Floor Statements

Madam President, this year marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the beloved classic film, ``The Goonies.'' With enduring and relatable themes of adventure, acceptance, and friendship, ``The Goonies'' has become one of the alltime great American underdog stories. ``The Goonies'' has withstood the test of time and firmly established its place in American culture. A large part of what makes this film unique and impactful is its iconic setting along the stunning Oregon coastline. Indeed, so significant is the film's location that thousands of fans from around the globe gather each year in Astoria, OR, for a multiday celebration to commemorate the magic that is ``The Goonies.''

One of the reasons for the enduring success of ``The Goonies'' is the lessons it has imparted on generations of viewers who come away inspired to stand up to bullies, accept people who are different from them, and ``never say die'' when it comes to fighting for their communities and the things they believe in. As I travel to my townhalls all over Oregon and hear the deep concerns that so many Oregonians feel about the state of our country and the world, I hope we can all take an important lesson or two from ``The Goonies.''

Fans from around the world will flock to Astoria this summer for ``The Goonies'' 40th anniversary celebration. All of them will be able to participate

in treasure hunts, costume contests, and many other Goonies-adjacent events. In addition to Astoria, the 40th anniversary festivities will also include a visit to Ecola State Park, home to some of Oregon's foremost coastal views and the site of some legendary Goonies adventures. Visitors to Astoria this summer will also be welcomed to the Oregon Film Museum, which eagle-eyed fans may recognize as the former Clatsop County jail, which played host to the Goonies iconic jailbreak scene.

Just as the original Goonies fans and stars have grown and matured since the film's release in 1985, so has Oregon's film industry. With its magnificent and diverse natural beauty, Oregon has become a much sought after location for film production. As the backdrop for major television shows and box office hits alike, film production in Oregon brings with it good-paying jobs and tourism that in turn support local businesses and economic development across the State. Certainly all film producers in Oregon and across the country should aspire to achieve the remarkable success of ``The Goonies.''

Whether we are learning important life lessons from the stalwart friendships in ``The Goonies'' or taking note of how Oregon has grown a film industry no one could have imagined 40 years ago, what is important is that we all recognize the power in our differences--and to ``never say die!''

Mr. President, I rise to support my colleague Senator Kaine's joint resolution to terminate the Trump order placing blanket tariffs on products Americans buy from Canada.

I am going to start by saying, as the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I am always struck by how much doubletalk there is about trade. So let's be clear as we start this part of the discussion.

Tariffs are taxes on things we buy from other countries. The bottom line is, those taxes make it more expensive for Americans to buy those products. No other country pays the tariffs. Let me repeat that. No other country pays the tariffs. The consumer pays the tariff. So if somebody tells you they can do tariffs and do it without raising prices--I am sorry, but anybody who says that with a straight face is basically taking advantage of you.

Every credible economist, every automaker, every business on the record has said that Trump's trade taxes are going to make things more expensive for Americans.

Ronald Reagan's favorite economist, Art Laffer, just released a study showing auto tariffs are going to raise car prices by $4,700. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the full Trump tariff scheme is going to cost an average family thousands of dollars a year.

It is one thing if tariffs are imposed with a good strategy, like decreasing sales in the United States by raising prices to punish countries that cheat on trade and changing their behavior so that U.S. workers get a fair shake.

I have consistently supported targeted tariffs in the past as a tool to fight back against trade cheating, especially by China. When China was stealing America's trade secrets, subsidizing cheap solar panels, and then dumping them here to drive U.S. manufacturers out of business, we were shouting from the rooftops for more tariffs on Chinese goods.

But Canada is not China. Canada is America's closest ally, not a rival. Making everything Americans buy from Canada more expensive for some bogus reason is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal ``the dumbest trade war in history.''

There are 8 million American jobs that depend on trade with Canada. Canada is the biggest export market for 32 States. It provides raw materials and potash that so often farmers need to grow their crops. U.S. farmers can't replace 90 percent of potash that comes from Canada, definitely not overnight. The only choice is higher prices--again, higher prices paid for by Americans.

So the stuff we buy from Canada gets more expensive. And on top of that, in response, Canada has already slapped tariffs on a whole host of crops, ag products, dairy, alcohol, manufactured goods. The list goes on and on.

Canadian grocery stores pulled U.S. products off the shelves. Our small businesses and farmers are losing sales as we speak because of the weird obsession in the Trump administration with attacking our northern neighbor.

Plunging our economy into a recession because of the Trump desire to annex Canada is just bizarre--bizarre even by Washington, DC, standards.

Congress has delegated far too much of its authority to the executive branch, and it is far past time for the Congress to take it back. In 1962 and 1974, Congress passed laws handing the President major portions of our constitutional power over tariffs. It is time to reverse that trend. Those dates I mentioned were before my time, but I want everybody to know, on our watch, I think this has got to be a bipartisan concern. We have got to take these powers back, because if Republicans say it is not their fault that Trump is destroying our economy, why not do something like this to restore the power of Congress to set tariffs?

I am going to close by addressing the bogus claim of the Trump administration that tariffs are actually intended to stop fentanyl trafficking from Canada. Let me be clear. Our immigration system needs reform, and the fentanyl crisis is a serious issue.

Oregon is no stranger to the devastating effects it has wreaked on our economy communities. The reality is, there is no crisis at the northern border. Less than 0.1 percent of fentanyl entering the United States comes from Canada. Fentanyl seizures at the northern border are down over 97 percent from July 2024.

I think almost everybody understands that Canada is not the issue here. Instead of coming up with real solutions to get fentanyl off the streets and out of our communities, Donald Trump has decided he would rather make threats and tariff our closest allies.

My colleague from Alabama is on the floor, and we are going to have a little bit of a discussion. We just talked about how we are going to handle it. But I want to be clear. If Donald Trump and the Republicans wanted to address fentanyl in an effective way, they would pass my bill to limit the millions of low-value packages that come into the United States from China and elsewhere. Getting a handle on these so-called ``de minimis'' imports will help our border agents detect the illicit imports of things like fentanyl and pill presses before they reach communities in the United States.

So with that, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 1185 and the Senate

proceed to its immediate consideration, the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I listened very carefully to my colleague from Alabama, and I don't believe my colleague used the word ``fentanyl,'' and that is what we are concerned about in the Pacific Northwest. We are concerned that fentanyl has hit our country and our region like a wrecking ball.

So maybe when this all gets sorted out, he will support my bill to crack down on fentanyl everywhere through reforms of this de minimis issue. And I would just say, for purposes of our discussion now, I understand--and we all await the announcement, I gather, sometime late this afternoon--the Trump administration only is going to address de minimis shipments from China and nowhere else.

We have to make this comprehensive. My colleague serving as the Presiding Officer knows what it is like in the West with fentanyl hitting us so hard. If you just do it with China, Chinese companies are going to circumvent the rules and transship through other countries.

