Floor Statements

Mr. President, many of us who were here on January 6 have pretty indelible memories. I am looking at Senator Murray, who has particularly harrowing memories. One of mine is, I was one of the last people out of the Senate, and by the time we got to the room where we were sequestered for our own protection from the mob, colleagues were irate, and they had been frightened.

There is footage of Republican Senators running through the halls to get away from the mob. I remember one of our colleagues shouting out that we should get back over here to vote even if it meant protesters would have to be shot--again, a Republican.

There were 600 of the rioters here who committed violence on police officers, and nearly 200 of them used weapons. They were convicted of this after all proper, fair procedures in an American court of law.

Then the notion of pardons started to come up, and we were basically shushed by our Republican colleagues. Oh, that will never happen.

The Vice President said: If you committed violence on January 6, you shouldn't be pardoned. In fact, he said ``obviously''--``obviously you shouldn't be pardoned.''

Another colleague in the Judiciary Committee chastised Democrats for asking the Attorney General nominee what she would do with respect to the violent January 6 protesters. Would she recommend that the President pardon them? And we were chastised for the absurdity of that question. That is an ``absurd and unfair hypothetical to even ask.''

Over in the House, Jim Jordan said that he didn't think anybody violent was going to be pardoned. ``I think,'' he said, ``he is going to focus on . . . all the people who didn't commit any violence.''

Another colleague on the Judiciary Committee said he was against any such pardons ``for people who assaulted cops, threw stuff at cops, broke down doors, broke windows.''

We heard this cascade of denial from the other side about these pardons. It was unfathomable that he would do this. It was wrong that he would do this. It was absurd that he would do this. And then he did it.

And what happened? Well, two things happened: One, over 1,000 people who have demonstrated their willingness to commit acts of political violence at the behest of Donald Trump were set loose on the streets. We haven't heard the last of them. There may be another call to arms.

``Will be wild!''

``Be there.''

We haven't heard the last of them.

But just the leading edge, in only the week since we have been there--one has already been arrested for a violent confrontation with police officers, another was killed in a shooting incident when he refused to be arrested and engaged police officers with a weapon, and a third is in Rhode Island in our ACI, our adult correctional institute, for having challenged police officers in an armed standoff. Now, he was in prison when he was pardoned. Nobody in this pardon operation thought to understand that this guy actually was convicted again of violence against police officers and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in my State.

So we know that there is going to be more violence from these people. We know that Trump now has an on-call assault team that he can use to launch political violence, just the way he did on January 6, and this is a dangerous situation.

This ought to be the easiest vote in the world. How you can even walk through these halls and look our Capitol Police officers in the eye-- the ones who were there, the ones who took their lives in their hands to steer the mob away from vulnerable Senators--how you can look them in the eye if you haven't supported this, I don't know.

There is a word in the English language, ``subservience.'' I think we need a word called ``Trump-servience'' in which things you know you shouldn't do you do anyway because you are either frightened of Trump or want to suck up to him.

This is not a great moment.

There is an effort, frankly, to erase that incident. For a long time: Oh, just peaceful protesters. This was all just, you know, happy people coming in to visit the Capitol, fun and games.

Yeah, so fun that we had Senators running down the aisles to get away from them; so fun that, to get back into this building, we had armed SWAT officers with automatic weapons lining the entire pathway back from where we were secured into this Chamber.

Just remember what our colleagues were saying in that time period, but the effort to erase this moment goes on. It occurred just recently in the Judiciary Committee when the Attorney General nominee said that there had been a peaceful transfer of power, like January 6 never happened.

I asked a question for the record, asked her to explain that. She said: Well, on Inauguration Day, it was peaceful.

Do you remember why it was peaceful on Inauguration Day? Because we had the Capitol of the United States surrounded by more soldiers, more police officers, more fencing, more snipers, more law enforcement and military safety people than had probably been the case since the Civil War. Yet now everything is peaceful.

We cannot forget what happened here. It is wrong to forget what happened here. It is an insult to this Capitol to forget what happened here. It is an insult to the men and women of the Capitol Police Department and the DC Police Department and the others who came in to fill in when they were overwhelmed by these brutal rioters.

So I am glad that Senator Murray did this. I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak on their behalf, both for the sake of those police officers and for the sake of the truth and for the sake of our history here. This deserves to be remembered.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think this is my first time with you presiding, so it is good to see you.

This power grab--this attempted power grab--that took place today in flagrant disregard for our separation of powers has a home not in the Constitution but in Project 2025.

The American people hate Project 2025, so Donald Trump spent his campaign trying to distance himself from Project 2025, but then he put one of the authors of Project 2025 in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, who is, as we saw in the Budget hearing, out of one side of his mouth saying ``Oh, President Trump doesn't have anything to do with 2025; he disavowed it'' and, as President Trump's appointee to OMB, is merrily implementing Project 2025.

This is exactly aligned with the Project 2025 playbook that Americans rejected so much that Trump had to lie and pretend he rejected it too, in addition to being unconstitutional. That is not just an allegation any longer; a court today here in the District of Columbia found it to be unconstitutional and has ordered a stop to this pause.

That is a relief because for people in my State, today was a scary day.

Medicaid was stopped. The portal to the Medicaid system that the State reaches into was closed. People say: What is Medicaid? Medicaid is how a great many American seniors pay for their nursing homes. If you are shutting down Medicaid for your jollies, what you are doing is threatening the security of elderly folks living in nursing homes for whom Medicaid pays the bill.

We have in Rhode Island and in other States gone through very significant addiction crises. Addiction recovery is very often paid for through Medicaid. So when you shut down Medicaid and close the portal, you are threatening people who are bravely fighting their way through their addiction, trying to get well and better, and suddenly President Trump is cutting the legs out from under them by closing the Medicaid portal and threatening Medicaid.

