Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to honor and recognize Michael S. Treppel for his nearly quarter century of distinguished service to the U.S. Congress. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Treppel has tirelessly supported the safety and well-being of more than 30,000 congressional staff, security personnel, and Members of the House and Senate. His work--often behind the scenes--has allowed others to carry out their duties with the confidence that their health and safety were in expert hands.

From the daycare centers to the Chambers of the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Treppel's impact has been both broad and profound. As an environmental health specialist and later as director of environmental health within the Office of Attending Physician--OAP--he has been the trusted adviser, evaluator, and implementer of critical health and safety policies that shaped the day-to-day environment of Congress. Mr. Treppel conducted over 5,000 inspections across nine congressional buildings, ensuring strict adherence to food safety standards and pathogen prevention protocols. His work was central to staff welfare, and he quickly corrected any discrepancies while establishing preventative measures to ensure long-term compliance.

He worked closely with leading experts from the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and internal leadership from the Architect of the Capitol--AOC--and OAP. During the anthrax and ricin incidents at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Treppel played a pivotal role in evaluating ventilation systems and contamination risks, providing vital guidance to protect occupants. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the environmental health response for the entire Capitol complex. He singlehandedly recommended and guided sanitation and remediation requirements for all nine buildings and the U.S. Capitol, helping to restore safe occupancy in offices, common areas, committee rooms, eateries, and the House and Senate Chambers. He also facilitated the delivery of critical Personal Protective Equipment--PPE--including plexiglass shields, N-95 respirators, and medical-grade disinfectants. When the return-to-work transition began, he assessed and approved the use of physical barriers, distancing protocols, and sanitation measures. His knowledge and calm guidance became a trusted source for thousands navigating uncertainty during a global health crisis. He also developed and led PPE training for clinical staff for COVID-19, H1N1, SARS, Ebola, etc., ensuring that frontline medical personnel were equipped to protect themselves and others--and he made proper donning and doffing of protective equipment second nature to the Capitol's medical teams.

He also played a vital role in the planning and reopening of the new House Child Daycare Center in the O'Neill Building, providing input on space requirements, sanitation procedures, and illness policies. His oversight extended to the Library of Congress and Senate daycare centers as well, where he continued to ensure safe environments through inspections and guidance on evolving health standards.

Mr. Treppel oversaw the occupational health division and served as a contracting officer representative. He was instrumental in managing hundreds of thousands of dollars of contracts for health surveillance programs for AOC tunnel workers, power plant employees, and U.S. Capitol Police. During the pandemic, when services were paused due to social distancing, he facilitated a smooth transition to mobile medical units, ensuring uninterrupted OSHA-compliant care for at-risk workers. In addition to his environmental expertise, he helped interview and evaluate hundreds of nursing candidates to support both routine care and mass casualty preparedness for the congressional community.

Few individuals have had such a lasting and comprehensive impact on the operational safety of the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Treppel's unwavering dedication, depth of knowledge, and calm presence during times of crisis have made him an invaluable part of the congressional community.

As he retires, we offer our sincere gratitude for his exceptional service. His legacy of leadership and care will be felt for many years to come.

We thank Michael S. Treppel and wish him the very best in his well- deserved retirement.

Mr. President, I would like to recognize the remarkable life and career of Ambassador Lino Gutierrez, a dedicated public servant whose decades of diplomacy helped shape U.S. engagement across the Western Hemisphere. He passed away on May 3, 2025, leaving behind a legacy defined by service and impact.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Ambassador Gutierrez came to the United States as a young boy, fleeing Castro's regime and beginning a journey that would see him rise to some of the highest ranks of American diplomacy. Gutierrez served in the Foreign Service under five Presidents and 11 Secretaries of State, including as U.S. Ambassador to both Nicaragua and Argentina.

In those roles, Ambassador Gutierrez led and oversaw a number of significant achievements. During his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, the United States and Argentina signed agreements on counterterrorism and counternarcotics cooperation and container security. As Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Gutierrez led the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs on September 11, 2001, and beyond. He accompanied Secretary of State Colin Powell to Lima, Peru, for the signing of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and returned with the Secretary's party to the United States on September 11, 2001. During his tenure in Nicaragua, Gutierrez oversaw efforts to demobilize and reintegrate the Contra fighters into civil society, strengthen the country's newly established democratic government after years of authoritarian rule, and coordinated the U.S. relief effort following the deadly devastation of Hurricane Mitch.