That is why I felt so strongly about a comprehensive solution to get at this fentanyl, this poison, that has hit us so hard, because if you just go to one country, what you are going to have is something called merchandise laundering. We saw it when we did an investigation in the committee.

A Chinese company ships its product through an intermediary in Vietnam or another third country. The intermediary then slaps a ``Made in Vietnam'' sticker on the Chinese product and falsely labels the product, and they can easily evade the Chinese product restrictions. And with millions of shipments coming in from China, there is no way for Customs and Border Protection to police Chinese products transshipped through third companies.

This is not a new gimmick. Chinese companies have been circumventing tariffs all this time with products like steel and solar panels. I have been bird-dogging this issue since I passed the Enforce and Protect Act nearly a decade ago.

My de minimis bill that I hope to get bipartisan support for would stop the flood of low-value packages from all countries on a global scale. That is the only way to deal with this problem--not create, as my colleague from Alabama would do, a gigantic game of Whack-A-Mole.

So I hope we will be back on this floor doing something comprehensive to fight the scourge of fentanyl, and I proposed it with legislation.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, first of all, I want it understood that we take a backseat to nobody--nobody--when it comes to fighting this fraud. That is why I negotiated a bipartisan package in the last Congress dealing with a host of issues relating to addressing fraud and making improvements to unemployment insurance. I negotiated that bill with our ranking member, now the chairman of the Finance Committee.

I am a little struck by what is going on here because my colleague, my friend from Oklahoma, was a cosponsor of that proposal. In other words, we did what the American people say they want, which is to have people find common ground on commonsense matters like fighting fraud.

Our bipartisan proposal went after pandemic-era fraud by extending the statute of limits on prosecution. It would help to prevent fraud in the future. It would help States improve their unemployment insurance programs to get benefits out on time in the event of a big economic crash shall like we saw in 2020. It would make better use of data to prevent abuse. It would protect people who got overpayments entirely due to somebody else's mistake, who may not even know it to this day.

I will tell you, I think it is odd at best but certainly disappointing that our Republican colleagues have decided to walk away from a really good bipartisan agreement. The proposal they brought to the floor is much smaller, is much narrower. In fact, instead of looking forward, it is looking backward--no improvements to unemployment insurance, no fraud prevention looking at the future. In fact, the bill before the Senate actually cuts $5 million of crucial fraud-prevention funding that Democrats secured after the pandemic.

So you ask yourself, why are Republicans attempting to make this cut? The nonpartisan experts at the Congressional Budget Office, looked at this narrow proposal my colleagues have brought forward, and they said if Congress were to pass this bill, Republicans would spend more money--more money--trying to track down fraud than they would actually recover from the fraudsters.

Government efficiency is something we are all interested in. You had me at hello on the concept of working on those kinds of issues in a bipartisan way. But here is a Republican anti-fraud proposal that loses taxpayer dollars overall, and to pay for it, they cut future fraud prevention. That just strikes me as defying common sense.

Another issue with this approach I want to highlight is that the bill now before the Senate fails to provide any protection for workers who got overpaid through no fault of their own. Colleagues may remember that when the pandemic UI program was created, it was in the midst of the COVID crisis--highest unemployment since the Great Depression, tens of millions of Americans out of work, entire sectors of our economy essentially mothballed.

Congress scrambled to create an unemployment insurance program for Americans who weren't eligible for traditional unemployment insurance. Without it, a whole lot of people would have gone hungry and lost their homes.

In the rush to get urgently needed relief to those out of work, some States made mistakes, provided a number of workers more in unemployment than they were entitled to. These workers didn't defraud anybody. A lot of those people who received overpayments had no idea they had gotten more money than they should have.

The issue is that some States are running their unemployment insurance programs with decrepit, old systems that can barely keep up, and they made mistakes.

Now 5 years down the line, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to claw back these payments--even from people who did nothing wrong. In fact, some of these people to this day aren't even aware they were overpaid. They certainly aren't fraudsters.

States made mistakes in the heat of an economic crisis, and Congress shouldn't be punishing individual workers who had no idea in the first place what was going on.

Final issue with the proposal: The Trump administration has made a mockery of fraud prevention by illegally firing the Department of Labor inspector general.

The inspector general's office successfully oversaw unemployment fraud investigations throughout the pandemic. In my view, firing the inspector general is a big setback in the fight against fraud in the unemployment insurance program.

The Trump administration has also given DOGE unfettered access to unemployment insurance claims data. The bill before the Senate would allow DOGE to falsely accuse innocent workers of fraud years after unemployment insurance helped them keep food on the table during the pandemic. That is not being tough on fraud. That is making innocent people victims.

Democrats are all in--all in--on bringing criminals who defrauded the UI system to justice and building a more reliable, durable unemployment insurance system for the future. That is why, colleagues, we negotiated a really strong, bipartisan antifraud package. For the life of me, I don't understand walking away from that package now, especially in favor of a narrower proposal that would lose taxpayer dollars and sacrifice the effort to fight fraud.

Therefore, I would ask the Senator to modify the request so that the Wyden substitute amendment, which is at the desk and is a text of the Wyden-Crapo Unemployment Insurance Integrity and Accessibility Act, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Reserving the right to object, let me make sure we are clear with my friend because we do a lot of work together, and I am looking forward to continuing it.

I don't see much to object to this afternoon. We both want to be all in on the fight against fraud. Those were the first words out of my mouth: Let's go all in on fighting this horrendous fraud. That is why we worked so long in a bipartisan way, because you are not the only Republican from the committee who worked with me and it is a large bill and it deals with a big problem. And, for the life of me, I can't figure out why we aren't dealing with the big problem and not creating innocent victims--more of them.

At this point, I guess there is gridlock today, but I want to extend the olive branch again, which I have been doing from day one. I want a big bill that goes after big-time fraud in a very aggressive way. I am still baffled by why we are not out here with a whole lot of Republicans who are cosponsors of my bill, with the Senator from Idaho as the chair, and saying: This is the way we ought to be governing.

But I object.

I hope we are back.

Mr. President, just very briefly, my colleague says nothing is going to happen in the House to fight fraud. I have got to tell you that I don't see any fraud caucus out there in either the Senate or the House. There are no rallies for people who are committing outrageous fraud. I think we ought to move. We ought to move here.

We have done the hard work. We have done the heavy lifting. My colleague from Oklahoma knows what it is like when he is trying to put together a bipartisan bill. We have done that work. I think we ought to move here and then talk to our colleagues in the House. Why don't you now pick up on the hard work we have done and we will get serious about fraud.

So we are going to continue this conversation. I always wanted to work with my colleague from Oklahoma on these kinds of issues, and we are going to stay at it until we deal with big-time fraud in a big-time way, in the U.S. Senate, in a bipartisan way.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator from New Jersey yield for a question?