Mr. President, 300,000 Rhode Islanders get supported by the Medicaid system, so this sent a lot of fear through a lot of people. I know there are people in the Trump administration who enjoy that. They get their kicks out of creating fear and having people--you know, cruelty is their pastime. But this is getting a little carried away.

Firefighters and police officers--I spoke this morning to the Major County Sheriffs' Association, and they immediately raised the concern: What about my HIDTA grants?

Those of who have been in law enforcement know what a HIDTA grant is. For firefighters, it is the AFG grant--the assistance to firefighters grant--with which they buy safety equipment, breathing apparatus, and new fire engines and vehicles.

So all of that panic because this rash and unconstitutional decision was made.

Kids in school often are supported by Federal programs. Head Start is a particularly good one. We had a very well-loved mayor of our capital city, Providence, RI, who started in Head Start and became the mayor of our capital city. Head Start is a wonderful program. Why would you want to threaten all of those children?

Sojourner House is a domestic violence support entity and shelter in Rhode Island that supports women when they come out of an abusive relationship and need a place to find immediate safety and try to put their lives together. It is supported by Federal grants that President Trump tried to shut down today. It is astonishing.

There is $33 million in small business loans out in Rhode Island with a big question mark by them because of today's bad behavior.

It is the community health centers. People had doctor's appointments and people were going in for minor procedures and treatments, and suddenly there is a cloud over the ability to fund the community health centers.

This is just wild, extreme, and dangerous stuff.

I will take my lawyer role for a minute. Talk about unconstitutional--the Constitution provides a method for the President to veto legislation he doesn't like. That veto method does not include not--being the President, coming in in a whole new administration, having missed completely the opportunity to do a proper veto or for Congress to override, and doing this unilateral thing, which is not only forbidden by the separation of powers and the veto rule but also by law Congress passed regarding so-called impoundments. So it is flagrantly, flagrantly illegal.

I will close by saying that it is also a threat of corruption. Every time you

look at the Trump administration, you have to lift up the hood and look for where the corruption thread is. We are going to see corruption like you have never seen before out of this administration. And the corruption thread here is that you close all these things down, and then you pick the ones you like for the people who are your big donors, for the companies that gave you big bucks, for the special interests who put you in office, for the political allies who serve you, and you let them have their money freed up while everybody else's is frozen.

Do you think that is imaginary? It is exactly what the Trump administration did with the tariffs in his last term of office. You could go into a secret little line, and if you knew the right people, you could get a waiver.

There is an absolute avenue to corruption in this. Thank God the courts shut it down. This was a bad moment. It is not over. I hope my Republican colleagues will rise to the occasion because this is a basic attack on our Constitution, and it is a basic attack on the legislative branch of government.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, it is nice to see you in the Chair.

Madam President, I am here to add some thoughts regarding the vote we are going to have on Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.

Of course, as a Rhode Island junior Senator, I am very cognizant of the important role that my senior Senator Jack Reed has had on the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Armed Services Committee. I want to give him credit for the way he has conducted himself.

What I can bring to this conversation is a little bit about background investigations. I sit on the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee does more background investigation work than any other because we have so many people coming through--the judges, the U.S. attorneys, every marshal--all of it. So we are very busy on BIs.

I took a deep dive into the Brett Kavanaugh background investigation and put out a report on the flaws and gaps and misdirections that transpired around that background investigation--specifically, that supplemental background investigation, a point I will clarify in a moment.

Let's start with what we do know about the FBI background investigation into Mr. Hegseth. We know that only one Democrat has even seen it, and that is the ranking member on the committee, Senator Reed. And we do know that he has publicly said that that background investigation was--to use his word--``inadequate.'' So Republicans are going forward on the basis of an FBI investigation that a very respected Member of this body has publicly said was inadequate.

What else do we know about it? Well, it has been reported in the press that the chairman has said that it took three briefings by the FBI to get through the background investigation. I don't know why that happened, but we do know that new material emerged in the press about various kinds of misconduct by this individual after the initial background investigation took place.

So the likeliest scenario to explain why there were three background investigations in the light of the recurring release of further information about his repeated misconduct is that there were supplemental background investigations after the original full field FBI background investigation was completed.

Let's presume that to be true. Again, we can't know this because this is all tied up in so much unnecessary secrecy, in my view. Let's presume that that is the case.

What does that mean? Well, what we discovered during the Kavanaugh background investigation is that the regular FBI full field background investigation takes place under a set of longstanding rules and protocols and procedures. They have forms that they follow. It has been routinized to a fairly significant degree. It is different than a proper FBI investigation. A proper FBI investigation in the criminal law enforcement front has a whole different set of controls and protocols and supervisory roles over that. When you get into the full field background investigation, you are operating under a different set of rules, but you are still operating under rules.

And you can ask the question to the FBI: Was this background investigation conducted fully within the rules and the protocols for background investigations--until you get to a supplemental background investigation.

Now, one of the objections that I had to the way we were treated as we tried to get to the bottom of the Kavanaugh background investigation was that the then-head of the FBI kept repeatedly saying publicly--we were repeatedly told that the supplemental background investigation was done consistent with all of the FBI standard protocols and procedures. What was misleading about that, as we later discovered, is that for a supplemental background investigation, there are no operating procedures and protocols. Wray said that they comported with all of their procedures. Didn't disclose that, in fact, there are no procedures to comport with.

What is the FBI doing in a supplemental background investigation? They are doing only and exactly what the White House has instructed them to do--period, no more, no less, no procedure, no protocol--which raises a huge question about the adequacy of this background investigation to the extent that, in its later stages, it was a supplemental background investigation.

We know that, when the Kavanaugh investigation was going on, Republican Senators were told that there was no corroboration-- corroboration being kind of an important legal term here--no corroboration of the charges that had been brought by Dr. Blasey Ford of his attack on her those many years ago--no corroboration.