After retiring from the State Department, Ambassador Gutierrez remained deeply committed to strengthening the Foreign Service. As executive director of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation, he championed initiatives to enhance recruitment, professional development, and public understanding of diplomacy. He also taught as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins and George Washington Universities, served on the board of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, was appointed by Secretary of State John Kerry to the Foreign Service Grievance Board, and provided expert guidance to DACOR on fostering strong U.S.-Latin America relations. Through these endeavors, Ambassador Gutierrez leaves behind a remarkable legacy which will continue to shape the next generation of U.S. diplomatic and foreign policy leaders.

Ambassador Gutierrez embodied the American ideal of public service. I extend my deepest condolences to his wife Miriam, their three daughters, and six grandchildren. May his example continue to inspire all who believe in diplomacy as a force for peace, security, and opportunity.

Mr. President, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I ask that further reading be dispensed with.

Mr. President, my motion would require the bill to come back with no cuts to faith-based organizations in the International Development account and the Migration and Refugee Assistance accounts. These two accounts, on the refugee side, provide service to lawful immigrants of the United States overwhelmingly by faith-based organizations in this country, and the development assistance is disaster relief by faith-based organizations.

Whose funds are being cut by this? Catholic Relief Services--been doing this for 80 years; Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; World Vision; World Relief Corporation of the Evangelical Association; Lutheran Social Services; Lutheran World Relief; the Episcopal Church; Bethany Christian Services; Jesuit Refugee Services; Samaritans First.

This is a war on faith-based workers who are providing services in many instances for decades, even over a century. I would ask the support of my colleagues that we not cut faith-based organizations doing work in accordance with their faith.

Mr. President, I just ask that you join with these organizations that support my motion, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Motion to Recommit

Mr. President, I oppose H.R. 4 and believe it reflects profoundly misplaced priorities for America. Accordingly, it is my intention to make the following motions to recommit the bill:

A motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on

Appropriations with instructions to report back to the Senate

with changes that include eliminating the rescission of

Migration and Refugee Assistance funds and International

Disaster Assistance funds, including such funds that support

activities of faith-based organizations or their local

partners.

A motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on

Appropriations with instructions to report back to the Senate

with changes that include eliminating the rescission of any

funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that

supports pre-K educational programming.

A motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on

Appropriations with instructions to report back to the Senate

with changes that include eliminating the rescission of any

funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for any

broadcasts and media stations that disseminate information

during natural disasters and national emergencies.

Mr. President, the good news is that I am the last speaker of the day. I wish I could tell you my speech will be short. I don't think it will be long, but I will try to make it interesting.

I want to tell you a story. It is not a story about anything that has happened in this building. It is a story about a very humble Catholic parish in Northside Richmond, VA, called St. Elizabeth of Hungary. It is a humble parish. It is a small parish. It is slightly over 100 years old. It is the church where my wife and I were married more than 40 years ago, where all three of our children were baptized, where we attended Mass just this last Sunday to hear the Gospel reading of the story of the Good Samaritan.

The church was founded more than 100 years ago in an unusual way. There were Italian and German immigrants in Richmond who felt looked down upon because of where they had come from and because of the accents that they spoke with and that their English wasn't so good.

In the aftermath of World War I, people looked at German-Americans and Italian-Americans with some suspicion. German language was being criminalized in some of our States in the aftermath.

These immigrant refugee Catholics decided that they wanted a place where they could feel welcomed, loved, and safe as they worshipped in accord with the American value of freedom of worship. So they set up this little parish in the Highland Park neighborhood of Northside Richmond, VA, where they could go and be together and feel safe. They chose an interesting name, St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary lived 1,000 years ago. She was a teenager, and she was a queen in a time of great poverty. Against the wishes of her husband and other officials, she would take bread and put the bread inside of her garments and go out and distribute it to the poor.

Once, she was caught, and she was made to open her garment, and when she did open her garment, the bread had turned into roses. That is the miracle that was attributed to her. She lived only a short time and died, but she was made a saint by the Catholic Church.

These immigrants who started my parish chose that name because they felt like that was what was needed in the world--people who would try to serve others in need.

One hundred years later--we celebrated the centennial of my church a couple of years ago, and I was sitting there--I have now been a member of the parish for 40 years--and I was looking around, and I realized that times change and they don't.