I thank my colleague.

I have been listening to this, a Herculean presentation, for hours and hours. Your remarks reflect the urgency of our times, Senator Booker, and I thank you for it.

Let me frame the question this way: I hold open-to-all townhall meetings in every county in my State each year. I have had more than 1,100 of them. And since Donald Trump took office, what we have seen in these townhall meetings is fear and terror, and, I might add, record turnouts.

I was in a small town in central Oregon recently, Sisters. We had almost 1,400 people there. And what people asked about and you have touched on this morning, is, of course, Medicaid and Social Security because these are programs involving healthcare and retirement that are really the connective tissue between the government and our people.

These programs make it possible for people to pay for essentials. They are not going to fancy places. They are buying groceries. They are paying rent. They are buying medicine.

We had one separate townhall meeting, I say to my colleague, just with Federal employees whose goal is to get out in the woods and help prevent fire in Oregon. I organized this meeting. They, too, are terrified. They have dedicated their lives to trying to help.

We serve the American people. And I am telling you, I have seen service in action over the last few hours with your reflecting the urgency of our times. Our salaries are paid for by taxpayers, and I am particularly troubled by the fact that we are getting all these reports that many Senators are saying: I am not going to do townhall meetings.

They are on the other side of the aisle. As I said, I have had 1,100 of them, 10 of them so far this year. It seems to me, that is refusing to answer to constituents.

You have been here all night, and you are setting a very clear example about what it means to push back against authoritarianism.

So just like I have townhall meetings, my question to my friend from New Jersey is, What are you hearing from home? It is a pretty straightforward question, but it sure as heck is what the times are all about because people are saying: What are you doing back there? What is important to you?

I talk about town meetings. I had a tele-townhall, I say to my friend, during the speech that was being made on the floor of the House. I had 30,000 people participating. That is a lot for my small State. So I know what I am doing, and I think the American people would like to hear a bit about what my colleague is hearing from his State and why it is so important that he is out here mopping his brow today trying to stay on his feet, making the case for the urgency of our time. What are you hearing?

Mr. President, 4 years ago, I kicked off an investigation of Big Pharma's tax practices, the dodges and tricks these hugely profitable, multinational companies use to winnow down their tax bills. This was not very long after Trump's first tax breaks for corporations went into effect. My Democratic colleagues on the Finance Committee and I wanted to know exactly how sweet a deal Trump gave the biggest drug companies and what changes needed to be made to ensure these corporations paid a fair share.

So far, in the course of my investigation, I have released information on the tax practices of five major drug companies: AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories, Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Merck. The questions that I asked these companies were not very complicated. Essentially, what I asked came down to questions like: How big were your sales? Where did you make them? Where did you report your profits? Where did you stick your intellectual property? Did you actually pay taxes?

Last year, I expanded my investigation with an inquiry to the company Pfizer. Pfizer initially resisted, but my staff and I were not going to let up. Finally, the company provided some answers to our questions.

We are going to get into those issues now, and I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record a memorandum outlining records of my investigation relating to Pfizer's tax-avoidance schemes, which will also be available immediately on the Finance Committee's website.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the report printed into the Record now.

There being no objections, the material was ordered to be printed in

Mr. President, I am going to take a few minutes to walk through these findings and discuss why they are so important. I am very pleased to be joined by several of my colleagues who are also outraged about this tax-dodging.

Here is the upshot. My investigation has found that Pfizer carried out what could be the largest tax-dodging scheme in the history of Big Pharma.

The United States is the largest market for Pfizer's products. In 2019, the company sold $20 billion worth of drugs to American patients. If you are following along on this discussion, you might be hoping to hear that Pfizer paid a reasonable rate of tax on those profits. I have got bad news for you and the American people.

In that same year, Pfizer reported zero--not one red cent--in taxable U.S. profits. Through various tricks and games, Pfizer was able to shift 100 percent of its U.S. profits to foreign tax havens. This means that Pfizer dodged billions of dollars in Federal income tax on its U.S. drug sales. There is every reason to believe it continues to do so.

Thanks to the tax law Trump and Republicans passed in 2017, Pfizer doesn't need to keep the money stashed overseas. Pfizer can take this cash and pocket it with tax-dodging schemes and turn it into stock buybacks, dividends, executive compensation--the list goes on.

There is an additional matter that is so disturbing. The company appears to be keeping some of its tax schemes hidden from view with what has been described to me as a confidential arrangement with the Governments of Puerto Rico and Singapore. It is enough to leave you slack-jawed.

So this is a Senate investigation that will have a direct impact on tax legislation, and Pfizer is hiding relevant tax information behind nondisclosure agreements.

So colleagues, this is the sixth Big Pharma company where my investigation has found a staggering level of tax dodging. And these rip-offs don't happen by osmosis; they happen because Republicans have allowed them to happen. With the tax law they passed back in 2017, Republicans delivered to Big Pharma a tax break of more than 40 percent. From 2014 to 2016, the industry paid 19.6 percent, on average. In 2019 and 2020, it paid 11.6 percent.

Now, reasonable people watching at home might be thinking about how Republicans always claim to be worried about deficits and debt. Surely those Republicans would dial back what they did in 2017 and ask these huge, profitable corporations to pay a little bit more to ease our fiscal challenges. If you think that is the case--wrong.

So I want to bring my colleagues into this discussion momentarily, and I will close by looking at the big picture as Congress moves forward with this debate on taxes, health, child hunger, and more.

Republicans are in control of the Congress and the White House, and they have locked Democrats out of the discussion. Somewhere here on Capitol Hill, there is a group of Republicans meeting right now, behind closed doors, quietly planning the outline of their gigantic bill. Nobody in that room is talking about how to protect people who work for a living or how to get more fairness in the economy. The discussion they are having comes down to how big the handouts are going to be for billionaires and multinational corporations, how many tens of millions of Americans they are going to kick off Medicaid to pay for it, how many millions of kids are going to go hungry, how many hundreds of thousands of workers are going to lose their jobs.

Republicans are doubling down on a broken system. And if you want to see that system in action, read our report, because you couldn't find a better example than Big Pharma's tax dodging. These are huge corporations that rake in enormous profits in U.S. sales because they charge astronomical prices in America, and then their stables of lawyers and accountants get to work on a whole bunch of fancy financial wizardry, taking advantage of loopholes and rip-offs planted by Republican lawmakers.

Suddenly, the record profits get shipped overseas. Often, the factories get shipped overseas, the jobs get shipped overseas, and the companies aren't paying anything close to a fair share of taxes. Typical Americans who pay taxes out of every paycheck get ripped off.