What we found out, later on, is that the instructions from the White House

to the FBI for that supplemental background investigation related to her charges were: Don't look for, don't find, and don't report to us any corroborating information.

We also found out that they never interviewed either Dr. Blasey Ford about her allegations or Brett Kavanaugh about his conduct.

So there is every reason to believe about this background investigation, as to the supplemental background investigation part of it, that it was woefully incomplete; that it was restricted by the White House to very, very narrow bounds; that we do not know what those narrow bounds are; and that, very likely, neither Hegseth nor the individuals making the charges were even interviewed by the FBI. And we can suspect that because that is precisely what happened in the Kavanaugh background investigation.

So there is a major, major weakness in what is publicly described as an inadequate background investigation, to the extent that those latter two segments of it that caused the three briefings to have to take place were supplemental background investigations precisely and exactly controlled by the Trump White House.

Another point that relates to all of this is that, when these witnesses came forward, the standard counterattack against them was that they were anonymous. Over and over again, Hegseth said in the committee: ``Anonymous smears''--``anonymous smears.''

These accusers were not anonymous. Not only were they not anonymous, they were willing and presented themselves as willing to be able to come over here and personally brief, in their offices, any Republican Senator. It is not anonymous when you are willing to show up in a Senator's office and give a personal briefing.

What they weren't willing to do was to put their names out there publicly. Now, why would they want to steer away from that? Ask Christine Blasey Ford what her life was turned into by far-right and MAGA attacks on her after she came forward with her charges against Brett Kavanaugh.

Ask the poll workers who were Rudy Giuliani's victims what their lives turned into after he called them out--conduct against them that gave rise to the massive, multimillion-dollar verdict that Rudy Giuliani is still struggling to pay. Evidently, some billionaire paid it off for him. We will see.

But it is perfectly logical for a person to be willing to come forward, like many witnesses are, to identify themselves and to speak privately--the way people often do in a grand jury--to a prosecutor without yet putting your name out there. And, actually, some are not anonymous, but we should reject the notion that these witnesses were anonymous. They were not anonymous. They are real people with real faces who are willing to come in and tell their real stories, and Republican Senators simply refuse to hear them. That is a different thing than anonymity. They couldn't get through the doors of the offices.

So either our Republican colleagues already know who these people are--so they are not anonymous--or they are perfectly able to find out by getting their names and inviting them in and hearing them out. It seems like a pretty simple ask.

Now, in some cases, for instance, Mr. Hegseth's sister-in-law--ex- sister-in-law, I guess you would say--has actually put her name on her affidavit, describing his abusive and drunken misconduct. So she is not anonymous by any stretch of the imagination. And because the far-right counterattack team likes to attack people who are willing to come forward, they actually outed one of the other witnesses in a story. I won't mention her name because I do not want to make things even worse for her, but they did out her in a rightwing publication.

So you have at least two names that are out there that are clearly not anonymous and, indeed, are public. What happens with them? What happens with them is that they are accused of having evil motive; that they had a motive to lie about Pete Hegseth, and that is what is driving what they have been saying.

Well, guess who is really good at interviewing witnesses and looking at the surrounding circumstances and evaluating a motive--the FBI. The FBI is. So, if the FBI in this supplemental background investigation was instructed not to evaluate motive--just to let that be a political hand grenade to throw with no foundation--then we have an extra layer of problems with this background investigation.

So there is every reason to believe that the background investigation was inadequate and specifically directed by the White House away from relevant evidence, the way the Kavanaugh investigation was directed away from corroborating evidence. Here, it would have been directed away from evidence of motive, and you have got a real problem on your hands.

I urge my Republican colleagues--this is kind of the last call. If this guy gets in and starts to behave the way reasonable people can expect him to behave, you are going to own that. And when you say, ``Oh, the background investigation should have brought that up,'' not if you didn't ask about the background investigation, not if you didn't get a real one, not if you didn't bring the actual witnesses in to hear from them themselves.

We have had another little event recently, which are the pardons of the violent January 6 rioters.

Before those pardons took place, our Republican colleagues said over and over again that that will never happen; that this is a weird Democrat pipe dream. ``The very notion of pardoning these violent rioters who hurt police officers--who attacked and harmed police officers--is absurd,'' said one colleague. The Vice President said it wasn't going to happen; that it would be wrong.

And after all of that talk and all of that reassurance, what happened? Donald Trump went right out and did it.

So, if you think there are guardrails around this individual, it has already been proven that they are not there. The thing you thought was absurd, the thing you thought would never happen, the thing you said was wrong was done, and if that is not a lesson as we go forward into these other defective nominees, I can't help you; I can't make you vote any other way.

But it ought to be clear that, with future misconduct by this guy, whether he is being drunk on duty or erratic or abusive or inappropriate with female staff and officers or even abusing the power of our military to accomplish political purposes for President Trump, there is really no sign of guardrails to prevent that, and an inadequate FBI report is something that should be cleared up before Republicans are forced to vote on this.

It is in your power to look into these things and get it done. It is not in our power in the minority. We are doing the best we can. So I urge you to consider those dangers as we move forward toward this vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise now for the 296th time to direct our attention to what is coming at us through fossil fuel emissions causing our natural systems to be significantly disturbed.

We are not yet all the way through the first week of the second Trump administration, and already Trump has made his priorities clear: Looters and polluters reign, and their feeding frenzy comes at the expense of the American people. I expect the looting and polluting have only just begun. So we have made a new chart that will surely see the Senate floor again.

When President Trump needed cash for his campaign, he knew just whom to ask. He convened Big Oil CEOs at Mar-a-Lago. He requested that they pony up $1 billion for his campaign. And he promised them he would immediately reverse dozens of President Biden's environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted. Giving him $1 billion, he said, would be a ``deal'' because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him.