Catholic Relief Services, which is one of the largest agencies in the United States that help settle refugees, who are legal immigrants-- refugees are legal immigrants--about 15 years ago settled a Congolese family into my church who had been in a refugee camp after fleeing violence in the Congo. Catholic, French, and Swahili speaking, one Congolese family came to my church. Then, over time, Catholic Relief Services decided ``Well this family likes St. Elizabeth, and they feel welcomed here,'' and other families started to come to my church.

So by now, as we were celebrating our centennial and I was looking around the parish where I go--this small, very humble parish--it is a sizably Congolese refugee population, legal immigrants to the United States who have been settled through the Catholic Relief Services, and they have come to a place where they feel loved and cared for and safe and welcomed. The color of their skin, the accent they use, and the fact that they are unfamiliar with American culture might make them feel not so welcomed in other venues, but in my church, they feel welcomed.

It made me realize as we celebrated that centennial that my church looks really different in some ways than when it was founded 100 years ago, but in other ways, it is exactly the same. It is a haven for people who are legal immigrants to the United States but need a place where they can gather with others and feel welcomed.

Why do I tell that story? How is it connected to the rescission bill that we are going to be voting on tomorrow?

President Trump has sent a bill to Congress, and one of the pillars of that bill is to rescind the funding for refugee resettlement programs in the United States run by churches. Seven of the ten organizations that resettle refugees in the United States are faith- based organizations. The largest two are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, operating through the Catholic Relief Services, and the evangelical organization World Vision.

But it is not just them. There is Church World Service, Lutheran Social Services, the Episcopal Church of the United States, and World Relief. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was founded more than 100 years ago to try to bring Jews at that point from Europe to the United States and make sure that, as legal immigrants--yes, they would be allowed to be here legally, but they needed someone to teach them about American culture and integrating into American life.

The practice of American religious organizations assisting in legal immigration goes back more than a century, and President Trump's rescission package that is before us wipes out funding to a dramatic degree for virtually all of them.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has had to lay off hundreds of staff.

World Relief said this:

President Trump [has] said he will defend persecuted

Christians. [But] the U.S. refugee resettlement program is

one of the primary ways that the U.S. government protects

Christians and others fleeing persecution.

The Episcopal Church of the United States has had to end its longstanding refugee resettlement program because of President Trump's budget cuts.

Lutheran Social Services has had to--they have struggled to make payroll. They have had to lay off so many people. They reduced the services they are able to provide, especially to Afghan allies who are in the United States because they worked with the U.S. military in Afghanistan to protect our troops.

Catholic Charities has laid off all kinds of staff.

The families at my church come up to me after mass on Sunday, and they are so frightened about what might happen because many of them have family still in refugee camps who might want to come here as legal refugees, as legal immigrants.

I don't know of a President who has attacked religious organizations--Catholic, evangelical, Jewish--that have been doing this work in many instances for more than a century, in

such an orchestrated, intentional, and calculated way as President Trump.

Matthew: ``I was a stranger and you welcomed me in. I was sick and you cared for me. I was hungry and you fed me.'' This is a bedrock belief of our Nation's religious organizations: that they will follow the law--legal refugee program--but they will help the person who is accessing legal refugee programs to be able to integrate into a society so they can live with some sense of dignity and have some chance of success.

Why cut these programs? Why look in the face of these religious organizations that, out of a motivation of conscience, for decades, even a century, have decided that they will try to smooth that path to integrate people into American life who are here lawfully? Why cut their funding? Why force them to be laid off? Why debilitate their ability to provide services? It is an attack on the religious organizations so that they cannot do the work that their faith and their Creator compels them to do.

I am not surprised that President Trump would propose this. The language and the rhetoric and the behavior that he has exhibited toward even legal refugees, legal immigrants to this country lead me to not be surprised that this important funding is on the chopping block in the bill that he has sent to the Senate. But I have to admit that I am surprised that it seems to be just moving on a path to being accepted. It was accepted in the House without much drama, including by a whole lot of people who go to churches, just like me, and hear sermons preached about the Good Samaritan, just like I do every Sunday.

We will have an opportunity tomorrow to grapple with it here. I intend to at least offer an amendment to try to strip this piece of the bill out so that the bill will not be an attack on religious organizations doing what they feel compelled by their faith to do.

It is my prayer that the entire rescission bill fail for the reasons my colleagues have said--a deal is a deal, and we shouldn't backtrack on it. But if we can't defeat the entire rescission bill, it is my hope that we will allow organizations like Catholic Relief Services and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Episcopal Church and World Vision and World Relief and Lutheran Social Services--it is my hope that we will at least allow them to practice the faith they sincerely believe and do it in a way consistent with what their practices have been for decades and in some cases more than a century.