Republicans are not going to fix this broken, unfair system. In fact, they are gearing up to give tax-dodging corporations like these and their billionaire shareholders even bigger handouts. It is a scam. It is a rip-off on a national scale. The American people see it for what it is.

Senate Democrats are going to keep calling it out, because this must not stand.

So I am very appreciative that my colleagues are joining me here on the floor. We have a very important member of the Senate Finance Committee to start, Senator Whitehouse, and I want to send this over to him.

Well said, Senator Whitehouse.

And I want to get my colleagues into this. Next in order of appearance is Senator Van Hollen.

Once again, I want everybody to understand that the four of us are going to continue to go after this colossal tax avoidance until it gets fixed, because the American people are getting ripped off.

Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague. Once again, you can hear his expertise in the Ways and Means Committee and the body on these issues, and I thank him for his leadership.

A new member of the Finance Committee, Senator Welch, is here and he will have some remarks and then I will wrap up.

Senator Welch.

Senator Welch, thank you for your leadership. It is great to have you on this committee.

Mr. President, to wrap up, our investigation has found that Pfizer has carried out what could be the largest tax-dodging scheme in the history of Big Pharma. This Big Pharma rip-off is exactly what Republican Senators should be rooting out in their upcoming tax bill.

Instead, it looks like Senate Republicans may lock this outrage in permanently. All Americans who believe in tax fairness should join us in fighting any extension of this tax boondoggle.

I yield the floor.

The Senator from Mississippi.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes after 5.

Mr. President and colleagues, the Senate will soon take a vote on the nomination of Michael Faulkender to serve as Deputy Treasury Secretary. I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination.

I am going to take just a few minutes to explain why he got zero support from Democrats in the Finance Committee, and I am going to start with the big picture.

For the last 2 months, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have let loose a pack of cronies who, in my view, are looting the United States of America. They are violating laws, they are blocking accountability, and they are breaking key programs in ways that are going to hurt a lot of Americans.

All the while, there has been a parade of Trump nominees marching through the Senate, and one after the other they pretend that they know nothing about what I just said. They all swear up and down that they follow the law. Under their watch, everything will be on the level.

The reality is, in nearly every case, it is just not true.

Just yesterday, in the Finance Committee, the nominee to head up Social Security told me that he was not involved in any discussions regarding DOGE personnel at Social Security. I asked him directly. That was his response, and his response was a lie.

The committee had received whistleblower testimony from a senior official who worked at Social Security and has recently left. The whistleblower said this nominee had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials installed at Social Security.

This is happening again and again. Trump nominees show up in the Senate, and they always say: I am a choir boy.

But they are directly involved in the ransacking of the country, and Americans are outraged from coast to coast.

Dr. Faulkender is another example. He has been in the building at Treasury since January 21, working in an unofficial capacity. So he knows what is going on there. He knows that DOGE personnel showed up at Treasury with the intent of violating our constitutional authority over Federal funding. Yet, when he was asked about DOGE's activity at Treasury and at the IRS, he, too, had nothing to say--just a bunch of dodging and ducking.

I asked him, as well, directly whether the President has the authority to impound funds, which is a constitutional breach.

His answer was:

I do not know the legal authority of the President when it

comes to impoundment.

However, during a television interview last year, he actually said he supported impoundment and talked about how the President should use it to trample over congressional appropriations and our article I authority.

If confirmed, he will be the No. 2 official at the Department that oversees the IRS, but he had nothing to say about the fact that the administration is intent on violating taxpayer privacy laws and weaponizing the IRS against American taxpayers.

But it wasn't all bobbing and weaving during the hearing. In fact, the most telling moment was when Dr. Faulkender decided to give an awfully revealing answer to a question he probably could have avoided.

Here is what happened.

Everybody understands that the Treasury Department's big job under Donald Trump is giving huge handouts to billionaires and corporations. They plan to pay for it, in part, by slashing Medicaid and kicking tens of millions of Americans off their healthcare.

Senator Warnock, our colleague, asked Dr. Faulkender a pretty simple question.

He asked:

Do you think that it's a good idea to take families off of

Medicaid?

The funny thing is nobody would have blamed him for saying that the Treasury doesn't have jurisdiction over Medicaid so he wouldn't have to take a position, but that is not what he said.

Dr. Faulkender went out of his way to defend the Republican plan to slash Medicaid and kick tens of millions of Americans off their healthcare. He answered with the same traditional Republican spin--that it was all about ``self-sufficiency and getting off of government dependency.''

We are talking about a program that covers nearly 40 million kids, half of all kids with special needs, and two-thirds of all nursing home beds in America. Without Medicaid, rural America would become even more of a healthcare desert.

Dr. Faulkender's nonsense about self-sufficiency is basically what I call trickle-down economics for healthcare. It is a talking point that papers over an agenda that benefits the very affluent at the expense of everybody else.

So, colleagues, this is another case of a nominee dodging nearly all the tough questions and misrepresenting his role in what is going on in the Trump administration. The most forthcoming answer we got during his nomination indicated that he is totally on board with the agenda that is going to put people's lives in danger by kicking tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance so that those at the very top, like Elon Musk, can afford bigger yachts and probably some kind of island.

Dr. Faulkender has been at Treasury since January 21. He is already tied up with DOGE. He has already made himself a part of the harm that the Trump administration, through DOGE, is inflicting on the American people. That is why he got zero support from Democrats in committee.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination when the Senate votes on it in a little bit.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Wyden, Senator Sanders, and Senator Scott be recognized for up to 25 minutes, and that following their remarks, the majority leader be recognized.

Mr. President, I come to the floor with my colleague from Vermont Senator Sanders to pass a set of critical improvements to America's healthcare system. This legislation is overwhelmingly bipartisan, fully paid for, and targeted at two objectives every Senator ought to support: improving healthcare for Americans and cracking down on the middlemen who take advantage of the system.

Mr. President, 597 days ago, the Senate Finance Committee passed the most comprehensive legislation in history to address the pharmacy benefit managers' predatory business practices, and it was passed by a vote of 26 to 1. And 493 days ago, the Senate Finance Committee passed another piece of healthcare legislation that improves

mental healthcare for Americans with Medicaid, expands and strengthens telehealth, and more PBM policies, by a vote, again, of 26 to 0. Since that time, negotiations about how to sign these policies into law have been fatally intertwined with the dysfunctional debate over congressional appropriations, as the public can see on full display this week.

These policies are too important to leave behind due to an unrelated disagreement. Community pharmacists are counting on this legislation. Doctors who don't want to see a pay cut are counting on this legislation. Seniors and working families who want better care at a lower cost are counting on this legislation. So the time to act is now.

In December, Democrats and Republicans struck a deal on this bill. I have the press release on my website to prove it. It was introduced in the House and set for passage. But along came Elon Musk and his now familiar wrecking ball. With one tweet, he killed the entire package for reasons that had nothing to do with the bill before the Senate today.