Well, he is right about that being a superdeal for polluters. The industry benefits from more than $700 billion a year in subsidy in the United States alone--$1 billion to Trump to protect $700 billion to the industry. That is a pretty good return on investment for fossil fuel.

Well, Trump won and the billionaires who funded Trump's campaign want their payback. Payback began this week with a big score for the leaders and polluters. On his first day, President Trump signed Executive orders to lay the groundwork for weakening vehicle emission standards, raising costs for families--raising costs for families--an average of $6,000 to $8,000, while also harming public health from the added emissions, and weakening our American automobile industry's global competitiveness, a major gift to Big Oil at the expense of regular Americans and consumers.

Review EPA's 2009 finding that the greenhouse gases are a danger, even though that finding has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The winners? The polluters driving climate change: dramatically reduce or eliminate the social cost of carbon to protect the fossil fuel free-to- pollute business model, made subsidized fossil fuel winners over domestic clean energy losers.

Do you remember when Republicans used to say government shouldn't pick winners and losers--until it is the fossil fuel industry.

Withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, helping fossil fuel undermine global efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution; stopping offshore wind development, a clean energy competitor to his fossil fuel funders, at the expense of American

consumers, workers, and our own domestic manufacturing base.

Rhode Island, by the way, is home to the Nation's first offshore wind farm and a growing number of good union jobs in the industry.

Would President Trump say to the country that, on his first day in office, it was time to repay his Big Oil donors? Well, that wouldn't have gone over well so he had to pretend all these donor handouts would benefit the public. His first day Executive order on energy begins by stating:

America is blessed with an abundance of energy and natural

resources that have historically powered our Nation's

economic prosperity. In recent years, burdensome and

ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the

development of these resources, limited the generation of

reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation,

and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens. These high

energy costs devastate consumers by driving up the cost of

transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and

manufacturing, while weakening our national security.

Virtually none of that is true.

So let's look at the claims one by one. First, yes, he got this right. America is, indeed, blessed with energy abundance. Where it is particularly abundant is in wind power. We have the third greatest offshore wind power potential of any country in the world. We have the fourth greatest onshore wind potential anywhere in the world. Indeed, wind resources in the Great Plains States alone could supply the United States with 16 times our electricity demand.

That is energy abundance.

Then, as this map from our national labs shows, we have amazing solar energy resource potential, particularly in the Southwest and through the Southeast.

Now, Trump defines energy as ``crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, the kinetic movement of flowing water, and critical minerals.'' Notice anything missing? That is literally every possible iteration of fossil fuel, plus nuclear, geothermal, and hydro; everything except wind and solar, which produced more electricity than coal last year and could power the entire country.

Trump next claims regulations have impeded the development of energy resources. And by that, as we just heard, he means fossil fuels. Well, as he would say, ``wrong.''

Under President Biden--and, actually, regrettably, from a climate point of view--the United States produced more oil than ever before in the Biden years, indeed, setting monthly records for oil production. So that wasn't true either.

Well, it is foolish to abandon those enormous wind and solar assets-- not good for our country or our economy, good only for their fossil fuel competition.

And there is an additional big economic danger if we stick with oil because the United States is a high-cost oil producer. The average cost to produce a barrel of U.S. crude ranges from $50 to $70. In Saudi Arabia, the marginal cost of production is around $10 a barrel--$50 to $70 for us, $10 for the Saudis. That means our industry will always be vulnerable to cheaper foreign producers. And by the way, it has happened before.

In 2015, the Saudis decided they didn't like America producing so much, so they turned on their spigots, causing a big hit to American oil and gas companies. Once they had tanked American production, they reduced their own back to normal levels and the price of gasoline spiked for our consumers.

They can do that again anytime they want. It is basic business and economic sense not to put all your eggs in an industry where you are the high-cost producer. We have a competitive advantage in wind and solar with those massive resources and continent-straddling range that spans multiple time zones, allowing wind and solar energy to be sent wherever the wind isn't then blowing or wherever the Sun isn't then shining.

We have massive clean energy opportunities.

Trump claims that existing energy policies have reduced job creation. Again, wrong. Oil patch jobs have been reduced, not by regulations but by automation. Where the country has seen a job boom is in the low- carbon energy sectors with more than 400,000 jobs created since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Low-carbon energy now employs more people than fossil energy. It is where the jobs are--not that Big Oil cares about that for 1 minute.

Trump claims that renewable energy is driving up energy costs for Americans. Wrong again. Solar and wind have, for some time, been the least expensive forms of energy that there are.

Wind is the bottom blue line, solar panels are the bottom yellow line.

They have been the cheapest since 2015 or, if you go back further, 2013. We have had a solid decade of wind and solar being the least expensive forms of energy for the American public. But Big Oil doesn't care. They just want to sell their dirty product.

What does actually drive up energy costs for Americans? The greed of Big Oil. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, OPEC, the international cartel, jacked up prices and U.S. oil producers rode along to epic profits off of those events. You just have to look at their sworn financial statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission about what profits they earned. They earned the biggest profits in the history of the world. In a nutshell, they gouged.

Electricity bills also rose when the price of natural gas spiked after that Russian invasion. Climate change means Americans are spending more to cool their homes because it is hotter than it has ever been. If you are living in Phoenix or Houston or Tampa, you are likely running your air-conditioner nonstop for months on end, and that is on your electricity bill. That is just going to get worse as Trump's looters and polluters have their way.

Climate change-fueled wildfires are forcing utilities in the West to spend billions burying transmission and distribution lines to avoid sparking more fires. That increases electric bills--another climate cost to consumers.

And, obviously, Trump's decision to let his big LNG donors export more LNG will drive up natural gas prices here at home. When there is less at home because more is going overseas, prices go up. That is supply and demand 101.

Here, again, under Trump, fossil fuel wins, American families lose and Big Oil doesn't care.