And so that is what I am going to be praying for tonight, that there is a bit of an epiphany in this body, and we realize that the work that these church-based organizations are doing isn't bad. This work isn't something that should be slashed and cut with these valuable faith workers laid off.

My hope is that the Senate will realize this is good work that is really at the core of who we are as Americans--so tiny little parishes like St. Elizabeth of Hungary or synagogues or other churches all over this country who pride themselves on offering a welcoming environment for people who are here lawfully and want to make their way in America will be able to continue to do just that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a motion to commit at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask that further reading of the motion be dispensed with.

Mr. President, 30 percent of the Federal workforce is veterans, compared with only 6 percent of the

overall workforce. The Trump administration has fired more veterans than any administration in the history of the United States.

Derek Copeland is an example. He is a 20-year Air Force veteran who trained bomb-sniffing dogs. He then took a job with the Department of Agriculture to train dogs to sniff out illegal agricultural products. He was fired 11 days before the end of his probationary year.

His termination letter said:

You have not demonstrated that your further employment at

the Agency would be in the public interest.

He said:

I gave blood, sweat and tears to this country for 20 years

to continue service to the federal government. . . . I . . .

feel like I was just thrown out like a piece of trash.

My motion hits ``pause'' on this bill and would stop mass firings of veterans because it is wrong. I would ask my colleagues to support my motion.

Mr. President, do I have any time?

Mr. President, we can stop this, and we should. President Trump has only been in office 6 months, and he has already fired more veterans than any President in American history.

Please vote yes.

Vote on Motion to Commit

Mr. President, I oppose H.R. 1 and believe it reflects profoundly misplaced priorities for America. Accordingly, it is my intention to make the following motions to commit the bill:

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Homeland

Security and Governmental Affairs with instructions to report

back to the Senate with changes that include provisions

terminating the mass termination of federal employees who are

veterans without a report to Congress 60 days ahead of such

action, detailing the positions, agencies, and number of

federal employees dismissed. Mass termination is defined as

more than 1% of any federal agency's workforce who are

veterans as of January 20, 2025.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Homeland

Security and Governmental Affairs with instructions to report

back with provisions that provide $882,000,000 to the

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant

program within the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with changes that would

ensure that no State with a Medicaid expansion trigger law

would see a reduction in its Federal Matching Assistance

Percentage that would cause such a trigger law to take

effect.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with provisions that would

eliminate estate tax cuts for multi-millionaires and utilize

the savings to reduce the number of Americans who would lose

health care coverage under the bill.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with provisions that would

not increase the deficit in years beyond the budget window

when measured against a current-law baseline produced by the

Congressional Budget Office in consultation with the Joint

Committee on Taxation.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with provisions that would

provide small businesses, farmers, and low- and moderate-

income families with relief from the duties imposed pursuant

to Executive Order 14257 (90 Fed. Reg. 15041; relating to

regulating imports with a reciprocal tariff to rectify trade

practices that contribute to large and persistent annual

United States goods trade deficits).

Madam President, pursuant to section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Control Expert Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 59, to direct the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

Madam President, we will begin a couple of hours of debate on this resolution prior to a vote that I understand is scheduled around 6 or maybe a little bit thereafter.

I rise to talk about the resolution for the second time in the last week, and I need to repeat all the points I made when I spoke about it last week. I will just begin with this: I came to the Senate in January of 2013, and I tell people that I came with 100 interests and 10 passions and 1 obsession. The obsession that I brought with me to this body was an obsession that I will do everything possible I can to stop the United States from getting into an unnecessary war.

Why did I bring that obsession with me in 2013? I brought it with me because of the experience in Virginia during two wars over the course of 20 years, from 2001 to 2021. I was Governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010. I was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia before that. Like every State in this country, Virginia was deeply, deeply affected by the global War on Terror.

When I was Governor of Virginia, I had the honor and responsibility-- but it was also a burden--of being the commander in chief of the Virginia National Guard. That meant that I was with our Guard men and women when they deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and when they came home. I went to funerals. I went to wakes. These were very, very moving experiences.