Musk even had the gall to tweet, ``What is a `pharmacy benefit manager'?'' less than 2 weeks after he single-handedly killed the bill.

While this unelected billionaire rifles through Americans' private information and earned benefits, claiming to be looking for waste, fraud, and abuse, he doesn't even know about the middlemen who skim billions off the Federal Government.

Since Musk's tweeting adventure, 237 independent pharmacies have closed their doors. That is nearly three small businesses closing every day. Our bill includes critical protections that stop the giant PBMs from bullying even more local pharmacies into the abyss. Every day matters. That is why it is critical to act now.

Now, I would like to yield to the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Sanders, so he can explain the important pieces of this bill that are in his committee's jurisdiction that also need to pass as soon as possible.

Mr. President, very briefly, I want to thank my colleague. We have been working, as we have indicated, for months and months, because Americans, with respect to healthcare, feel like they are getting hit by a wrecking ball here in terms of the costs and inability to get quality care.

So with that, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 891 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the Wyden substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

The Senator from Florida.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to talk about the importance of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in defending typical Americans against scams and multinational banks. This Agency's entire purpose is standing up for regular people as a watchdog against the powerful and the corrupt.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are attempting to close the CFPB, and they are demonstrating their priorities. They have systematically kneecapped every part of the government that can stand in the way of their spree of looting the government to make themselves and their wealthy friends even wealthier. This unlawful freeze threatens Oregonians' economic opportunity and our country's economic stability.

Donald Trump pledged to the American people to level the playing field and lower prices. His actions and the actions of many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do the opposite.

Just yesterday, my office heard from veterans who served our country and now go to college in Oregon. These are brave young people who are not wealthy. They shared details about how veterans routinely face predatory, for-profit, fake colleges that just want to target their post-9/11 GI benefits. If not for the work of the CFPB, many young veterans would have been robbed of tens of thousands of dollars each in earned benefits.

My constituents shared that they are really worried about what is going to happen in terms of our student veterans if Donald Trump and Elon Musk succeed in shuttering the CFPB. Either Donald Trump and Elon Musk didn't know that the CFPB has an entire office dedicated to protecting veterans and servicemembers from bad actors. Or possibly, they just didn't care.

Since the Bureau's start just 13 years ago, it has returned over $21 billion to

consumers, and through its oversight, it has prevented billions more in losses.

In a choice between fraudsters and scamsters and those who serve our Nation in uniform, Donald Trump and Elon Musk protected the fraudsters and the scamsters by illegally sending CFPB staff home and freezing the Agency's work.

Now my Republican colleagues are attempting to repeal the CFPB rule that protects consumers from frauds and scams on payment apps like Venmo. Under this rule, the CFPB would be allowed to look at the books of payment apps to ensure they are following the law.

This rule doesn't impose new requirements on these services like Venmo. This type of supervision is important to stop illegal activity before it is too late. In the case of payment apps, this supervision is crucial to combat frauds and scams.

Frauds and scams on payment apps are only getting more common, so why are my colleagues pushing to overturn the rule now? Republicans are trying to roll back the rule. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Elon Musk wants to start a payments app. That is a lot harder to do when you have to follow any pesky laws or rules. And anybody who has used the site formerly known as Twitter recently knows that Elon Musk doesn't seem to care about the proliferation of fraud or scams.

Trump, Musk, and my colleagues across the aisle seem to be working to destroy the CFPB because it enforces consumer protection and data privacy laws, which I have been working to strengthen.

Elon Musk has already trampled into Americans' sensitive data at the IRS. It should be clear to all of us by now that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the rest of this billionaire crowd seem to have no regard for the law or for the Constitution.

Those who voted for Donald Trump because they wanted lower prices and a fairer economy really ought to be concerned about what I have just described this economic sabotage. And anybody who plays by the rules has a right as well to feel betrayed by Trump and Musk's contempt for the rule of law.

I am glad to be here with my colleagues to blow the whistle on Trump and the Republicans' dangerous and chaotic agenda and to work with Senator Warren, who has led the effort on this issue for so many years.

I will vote to oppose this resolution. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, my colleague from New Hampshire is being way too logical for some of what passes as trade debate here. And it is my hope that her excellent proposal will be back on this Senate floor sometime soon for unanimous consent to pass a very important bill protecting Americans from tax hikes on imported goods.

This is, as she has stated, a straightforward proposition. All it does is clarify that the President's emergency powers can't be used to put tariffs on the things Americans buy from other countries.

Now, Donald Trump calls himself a ``tariff man''--his quote, not mine. It is the only answer he seems to have to any problem under the sun. Instead of taking time to think through actual solutions, he is willing to use any authority he can find to slap tariffs on our trading partners.

Just today, he announced he was slapping 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which are two of our three largest trading partners and closest allies.

That alone is going to raise costs for Americans on gas, on cars, on fruits and vegetables, and many other products. It is also going to cost America jobs because Canada and Mexico have announced plans to retaliate against our exports.

That is the opposite of what Donald Trump pledged to the American people.

It is disturbing that Donald Trump is going rogue and using emergency powers to pursue his tariffs. The American people voted for lower--not higher--prices. Donald Trump campaigned on the promise that he would lower costs on day one of his Presidency. But just a month in, all Trump has managed to do is gut the agencies in charge of protecting consumers and going after predatory corporations, and he's landed us in trade wars that are going to drive up the cost of goods people use every day.

Whether it is to punish a country that he doesn't like or to settle scores with foreign leaders, the only answer Donald Trump has ever had is tariffs. And as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I have heard him play that card again and again, no matter how many times we have said: Look, tariffs should be one of the tools in the trade toolbox, but it shouldn't be the universal answer to everything.

Trump's approach is going to drive up prices and costs for American families, businesses, and farmers in the process.

He does it, in my view, because he and his billionaire friends aren't going to feel the impacts, and they don't care about the millions of Americans who will.

These higher costs essentially add up to a Trump Tax on everything from food to clothes and cars. And to those who voted for Donald Trump because they wanted lower prices and a fairer economy--it sure seems to me that these policies are a betrayal. The Shaheen bill that we are trying to pass today would rein in some of Donald Trump's worst impulses and clarify that the laws on the books were never meant to be a blank check for the President to abuse tariffs by using them as a punishment against any country that hurts his feelings.

A number of our Republican colleagues have supported the Shaheen proposal in the past because putting a check on the President's power to land us in trade wars should not be, as my colleague has said, partisan or controversial. It is Shaheen common sense. I want to thank her for an excellent bill, and for her leadership that I have watched from my vantage point on the Finance Committee.