The wind and Sun and flowing water and the Earth's heat are all free fuels. Fossil fuels put us at the mercy of foreign petrodictators and predatory cartels. Just from a national security perspective, why not choose the free fuels that no outside actor controls?

And then, of course, come the costs of climate change itself burdening American families with climateflation, from grocery staples to insurance prices, to shipping costs, all rising as the result of climate change, disrupting agriculture, weather, and transit--even all the gas price-gouging by the industry thrown in.

That is just the climateflation.

Then comes the danger to our entire economy. For a look into coming attractions, check out what is happening out in Los Angeles, where raging Santa Ana winds turbocharged wildfires tearing through American families' homes much because of climate change. Climate change is perhaps the biggest systemic financial risk to our economy and, thus, to families' personal finances.

And where is this coming true first? In the insurance markets. Insurance markets are the leading edge of our time of consequences. The L.A. fires, with insured losses in the tens of billions of dollars and total economic losses likely in the hundreds of billions, on top of last fall's hurricanes--which resulted in hundreds of billions in economic losses in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia--are a dangerous blow to tottering insurance markets.

In recent years, millions of Americans had insurance policies canceled due to rising climate risk. Millions more saw skyrocketing premiums, particularly in Florida, that forced families in some cases to drop coverage, leaving their families' most important financial assets--their homes--exposed. Insurers are pulling out of some markets altogether. Insurers are going bankrupt. Insurers are flooding mailboxes with price hikes and notices of cancelation and nonrenewals, and that all hits property values.

So the concern here is cascading failures--cascading failures from the insurance market, to the mortgage market, to a property values collapse, and that ends in economy-wide catastrophe. Along the way, home ownership will move further out of reach for the middle class as homes are burdened with more risk and expense. Property owners will have homes that they aren't able to sell because they can't be insured, so a buyer can't get a mortgage to afford the house. There is a lot of pain before the collapse.

We have been through a long period of climate lies, and now, unfortunately, we are entering the period of climate consequences. To stave off the worst consequences, we must eliminate the carbon pollution that is the root of it all. President Trump's Executive orders do exactly the opposite, exposing us to grave economic dangers, and for the worst of reasons: to reward wealthy special interests who donated to his campaign.

The American people need to watch their wallets. When President Trump says he is fighting for you, think twice. He is actually fighting for the Big Oil donors--the fossil fuel billionaires--who got him elected. The looters and the polluters are looking to get ever richer, and they will loot working families, pollute Mother Nature, and damage our families' futures to do it.

So we fight on.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for one more question?

Through the Chair, the Senator mentioned the Budget Committee. In the hearings that we have had in the Budget Committee, during which we have discussed tax cuts and their effect on revenues and their ability to pay for themselves, how many times have our Republican colleagues been able to produce a witness who, under oath, would say that these tax cuts would actually pay for themselves?

Madam President, I would make the point to my friend from Massachusetts that when Democrats used reconciliation, we used the reconciliation process to do the Inflation Reduction Act and help everyone. The Inflation Reduction Act meant green jobs to red States, and it meant less pollution for everyone. The Republicans are teeing up to use reconciliation to help big CEOs, billionaires, and big corporations that are already doing amazingly well.

If you feel you are being left behind by those folks, it is because you are. Look at what CEO pay has done, rocketing skyward, compared to the pay of the top 1 percent--other folks in the C-suite who may not be the CEO--compared to typical worker wages down here. Most Americans are right here, and most of the benefit of this tax reform will go to these folks.

CEOs are taking a larger and larger share for themselves of the resources of American corporations, leaving less and less to pay their workers, and that is the difference: rocketing upward and more or less flat. They want to make this worse through their reconciliation.

If you want to add another backdrop to what is going on here, this is the share of America's revenue that is contributed by corporations. A lot of people in this body seem to want to go back to the good old days of the 1950s when things were whatever they were then. Well, back in the 1950s, more than 30 percent of America's revenue came from our corporate community. Corporations were making a real and significant contribution to America's revenues and enjoying the significant growth that being an American corporation provides you. But politically they hacked and they hacked and they hacked away at their responsibilities, and now they are paying 6 percent of America's revenues. As wealthy as American corporations are, they add 6 percent now of America's revenues. And this, too, will be made worse by this Republican program.

Half the benefits go to the top 5 percent. If you are making over a million bucks, it is a $78,000 tax cut; if you are making 50 grand, 273 bucks. Thanks a bunch. And the hit is going to come to regular Americans through Medicare, through Medicaid, and through support for their healthcare.

They will even lower taxes for companies moving jobs and profits offshore. How about that for ``Make America Great Again.''

I tell you, when you actually take a look under the hood, what you see every time is that the benefits of these Republican tax cuts go to the biggest corporations, to the billionaires, and to corporate CEOs, and within those biggest corporations, the worst ones for moving jobs and profits offshore. It is as reliable as the sunrise, and it is as wrong as it can be.

I yield to my friend Senator Rosen.

Mr. President, I ask that the vote begin at this moment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, let me start by pointing out that this is a national security bill. And the reason that it is a national security bill is because--to paraphrase a famous author--the United States is engaged in a clash of civilizations. And I describe that clash of civilizations as between rule of law countries like the United States and countries that are run by kleptocrats and oligarchs and criminals or subject to control by traffickers and international criminal organizations.

Now, if you are an oligarch or a kleptocrat or international criminal, the thing you want more than anything else is to be able to hide what you stole. And you don't want to hide what you stole in your own corrupt and crooked country. You want to hide what you stole behind rule of law.

And the result is that the United States and other countries on the rule of law side of this clash of civilizations are giving aid and comfort to our enemies by helping them hide their crooked assets.

The concern for the United States was made pretty clear by Treasury Secretary Yellen, who admitted ``there's a good argument that . . . the best place to hide and launder ill-gotten gains is actually the United States.''