I visited, as Governor, our troops, our Guard men and women, in both Iraq and Afghanistan during that period where the war was at a huge upsurge. Thousands of Virginia Guard men and women were deployed during those 4 years. Of course, because of who Virginia is, it wasn't just our Guard men and women; it was also our Active-Duty, our DOD civilians, civilians from other parts of the Federal family, reservists, military contractors, DOD civilians and their families. The cost of that 20 years of war on Virginia was very heavy.

I came with the obsession not only because of what I had seen in terms of the effect of these wars on my Commonwealth and my country-- the deaths, the injuries, the longstanding mental health needs, the tremendous expenditure of public treasure, the lack of clear and positive results from that 20 years--but I also came with an obsession on this topic because of watching the way the war started, particularly the war in Iraq.

The United States was basically--the public and this body were basically lied to about the extent of the Iraqi program of weapons of mass destruction, and then an administration forced a vote on the floor of this body right before a midterm election. The debate and vote occurred in October of 2022.

I remember--at the time, I was Lieutenant Governor, and I was paying attention to this, and I thought, what is the urgency about this debate in October of 2022 right before a midterm election?

You might remember that the United States didn't even invade Iraq until March of 2023. There was no urgency. There was none. But it was determined to be politically expedient to force a debate before a midterm election to try to give one party an edge in those midterms. Yes, there was a vote, but it was timed and structured for political rather than military reasons, and thousands of Americans, both soldiers and contractors, lost their lives as a result.

So I came to this body fully believing that, yes, I am only 1 of 100, but I am going to do everything I can to make sure that the United States doesn't get into an unnecessary war and that if the issue ever arises, Congress needs to fully debate any military mission before we send our sons and daughters into war.

Now, I say this as a Senator from--I am going to argue this, and the President will challenge me on this, but I am going to say Virginia is the most pro-military State in the United States. Our military bases, our veteran population, our reservists, our Guard, our military families, our DOD civilians--our map is a map of American military history: Yorktown, Appomattox, the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. Everything about Virginia is connected to our Nation's military mission.

I know the President would make the same claim about Florida's connection to our military. This would be a virtuous competition as we would all talk about how pro-military our States are. But I believe this deeply about Virginia.

My dad was an Army officer. One of my kids is a Marine officer. I mean, this is family. And I am connected deeply as a member of the Armed Services Committee to all of our military community.

I am not a pacifist. Every year, I work on the Armed Services Committee to help write a defense bill and try to get it passed. I whip votes on the floor for military aid packages to allies. There are bad folks in the world. The United States needs to defend itself, and it needs to work with allies to help them defend themselves. But our troops, our sons and daughters, deserve to have wise civilian leadership that only makes the decision to send them into war on the basis of careful consideration and a debate before the entire public.

The other night when I spoke on the floor, I pointed out the history of the way the Framers of our Constitution grappled with this question in 1787. To just make it simple, they decided--contrary to the history of the world and the way virtually every other country did it, they decided that war was too big a decision for one person. I mean, they were making this decision at the time that George Washington was President. He was very respected and admired. He was a wartime general. Deeply respected. But as much as they respected leaders like George Washington, they said that war is too big a decision for one person.

So they wrote a Constitution and said that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress. Defense against an attack or an imminent attack? Yes, the President, as Commander in Chief, has the power to do that. But to go on offense against another nation or an entity, like a terrorist group--and there were terrorist groups back in the days, like the Barbary Coast pirates. From the very beginning, we have confronted threats not just by nation states but by others.

But the decision was that it was too big a decision for any one person; we should only go to war after a debate--not only in Congress, where we put our thumbprint on ``This is a national mission we are risking our sons and daughters' lives for,'' we have a debate in front of the entire public so they can understand the stakes.

War is too big for any one person.

I think the events of this week have demonstrated that war is too big to be consigned to the decisions of any one person.

Our current Commander in Chief, on his social media account a day or two after the attack in Iran, put up a music video with lyrics that were matched to a Beach Boys song, ``Barbara Ann,'' but the music video contained these lyrics: ``Bomb bomb Iran; bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran . . . ; went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks . . . ; time to turn Iran into a parking lot.''

We shouldn't premise a decision to send our sons and daughters into war on the judgment of a single person.

The President patted himself on the back, and he compared the attack to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was a most unusual--most unusual-- comparison.

I haven't put all the lyrics of the song up on my chart, but one of the other lyrics was about sending the Ayatollah home in a box. I mean, is this some kind of a joke? Is this the way we treat war now? We run a victory lap, overstate it, and we turn it into a funny music video, or we use a Hiroshima and Nagasaki comparison as if that is like a good thing?