And when we can get this bill back on the floor for unanimous consent, I hope it will be met with a resounding bipartisan showing of support, and I look forward to working with her until that day comes to be.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Jamieson Greer to serve as U.S. Trade Representative. If confirmed, he would be the top official on one of the President's signature issues: trade and tariffs.

Donald Trump was elected President largely on the promise of lowering prices for American families and remaking the global economy to America's benefit. Six weeks into his Presidency, what he has shown is a willingness to impose staggering costs on our families, workers, and businesses in order to settle scores on issues that have nothing to do with trade or the economy. He gets headlines; his wealthy friends get tax breaks; and American families get stuck with higher prices and bigger bills.

I oppose this nomination. I certainly have nothing against Mr. Greer personally. I just believe, in this position, he will be a rubberstamp for the Trump tax, the knee-jerk decision to slap tariffs on nearly everything Americans buy, and make high prices even higher. Mr. Greer has embraced the Trump chaos strategy, which is a slap in the face to farmers, manufacturers, and communities across the country. They are sounding the alarm about how the Trump program is already costing them sales overseas and jobs here at home. Our country needs a U.S. Trade Representative who will be the point person on trade for this administration, and I just don't have the confidence in Mr. Greer for that job.

Let me start with the first key point. The Trump administration's across-the-board tariffs are going to cost Americans big time--up to $2,600 a year, according to one estimate. That could devastate American jobs. One appraisal is that they could destroy 344,000 American jobs.

Donald Trump has already ordered tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. The China tariffs went into effect last month. Now, he is promising that 25 percent tariffs on everything Americans buy from Mexico and Canada will go into effect next week. Get ready for gas prices to go up, power prices to spike, auto supply chains to be thrown out of whack, and fresh fruits and vegetables to get more expensive.

And there is more. Donald Trump has promised new tariffs on steel and aluminum, which go into everything from soda cans to cars. Yesterday, he proposed tariffs on copper, which is used in everything from housing to medical devices and cars. They largely come from Chile and Canada. And he is pushing something called reciprocal tariffs on . . . maybe . . . everything.

The only thing we can be sure about with Trump's tariffs is that they are going to hit working Americans the hardest. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire friends are barely going to notice the price hikes.

If you ask people at a Fred Meyer's store in Gresham, OR, or who are buying groceries in Charlotte or in Kalamazoo, they don't need an economist to know that Donald Trump isn't helping prices. Less than a third of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing on inflation, according to a poll released this week. Consumer sentiment-- a particularly important measure--fell by 10 percent this month. More and more Americans are rightly worried that tariffs are going to drive more inflation.

If this trade war continues, there is no doubt many U.S. workers, farmers, and ranchers are going to lose their jobs when our trading partners retaliate and slap tariffs on ``Made in the USA'' products. That is what happened the last time Donald Trump was in office. American producers of everything from rice to bourbon to motorcycles got hammered. They sold less overseas, made less money, and workers ended up paying the price.

There is a right way to approach tariffs that punishes bad actors like China and targets the products that will change other countries' behaviors while minimizing the cost to American families. Donald Trump is doing the opposite. He is maximizing price spikes for regular Americans, with no plan or strategy.

One other point with respect to trade chaos: Mr. Greer has endorsed this, and it is already hurting farmers and small businesses. Now, I had four townhall meetings in my State recently and talked with lots of small businesses and farmers.

I am hearing one message over and over again: They are already losing sales and losing markets to Donald Trump's bluster. Last year, our State exported $34 billion in blueberries, hazelnuts, and other goods overseas--almost an alltime high. Now, instead of building on that success, our producers and innovators prepare for the worst.

This story comes up again and again. The Washington Post quoted an Iowa farmer who has seen prices of seed, fertilizers, and equipment increase while prices for soybeans are flat. ``Our goal is to make Iowa and U.S. soybean farms profitable,'' said this Iowa farmer, ``and to do that, we need these international markets. We need to keep growing demand.''

The State economist in Georgia said this month that the greatest threat to that State's economy--and I will repeat that--the greatest threat to the economy is Trump's trade threats. Tariffs mean higher prices for consumers while trade wars mean other countries buy less of what Georgia makes, including aerospace components, pulp and paper, and auto parts.

Pittsburgh-based aluminum manufacturer Alcoa said Trump's tariffs will cost 100,000 jobs in the United States and won't lead to more production here. ``This is bad for the aluminum industry in the [United States]. It's bad for American workers''--not according to some Member of the Senate, but that is what the Alcoa CEO said. There are similar reports of communities fearing the worst in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and all across America.

One final reason I oppose the Greer nomination: It is not clear to me that he will be the final voice in the room with Donald Trump on trade. There are an awful lot of trade cooks in that kitchen. Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick all have claimed responsibility for trade. It reminds me of an old saying that gets attributed to John Madden:

If you've got two quarterbacks, you have none.

Well, if you have four chief trade officials, you have none.

Unfortunately, Mr. Greer did little in his confirmation process to build confidence that the buck stops with him on trade. He said it is not a trade matter when Donald Trump uses tariffs to settle scores about the border, immigration, and diplomatic issues. So Mr. Greer said these decisions aren't something he would expect to be involved with if confirmed. If the U.S. Trade Representative isn't going to be in the room when tariff decisions are at

stake, it is not clear to me what influence over critical trade decisions Mr. Greer will have in the Trump administration.

Americans need a trade policy that puts workers and families first and a chief trade official who has the authority to deliver actual results for our workers and families. Unfortunately, neither of those is on offer today. That is why I oppose this nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank Senator Kaine for his extraordinary leadership on this.

I think America is at a crucial time on energy policy, and Senator Kaine cuts right to the heart of the debate. Donald Trump wants more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy, and he is willing to pay for those tax cuts by raising your energy bill.

Here is how the flawed idea goes down. Clean energy today is plentiful. Clean energy today is cheap. Clean energy today is generating thousands of good-paying jobs. I was involved deeply in writing the Inflation Reduction Act. I developed this law that created the clean energy tax credit package, and it is making progress in communities across the country.

What Donald Trump is talking about doing--and Senator Kaine has spelled this out--is defying the reality of the marketplace.

For example, we are constantly seeing people in the fossil fuel business saying that this isn't time for ``drill, baby, drill.'' They have been very blunt about saying that doesn't make sense from a marketplace standpoint.

What we want to do as it relates to clean energy is to build on the progress we have made--making sure clean energy is part of an ``all of the above'' program that is technologically neutral and competing in a marketplace with choices.

Under the Kaine legislation, we can have that reality and not the flawed idea that we would somehow benefit from having more tax cuts for the ultrawealthy and somehow that will take care of people's energy situation. It won't. If you go with tax breaks for the ultrawealthy and this program that is based on ``drill, baby, drill,'' it is going to create rising energy costs for working families across the land.

I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine proposal.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition. This amendment claims to protect Medicare and Medicaid, but it does neither.