So we are trying to clean that mess up. And it is not just this administration. Under President Trump, Secretary Mnuchin said:

Treasury's ability to combat tax evasion and to detect,

deter, and disrupt money laundering and terrorist financing

would be greatly enhanced through reporting of beneficial

ownership information.

The suggestion that this magically appeared in some bill? No. It was worked through two committees in the Senate. It has been bipartisan from its earliest days, both in the Judiciary Committee and in the Banking Committee. It has been through enormous effort. And, in fact, the last Trump administration, working with us on this bill in 2019, released a statement of administration policy condemning this bipartisan ``measure that will help prevent malign actors from leveraging anonymity to exploit these entities for criminal gain.''

Are there examples of what has been going on? Well, terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Putin's oligarch cronies, North Korean foreign operatives, and fentanyl traffickers all need shell companies to hide what they have stolen.

Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the ``Merchant of Death,'' used a global network of anonymous shell companies, including at least 12 incorporated in Delaware, Florida, and Texas. Anonymous LLCs impeded New York City's ability to trace the terror finance scheme that funded the 9/11 attacks--again, shell corporations that we didn't know who was really behind.

An anonymous New York company served as a front for the Iranian government in violation of U.S. sanctions, with millions of dollars in rent illegally funneled to Iran.

A DOJ indictment last year said that cartel operatives designed a network of shell companies in Wyoming to launder illegal millions for the Sinaloa cartel. Narco traffickers in New Jersey were charged with using an American shell company to buy fentanyl-related supplies from China.

So this is a real problem, which is why the Trump administration's Statement of Administration Policy was supportive.

Now, we went through a lot of effort to get here. The first group that stood up against it was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and when it was exposed what they were arguing for, they actually ended up backing off and going to neutral on the bill, because they are bank members and they are anti-money laundering members.

And other Members of the Chamber said: What are we doing here?

And as soon as when that entity disappeared, up came the American Bar Association, doing the same thing. And their banking session and their anti-money laundering session and their former prosecutors and their national security folks all said: What are you doing?

And so the American Bar Association backed off.

The third in this game of political special interests whack-a-mole was NFIB, which came in to present the same stale argument to Senator Graham, Senator Grassley, and myself that were so stale and so flagrant that--well, I am not going to name names. Let's just say the NFIB had a very bad day facing down this bipartisan group.

So a lot of work has gone into this. The stakes are very high. This actually is a national security bill. And against that risk of being the loser in the clash of civilizations, because we are giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to use American shell corporations to hide what they get selling fentanyl to our citizens, here is what we ask: When you set up a corporation, you tell us your name. That is not very complicated. You can do that pretty quickly. You tell us your address. That doesn't take more than a couple of seconds to remember. What is my address? Yeah, write that down. Your date of birth? That is pretty simple too. And then either a passport or driver's license number. It is, literally, that simple. Where it gets complicated is where you have complex networks of joined shell companies in a complex corporate structure. But if that is what you have got, the very same lawyers who put that complex structure together can easily add this information.

So, in my view, delaying the Corporate Transparency Act would empower criminals who are operating through American shell companies, who outcompete and defraud honest small business owners, while emboldening and facilitating terrorist groups, foreign adversaries like Russia and China and Iran, North Korean weapons of mass destruction financing, fentanyl trafficking, and a whole array of grotesquely bad actors.

So I object. With great regard for my friend Senator Lankford, I object.

Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable budget points of order for the purposes of the pending measure.

I ask for the yeas and nays, and for the sake of our retired police officers, firefighters, and teachers, I would urge you to provide a lot more yeas than nays.

Madam President, I rise today to honor my constituent Pam Rubinoff. Pam is the coastal resilience lead for the Rhode Island Sea Grant and the University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center. She has spent three decades engaging with coastal communities, helping them implement science-informed coastal management and shoreline protection measures. Pam started her career working with coastal communities in Latin America and Africa but has focused her outreach in Rhode Island for the past 10 years. She has helped coastal communities address a range of challenges, including flooding and rising sea levels caused by climate change.

Pam's steadfast commitment to coastal communities in Rhode Island and beyond will have a lasting effect and protect people and communities from flooding and erosion. Pam worked with the city of Providence to pilot a near-real-time storm forecasting and infrastructure impact assessment tool, which has helped prioritize public emergency personnel response to flooded urban neighborhoods. With Pam's help, the Providence Resilience Partnership catalyzed $2.3 million in Federal funding for a range of projects, including a climate risk assessment of the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier, the neighborhood's main line of defense against major storms. She created the first-ever Military Installation Resilience Review plan for Naval Station Newport, a U.S. Navy property located in a flood zone that is at growing risk for coastal inundation. Pam has also advanced scientific and community engagement through solutions like MyCoastRI, an app-based tool to gather and analyze photos of flooding and storm impacts.

In addition to her scientific work, Pam is great mentor for the next generation of coastal management professionals. Countless undergraduate and graduate students who Pam mentored are now local partners in emergency management, sustainability, and other professions where they put climate science to use. Her ability to clearly communicate the need for shoreline protection makes her highly sought after by government advisory committees, industry groups, community organizations, and the media. I applaud Pam's work and thank her on behalf of all the Ocean State.

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

Mr. President, this is, I think, my 295th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, with my increasingly battered graphic, which the Smithsonian has asked for as the most used graphic in Senate history, but I wouldn't let them have it until we solve the problem, so it just gets increasingly dented.

But what I want to talk about now is the trip that I just took with Senator Markey to the COP, the Conference of the Parties, the COP 29 in Azerbaijan, where Senator Markey and I heard a similar message from almost everyone there: The transition to clean energy is happening and will continue to happen no matter who occupies the White House.

