed a bottle and was darned determined to let you know about it, screaming and

shouting until you finally plugged that bottle in her mouth and she quieted down.

So now the Trump administration says, when it comes to feeding programs for babies and infants and children around the world, because they are screaming and they are hungry, just tell them we have decided to pause the program--pause the program. Parents laugh out loud when you consider that possibility.

Just last month, the Trump administration dismissed the few remaining public health officials overseeing programs for pregnant women with HIV in low-income countries. Don't tell me that you have dedicated public service to strengthening families and then take away this basic need so that mothers giving birth to babies don't have to worry about HIV-AIDS.

All the experts at the Centers for Disease Control, the State Department, and USAID have been terminated and are waiting for reassignment. That is the Trump record. That is what he will be remembered for in history if we go along with it.

Even with some funding restored, how will the critical work continue without professional staff to carry it out? Like so many White House policies, this is cruelty and madness and certainly not efficiency.

In upcoming funding bills and any rescissions effort, it will be up to Congress--all of us in Congress, not the Democrats, although we are in the minority, but Republicans and Democrats together--to protect and restore these critical, lifesaving programs that are both the right thing to do and the strategic thing to do.

Mr. President, on a separate topic, as I reflect on my time in public service, I have been thinking about the issues that have meant the most during my career. There are a few that stand out, including my steadfast belief that the promise of medical research funding is one of the most important. That conviction led me to join forces more than 10 years ago with a bipartisan group of Senators: myself; Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington; Senator Roy Blunt, then-Republican Senator from Missouri; and Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican Senator from Tennessee.

Our team of four, Democrats and Republicans, came together and decided to speak up and be committed to increasing Federal funding for the National Institutes of Health. The National Institutes of Health is the premier medical research laboratory in the world.

I did my best to make sure with my friends that we fought for a 5- percent increase in growth in medical research each and every year. We did it too. A 60-percent increase to NIH's budget over the last decade--60 percent, money that is used to research and develop new ways to fight childhood cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, you name it.

If you own a television and you ever turn it on, you can't avoid an ad for a new prescription drug. They are on all the time, with great promise, and many of them are breakthrough drugs. Did you know over 99 percent of those drugs, those new breakthrough drugs that you see on television, were developed by America's taxpayers at the National Institutes of Health. Sure, the drug companies sell them and market them, do a good job in that regard. They charge too much in most instances, but having done the basic research at the expense of American taxpayers, those drugs are available in America, as they should be.

A 60-percent increase in the NIH budget over the past decade resulted in many of those drugs being discovered and being sold to American families and bringing relief to them in ways no one imagined.

That progress and the hope it brings to patients and families is why I am absolutely dismayed to see how President Trump has dismantled medical research in America during his 100 days in office.

Was that what we were voting for last November? a cutback on medical research in America? to give up our leadership in a world of developing new cures and medicines for people who are afflicted with disease? I don't think that was the message of the last campaign at all.

President Trump has frozen funding to university labs and hospitals across the board. For example, Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, a cancer research powerhouse that earns hundreds of millions of dollars of NIH grants annually has had its accounts frozen by the NIH for the past 6 weeks.

This chart gives you an indication of what this freeze in funding means. Take a look at the numbers for funding for competitive grants and medical research: President Biden, first term President Trump, President Obama, and now down at the bottom, President Trump in his current term.

We need people to speak up in Congress, in the Senate, in the House, Democrats and Republicans. Silence is not acceptable. The amount of funding awarded in Trump's first 100 days is dramatically lower than past years, with more than $2 billion in research funding being held up so far this year. Two billion dollars isn't just lost opportunity, but it discourages researchers from staying on the job, breaks their will to continue to dedicate their lives to finding cures for things that we, in America, view as dangerous.

President Trump has canceled hundreds of NIH-supported grants and clinical trials and placed gag orders on experts, eliminated the programs that attract young people to the field, and fired nearly 2,000 NIH scientists and healthcare professionals, 2,000 researchers. Is one of those researchers working on a cure for a disease that will affect someone in your family? It is quite possible.

On Friday, the President released a preview of his budget, which proposes to slash NIH's medical research budget nearly in half, wiping out all the gains we have made in the last 10 years. That is heartbreaking. These actions are devastating to medical research across America.

We are ceding our competitiveness to China, weakening our scientific expertise as the envy in the world, and unfortunately, Americans are paying the price.

So imagine my surprise by my Republican colleagues and their reaction. What has their reaction been? Silence. Crickets. It is the ``Silence of the Lambs.''

It only took two or three Republican Senators in the past 2 years to join with Democratic Senators, including myself, to make a dramatic difference in medical research. It only takes three or four now to step up to say to the President: We are sorry. This is part of your budget we cannot go along with. We are not going to walk away from medical research. We are going to stand together on a bipartisan basis because it means so much.

I came to the floor a few weeks ago to announce that if Republican Senators won't stand up for NIH funding in their States, then I would. So today, I want to highlight what NIH means to one State, Arkansas.

Last year, Arkansas received more than $100 million in NIH funding that supported more than 1,500 jobs and generated nearly $300 million in economic activity.

Among the top-funded NIH institutions were the University of Arkansas System and Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. Arkansas Children's used NIH funding to research why kids in rural, smalltown areas were experiencing higher rates of pediatric asthma and improving their treatment options.

They also used Arkansas NIH funding to research how to limit the negative long-term impact of chemotherapy for kids with leukemia. Is that important to you? If a member of your family was afflicted by asthma or needed chemotherapy, it would be critical.

I won't speak for either Senator of Arkansas, but helping pediatric cancer survivors and asthmatic kids in small towns sure seems like something worth fighting for, and I hope the Senators from Arkansas agree with me that this is a serious mistake for President Trump to cut the funding for that kind of research.

I look forward to working with those Senators if they want a bipartisan effort to restore this medical research in Arkansas.

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee heard testimony from a mother whose child beat cancer, thanks to NIH-funded clinical trials and treatment. It was great testimony

by this young lady who brought her little girl with her, her 5-year-old little girl with her.

Here is what she said:

Cuts to medical research are not just numbers on a

spreadsheet--they are stolen chances, unfinished stories, and

futures left unrealized.

I plead with my Republican colleagues: Break your silence. Let us work together to ensure the chances for medical research are not stolen. These stories should not be left unfinished, and those futures should be realized. Let us protect medical research together. Medical disease doesn't care what your party is. It strikes at any and every family in America. Let's stand up for these families and their kids.

I yield the floor.