In particular, the Medicaid language seeks to talk about a group called the most vulnerable. Obviously, we care about them, but the language of the Sullivan amendment would leave millions behind, and we don't want to go there. The language in this amendment is code for kicking Americans with Medicaid coverage off their health insurance if they are not sick enough, not poor enough, or not disabled enough. This amendment does nothing to stop Republicans from cutting these essential healthcare programs, kicking millions of Americans off their coverage, all to pay for the tax cuts of billionaires.

I urge opposition.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1156 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, this amendment is simple, it is direct, and, I believe, the only legislation tonight that is comprehensive on healthcare, that protects Medicaid and Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. It does that by taking cuts to these vital programs off the table in the Senate.

So what that means is, if you pass this amendment and the House sends us a budget resolution with severe cuts to healthcare, the Senate will have gone on record as being against the cuts.

Let's not jeopardize the health of millions of Americans. Support the amendment.

How much time do I have remaining?

I will use my 24 seconds to say the reality is the House is looking at a budget in the Energy and Commerce Committee with the prospect of significant cuts in healthcare. That is why I want us to go on record. If they send us something that cuts healthcare severely, we will be on record as protecting healthcare.

Motion to Waive

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues Senator Murphy and Senator Kaine for very strong speeches, and I look forward very much to working with them in this fight.

My colleagues have raised a host of important issues that I want to touch on, and I am going to start with the big picture of what is going on in America as the Senate careens toward a budget showdown.

Donald Trump, as of today, seems to consider himself royalty. Elon Musk seems to believe he calls the shots. They are trampling over the Constitution and violating laws as they try to rip apart so much of what makes America special, and they are clearing the way for financial predators and financial scammers to steal from innocent Americans.

They are gutting medical research. Days after the deadliest airplane crash on American soil in decades and when more plane crashes seem to be happening by the hour, they fire hundreds of people who work on airline safety.

They are slashing the university system, which is the envy of the world and a huge source of economic growth and opportunity in America. They fired hundreds of people who manage our nuclear arsenal because whomever in DOGE ordered those fired didn't seem to have any idea what the Department of Energy does.

The national parks closed because they don't have enough staff, and that is going to be a disaster for rural communities that depend on tourism. Farmers missed payments they are owed. Nobody I know voted for this chaos.

Now, I heard firsthand from Oregonians this past weekend at townhall meetings. Thousands of Oregonians, according to the press, were in attendance. They shared their real fears and legitimate concerns about how this slash-and-burn approach we are seeing from Trump and Musk is a recipe for a lower quality of life in America and people will lose their lives as a result of these attacks on healthcare and medical research.

Unfortunately, there has barely been a peep from Republicans. In fact, I have heard more support for Trump than criticism of this lawlessness from the other side, and it is business as usual here in the Senate.

What is so important to my colleagues on the other side that they are letting Trump and Musk get away with this destruction? It is another round of breaks for billionaires and big corporations. That, colleagues, is the Republican prize at the end of this process. That is Trump's plan to pay back his supporters who bought the election for him.

Now for some specifics. The centerpiece of the plan is extending his 2017 tax law at a cost of more than $4 trillion. Ultrawealthy individuals who rake in millions each year would get tax breaks of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Families who live paycheck to paycheck, as my colleagues have been talking about this afternoon, would be

lucky to get enough to cover groceries for a week. What an outrageous imbalance.

Trump and Republicans want typical Americans to be satisfied with peanuts compared to the growing fortunes of Elon Musk and Trump's other billionaire donors, and it is not just a bunch of extensions. Trump wants even more breaks for big, profitable corporations. Senate Republicans want new giveaways to the ultrawealthy.

How would it be paid for? By booting tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance, increasing child hunger, laying off hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers, and raising the cost of living here.

The Republican chair of the House Budget Committee had a whole list of destructive proposals a few weeks ago. Dozens of pages long, item after item, it looked like the kind of plan you would design if your goal was to wipe out the middle class in America and push tens of millions of families into poverty.

But this was a real document from a Republican committee chair. A couple of lowlights stuck out to us on the Senate Finance Committee. Trump and Republicans want to take a wrecking ball to the Medicaid Program. It is a devastating prospect for tens of millions of Americans, and I heard about it in Oregon all this weekend.

Medicaid pays for two out of three nursing home beds. Where do American families turn when nursing homes no longer accept Medicaid due to these Republican cuts? What my colleagues are saying is who is going to take care of our parents and our grandparents?

Medicaid covers 30 million kids. That includes half of all American kids with special needs. Cuts to Medicaid will set these kids back for the rest of their lives. Hospitals, nursing homes, other providers in rural communities all over America barely hang on. They depend on Medicaid. If the Republican cuts go through, rural America is going to become a healthcare desert.

The clean energy tax cuts, which I worked on for a full decade, are another disaster in the making. Republicans are looking at wiping out a host of tax incentives for clean energy to pay for a big chunk of their handouts to the top.

Nobody is rooting harder for Republicans to succeed on this than the Chinese Government. That is because if Republicans follow through and gut the clean energy tax credits that we passed in 2022, it will be a total surrender to China on clean energy. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs would be destroyed. Energy prices will jump, and that will hurt working families and small businesses.

The jobs and investment we have attracted to America over the last few years, that goes to China and other countries that win the clean energy arms race at our expense.

If you look at that document from the House Budget Committee chair, it is one item after another that is going to clobber typical families and communities across the land. They are looking at a tax increase on single moms. They are considering a tax increase that will raise the cost of owning a home. They are considering cuts to infrastructure that will hurt local economies. They are even considering taxing scholarships for kids looking to go to college.

The only people who won't feel the pain of these hardships are the ultrawealthy, people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. There is a game of hide the ball happening here in the Senate, with this first resolution that hides all the unpopular plans in the second bill that comes down the pike.

Over in the House of Representatives, they are trying to cram it all into one bill. In the end, the process here in Congress won't really matter to the people whose lives are made worse by the painful cuts Republicans are preparing to inflict on the country.

The reality is, this agenda goes hand in hand with the lawlessness we are seeing from Elon Musk and Donald Trump. My view is, this amounts to pillaging the government. They are breaking vital programs at Agencies, and there is no sign they care about the people who are hurt so greatly along the way.

Donald Trump even admits out in the open that it is causing pain--his words, not mine. And here in the Senate, Republicans are getting ready to add to the cuts, and they are getting ready to give even more tax handouts to the top: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the billionaire donors who support them.

As my colleagues have said this afternoon so eloquently, we are going to shine a light on this floor on the destructive agenda of the Republicans as the debate continues. The American people do not support what is happening here in the Senate or what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing to their government. We are going to do everything we can to stop that. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes, Senator Crapo for up to 5 minutes, and Senator Schumer for 2 minutes prior to the scheduled votes.