China's auto market will achieve a milestone this year with electric and hybrid vehicles half of all vehicles sold. China is also installing record amounts of wind, solar, and nuclear. Europe is rapidly and irreversibly weaning itself off fossil fuels, with greenhouse gas emissions projected to fall by 8 percent this year--enormous progress. In Australia, one-third of homes have rooftop solar, and they are growing dramatically. More than 40 percent of Australia's electricity comes from renewables, headed for 80 percent by 2030.

So while America's energy policy has been sold out to Trump's fossil fuel donors, the world will go on, leaving America more and more behind. Nor does Trump being for sale mean that there won't be leadership on climate change coming from the United States. California as the fifth largest economy in the world and New York as the 10th largest economy in the world, joined by other States like New Jersey and Rhode Island, can pursue together ambitious decarbonization policies. These States can move markets, and they will win economically against States that are left stuck with expensive, polluting fossil fuel.

The European Union is driving forward on climate change, particularly with its carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM. Europe's power and industrial sectors already work under a domestic carbon price. The CBAM extends that carbon price beyond EU borders to imports that are entering the European Union. American exporters are going to start paying a tariff if their exports aren't up to EU carbon emission standards. Given the size of EU markets, the CBAM amounts to a global carbon price for energy-intensive industrial goods.

Not just the EU but the UK has announced that it is joining the CBAM also. We spoke with Australia, which is in detailed negotiations to join as well. Because of the CBAM, even economies that aren't joining, like India and China, are looking at domestic carbon pricing to reduce the tariff burden. After all, why pay tariffs to get into EU, UK, and Australian markets when you can keep the same revenue at home via a domestic carbon price?

Washington State voters just approved a carbon price by an overwhelming margin. New England's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a small but successful multistate carbon price. Carbon pricing is coming, and that is good news because there is no longer a pathway to climate safety without a price on carbon.

We heard from business leaders about the economic havoc that climate change is causing, particularly now in insurance markets. It is a subject that my Budget Committee has examined closely, and our committee is going to release several more reports on the climate economic threat before I relinquish that gavel.

As I said frequently at the COP, we have gone through three stages on climate change.

The first stage was the science phase. Scientists did their job, and they gave us accurate warnings about the dangers of fossil fuel emissions to the planet and to humanity.

Then we came to the political phase. We did not do our jobs. Despite the warnings of science, politicians yielded to an unprecedented campaign of obstruction and disinformation orchestrated and funded by the fossil fuel industry through a flotilla of dark money front groups and captured trade associations.

One rare bright moment in this political failure came when Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, but despite its now proven benefit to Republican districts, not one Republican would vote for it.

Now we enter the third phase of climate change: the economic phase, the time of consequences. In this phase, climate change warnings start coming home to roost in household economies. We see it immediately in the insurance crisis in climate risk areas, with Florida being ground zero for exploding home and car insurance rates in a collapsing insurance market. We also see it in grocery aisles as droughts and floods hammer agricultural commodities. Shipping is constricted in dried-up waterways, like the Panama Canal or the Mississippi River; supply chains unravel; and for good measure, Big Oil adds to the cost problems by jacking up gas prices.

Let's review that for a moment. When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, gas prices spiked, assisted by the OPEC cartel. Big Oil had a two-part strategy ready to go: One, raise their prices to meet the new cartel price, pushing high prices at the pump for Americans, and two, blame the high prices that they put at the pump for Americans on Joe Biden. That campaign of blame was pure theater. Obviously, oil companies set their own gas prices; government doesn't. The surge in oil profits coming from their price gouging shows their multibillion- dollar motivation. Falsely blaming Joe Biden--well, that helped their politics.

The red line on this graph shows inflation-adjusted oil prices. Two things are clear: One, oil prices are dangerously volatile, and two, they keep getting higher, even adjusted for inflation.

This blue line here shows the average postwar oil prices.

This green line here shows the average price per barrel since 1980, up $13 from the postwar average.

So behind all of this volatility noise is an actual, persistent increase in cost, even inflation-adjusted.

This brown line up here shortens the timeframe further. It shows the average price since 2000, and it is up another $12--a total $25-per- barrel increase.

The lesson? Stay addicted to oil, and our future will be volatile, increasingly expensive, and dangerous.

Where fossil fuel denies us energy security and drives inflation, renewable energy offers us stable, affordable energy, powered by fuels that are free--sunlight and wind and flowing water and geothermal heat. None depend on tyrants' whims or foreign cartels' greed.

Then add the economic costs of climate change--not just the cost of the product but the cost to life of burning that product. Fossil fuel emissions are driving up the cost of insurance, electricity, and groceries, to name just the most prominent examples. Homeowners' premiums in Florida have tripled or quadrupled. And it is not just Florida--go to coastal Louisiana or Texas or even California and other States. They are seeing surging insurance premiums, including auto premiums, as floods and hailstorms and fires become more common and intense.

Electricity bills soared when utilities had to spend billions of dollars upgrading their distribution networks to prevent them from sparking wildfires in this new hotter, dryer condition that climate change has caused, and hotter temperatures increased electric utility bills as families had to use more energy in order to cool their homes. Phoenix's record 113 consecutive days of 100-plus-degree heat this year required lots of excess electricity.

In America's grocery aisles, you will find example after example of staples whose prices increased due to climate change--climate-fueled droughts, climate-fueled floods, climate-fueled heat waves. Orange juice, chocolate, olive oil, sugar--the list goes on. It is climateflation, and we should call it that.

The fossil fuel industry's fake concern for America's consumers is illustrated by liquefied natural gas--LNG--exports. Guess how economies work. Domestic prices rise when we export more LNG because there is less left for the American consumer: supply down, demand the same, price up. Yet Big Oil happily raises prices on Americans by fighting for more, more, more LNG exports and more and more profits, driving higher prices for American families.

Who is actually responsible for these price increases? The oil and gas executives who obstructed climate action for decades, putting our economy and our planet at ever greater peril. They knew that the continued combustion of oil and gas would eventually result in dozens of feet of sea level rise and make extreme storms, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and floods far more likely. They knew, and rather than fix it, they bought off the Republican Party with campaign cash and dark money front groups. Those oil and gas chieftains were among the biggest donors to President Trump's campaign. Just this year, Trump asked them for $1 billion in campaign money in exchange for doing their bidding--quid pro quo.

The burden on American families of higher insurance premiums, higher electricity bills, higher grocery bills, and storm-ravaged homes and cars is about to turn worse. There is an old saying--I think it was Ernest Hemingway--about going bankrupt. He said it happens very slowly and then all at once. We are headed for an all-at-once moment. Witnesses in our Budget Committee hearings warn that when insurance markets melt down because of unpredictable climate risk, the problem then cascades on into mortgage markets because you need insurance to get a mortgage, and that then cascades on into property values because your property's value drops if buyers can't get a mortgage to buy it from you.

I mean, it is fine if you are a billionaire in Palm Beach who is going to sell Mar-a-Lago to the next billionaire, and it is all a big cash transaction. But if you are a plumber in a development outside of Orlando, you need somebody who can get a mortgage to buy your property. And if you can't insure your property so that it can't support a mortgage, you are going to have a real problem with its property value.

The former chief economist of mortgage giant Freddie Mac testified this cascade ends in a shock to the economy like the 2008 mortgage meltdown.

He is not alone. Just to give one other example of many, The Economist magazine--not exactly a green outfit--warned in a cover article that ``climate change . . . could wipe out . . . $25 trillion'' of value in the global housing market; ``experts warn of a `climate- insurance bubble' affecting a third of American homes.''

That prediction from the chief economist of Freddie Mac about a coastal property values crash that would cascade into a 2008-style economic meltdown for the country was based on, as I said, coastal property values, but now the Carolinas can tell you about upland flooding destroying the reliability of insurance. And California and Western States can tell you about wildfire risk crashing insurance markets.

So the original risk to coastal properties now has these evil siblings of climate risk to upland flooding and to wildfire-adjacent properties. So it is likely to be worse. And as The Economist points out, it is affecting a third of American homes.

Rather than face up to any of this, the incoming administration will deny it all as payback to their oil and gas industry donors--corruption of the lowest sort. But no amount of lies, propaganda, and corruption can change the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. You can deny gravity all you want, but when you step out a window, the result is the same.

So I will be laser-focused on the corruption that Trump will unleash on America and the economic consequences of climate change that Americans will face. As the climate danger long warned about comes home to roost in surging insurance premiums, flooded communities, higher prices, and crashing property values in flood and wildfire-exposed communities--again, potentially causing a 2008-style economywide economic shock--we will explain to Americans how it did not have to be this way, how these costs are the poison fruit of the fossil fuel industry's climate fraud and its corrupt bargains with Trump.

And with that, I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled vote occur commencing now.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I speak in opposition today to the budget resolution put forward by my colleague from Kentucky.

Last year, President Biden and then-Speaker McCarthy came to an agreement on top-line appropriations levels for the current fiscal year as well as the fiscal year beginning on October 1. This bipartisan agreement, which included a 2-year budget deal, was passed by bipartisan votes in both Houses and was signed into law by the President. So, as of June 3, 2023, we have had a bipartisan budget deal that is good for 2 years--until September 30, 2025.

Just days before a government shutdown, House Republicans have spent most of this month trying to figure out how much of the deal they could renege on to get votes from their fractured caucus. Here in the Senate, this proposal also breaks the agreement, proposing $20 trillion in Federal spending cuts over 10 years but not a single detail about where it would cut.

Republicans are not happy to disclose where cuts would be because the American people would not be happy about the likely results--cuts, for instance, to Medicare, veterans programs, border security, national parks, law enforcement, transportation safety, affordable housing, education, and Medicaid. And, of course, the ``drill, baby, drill'' climate deniers would cut climate and clean air and water programs. If adopted, in its final year, this budget would cut all of those programs by 35 percent.

While this budget attacks basic Federal programs in the name of fiscal responsibility, Republicans simultaneously plan to blow up the deficit by cutting taxes for their billionaire mega-donors and big corporations. Under one hat, Republicans act fiscally conservatively and seek to cut programs to reduce the national debt. Under their other hat, they pursue more Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, increasing the debt by $4.6 trillion.

Last year, I asked CBO if it were mathematically possible to balance the budget within 10 years, extend the Trump tax cuts, and fully fund Social Security and Medicare, defense, and veterans programs. The answer from

CBO: No. The math simply doesn't add up. So that budget exists in fiscal fantasy land.

My Republican colleagues don't want to hear it, but more than a third of our national debt stems not from deficits but from economic shocks-- the 2008 financial crisis and COVID. As we have heard over and over again in the Budget Committee, the economic shocks from climate change will likely dwarf those we experienced during the financial crisis--for instance, one caused by a climate-driven insurance crisis that crashes mortgage markets and property values nationwide. We have heard those warnings from everywhere from the chief economist of Freddie Mac to the front page of The Economist magazine.

What we should do, in bipartisan fashion, is decorrupt the Tax Code so that big corporations and billionaires are no longer a favored, free-riding elite. The Bush and Trump tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations are another third--$10 trillion of the national debt. Without those tax cuts, the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is our best fiscal safety metric, would be declining in perpetuity.

Helping the wealthy avoid taxes is such an infatuation that House Republicans brought the United States to the brink of default in trying to prevent the IRS from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats.

If we want to address the national debt, preventing massive economic shocks, decorrupting the Tax Code and getting serious about healthcare reform are the ways to go about it. This is not.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled vote begin immediately.

I ask for the yeas and nays.