Mr. President, late into the night, Senators spoke on the Senate floor about why Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the least qualified nominee to ever be tapped as America's chief health officer.

On issue after issue, Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge, at best, and deeply dangerous views, at worst.

Mr. Kennedy has refused to tell Americans how we would manage healthcare issues that they are deeply worried about: vaccine safety, women's reproductive health, drug pricing, and affordable healthcare, to name a few. This leaves millions of Americans alarmed about the future of health and science in America.

Last week, two Oregon medical students approached me to talk about Mr. Kennedy's nomination. These medical students told me they were less concerned about the damage Mr. Kennedy would do as HHS Secretary in the weeks and months to come. These medical students are not only worried

about the prospect of losing cures, treatments, and medical breakthroughs if Mr. Kennedy is confirmed. These medical students from Oregon told me that his unwillingness to take science and medical data seriously is going to harm science for decades to come.

So I ask my colleagues to think about those medical students' words. Is that a legacy you want to leave behind as a result of supporting Mr. Kennedy?

Senate Democrats have been making this exact case. In his hearing before the Finance Committee, I asked Mr. Kennedy to square his anti- vaccine views with more recent statements designed to appease a number of our Senators who are quite nervous about his nomination.

In his testimony, he used the fact that his own children were vaccinated to prove he was not anti-vaccine. But the record shows that just a few years ago, he said he would ``do anything'' and ``pay anything'' to go back in time in order to prevent them from getting those vaccines.

Elsewhere in his testimony, Mr. Kennedy stated he was not anti- vaccine but, rather, ``pro-safety.'' But about 18 months ago, he said on a podcast:

No vaccine is safe and effective.

In other words, in the Senate Finance Committee, we brought the evidence; we brought the receipts, and Mr. Kennedy said nothing to actually disavow his prior statements. He stuck by the timeworn tactics of a conspiracy theorist: Always ask for more evidence, and never accept the evidence that is placed in front of you.

Even some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are now deeply disturbed by Mr. Kennedy's refusal to entertain evidence that would require him to change his mind on vaccine safety. Nevertheless, it sure looks like my Republican colleagues have bowed to pressure from Donald Trump and are poised to hand Mr. Kennedy the platform he has been seeking for two decades to push fringe views.

Before the Senate votes, I would like to take a moment to talk a little bit about the fights ahead on healthcare.

Republicans in the House are already pressing ahead this morning with their plan to kick millions of Americans off of their health insurance in order to fund more tax cuts for those who are very wealthy. And as HHS Secretary, Mr. Kennedy is going to be a key player in this effort.

While Senators were on the floor speaking yesterday, the Senate Budget Committee debated a budget resolution that unlocks the legislative tools Republicans need to make good on their go-it-alone plan. At the same time, the House Budget Committee released its own budget resolution that will be debated today.

What is clear in both of these blueprints, in their game plan, is that Medicaid cuts are at the top of the list.

Eighty-one million Americans rely on healthcare coverage under Medicaid and the CHIP program for kids. Those people are folks with disabilities, low-income families, seniors, and, of course, children.

The damage and destruction to American families if Republicans go through with their plans to gut Medicaid cannot be overstated.

Take nursing homes, for example. Two out of three nursing home residents are currently being covered for their healthcare by Medicaid.

Imagine you visit your mom in her nursing home in the months after the Republican bill makes steep cuts to Medicaid. Your mom complains there are fewer and fewer staff. She had to wait more than an hour after calling for help to use the bathroom on several occasions.

The next time you visit, she tells you some of the new staff don't have time for her. You learn that the facility no longer has the resources to conduct background checks and that they are desperate for workers.

A few weeks later, the facility manager pulls you aside to deliver some bad news. Her nursing home can no longer accept patients with Medicaid after steep Federal cuts to the program. Unless you can find another facility that accepts Medicaid, you have got to pay the high monthly costs out of your own pocket.

Suddenly, and with no warning, you have got impossible options. Either you scramble to find the money to cover a new facility that costs thousands of dollars a month, or you bring your mom home with you.

So between holding down a full-time job and raising young kids, suddenly, you have to deal with making sure your mom gets full-time care, and that requires nursing assistance around the clock.

Unfortunately, this case I described is something you see in every nook and cranny of America. I know that from my days as codirector of the Gray Panthers. And I know that many of your friends and neighbors with aging parents and grandparents in nursing homes are facing the catastrophe that I have just described.

Now, Republicans are going to do somersaults to disguise their cuts to Medicaid, and they are going to describe it in healthcare lingo that they think plays well with people.

For Republicans, every single child, senior, or family struggling to pay the bills that gets denied coverage is a win. That brings us to Mr. Kennedy.

During his confirmation hearing on everything from abortion to vaccines to Medicare and Medicaid, Mr. Kennedy was given ample opportunity to go on the record about how he would improve these programs, bring down costs, save taxpayers money, and improve care. Instead, he showed a complete lack of understanding of the basics of Medicaid and how it functions.

I personally believe it shouldn't be too much to ask for the future CEO of Medicaid to understand how important it is to provide affordable coverage for millions of families.

Republicans, with Donald Trump at the helm, are steering our country toward a healthcare cliff. Their ultimate objective is to take away Medicaid from as many people as they can.

Colleagues, so much for making America healthy again.

What the American people need is a leader who will be the voice of reason in the room as Trump and his assistants in Congress start slicing and cutting.

Our country needs a leader at Health and Human Services who is actually going to work to improve care and lower costs, defend the reproductive freedom of families, and listen, in particular, to facts and science.

The American people have no reason to believe, based on the record, the evidence that the Senate Finance Committee has accumulated--to believe that Mr. Kennedy will be that leader.

There is no question the healthcare system in America needs reforms. It has fallen short, and Democrats want to work in a bipartisan way on those issues.

We are disillusioned by a system that puts profits over patients in too many circumstances. Nobody on this side of the aisle is arguing for the status quo.

But the solution, colleagues--and I am closing with this--does not lie in Donald Trump's ``concept of a plan'' to make our country less healthy, less safe, and less successful.

When kids are kicked off their Medicaid coverage and forced to go without basic medical care and grow up with chronic illnesses that leave them in a lifetime of pain and suffering, Republicans are going to regret any vote they give to Robert Kennedy.

When seniors are told they have to vacate their nursing homes because it no longer accepts Medicaid, Republicans again will regret a vote for Robert Kennedy.

When families are struggling to pay the bills and they are landed with a mountain of medical debt because their kid got sick and they were kicked off their insurance, finally, Republicans will regret any vote they give to Robert Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy will, no doubt, be right alongside Republicans, a willing participant in this future for healthcare that I have described today that is really stepping back from progress that has been made.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield the floor.