War is too big to leave the decision to send our sons and daughters and risk their lives on the say-so of one person.

We had some turmoil this week in the Senate. We were going to have a briefing on Tuesday from the national security officials in the administration. They had to postpone it until Thursday because they were fighting with themselves and they were fighting with reporters about intelligence that had come out that the President wasn't happy about.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, he said that the Iranian nuclear program had been completely obliterated. All sources--Iranian sources, Israeli sources, the IAEA, the United States--have said ``severe damage,'' but because the President sort of went overboard with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki claims, reporters started to dig into it. Then the President got mad, and then his Secretary of Defense started to name-call reporters who were asking basic questions.

War is too big an issue to leave to the moods and the whims and the daily vibes of any one person. That is why the Founders said that unless it is imminent defense--and in this case, it wasn't. The Israeli Foreign Minister had said before the U.S. attack that their attacks had already set the Iranian program back at least 2 or 3 years. That is a direct quote from the Israelis who follow this very closely. If the program had been set back at least 2 or 3 years, what was the urgency that suggested we needed to take this action without a debate in Congress?

It was not only done without congressional authorization, it was also done without congressional consultation, and it was done without congressional notification of Democratic leaders. Republican leaders were given a briefing, but for the first time during my time here, no Democrat in a leadership position on the key committees was given an advance notice of this. Is war now to be a partisan thing where the White House just notifies those of the same party?

I have tried to be consistent about this. When I came to the Senate in 2013 with this passion that I am going to do anything I can to stop an unnecessary war, within a few months of arriving here, President Obama, who is a personal friend, was contemplating military action in Syria. I looked my friend in the eye, and I said: You do not have congressional authority to do that. You need to bring this to Congress.

Hey, I thought you were my supporter. I thought you were my friend and you would support this.

I do support you, and I think you have good judgment, and I think you are likely to make a careful decision, but war is too big an issue to leave in the hands of even a completely careful and deliberative of individual.

The Framers didn't want to leave war in the hands of George Washington, for God's sake. They thought Congress should be involved in it.

I said to President Obama: You need to bring this to Congress.

And guess what. A lot of Members of this body said the same thing.

Seven Members of the Senate right now were in the House in 2013. I have a letter that many of them wrote. Six Members who are currently Republican Members of the Senate signed this.

August 28, 2013:

Dear Mr. President, we strongly urge you to consult and

receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use

of U.S. military force in Syria. Your responsibility to do

so is prescribed in the Constitution and the War Powers

Resolution of 1973.

We were in a recess then--it was August--but they said:

If you deem that military action . . . is necessary,

Congress can reconvene at your request. We stand ready to

come back into session, consider the facts before us, and

share the burden of decisions regarding U.S. involvement in

the quickly escalading Syrian conflict.

Six Republican Members of this body signed that letter in 2013, but based on their public statements, they seem to have a different standard for President Trump than they did for President Obama, a different standard for war against Iran than they did for war against Syria.

There is one Member who signed this letter who is consistent: Congressman Peter Welch, who is now in the Senate. He signed this letter to the President of his own party, saying you can't do this without a vote of Congress, come to Congress. And he is taking the same position on the floor today, consistent with what he did then.

I am going to conclude and just say this: I know everybody in this body is praying that the cease-fire that is in place now, for a couple of days, works and that it holds.

I know everybody is praying that when the administration now says they are interested in a diplomatic resolution to this program, that they will have learned that they shouldn't tear up diplomatic deals that they did in 2018 but instead should prefer diplomacy and step back from war against Iran.

I pray that that holds and that we won't need to be back here doing this again, but I do note that the President, even today, said he would certainly bomb Iran again.

I am hoping--I am realistic--but I am hoping that Members of this body will stand up for the Constitution, will stand up for the proposition that war is too big to be decided by one person, will stand up for the principles that they articulated pretty clearly when it came to President Obama thinking about taking war into Syria.

At that moment, when we urged President Obama to do that, he didn't use military force. He did bring it to Congress. We had a debate in the Foreign Relations Committee. We passed an authorization, and in that debate, Syria stepped forward and said they would give up their chemical weapons program. Diplomacy achieved a result, just as diplomacy achieved a more effective control of the Iranian nuclear program--even than the bombs that we dropped last Saturday--until it was torn up.

I pray the cease-fire continues, but I fear we are going to be back here on this floor. And I hope when we are on this floor again, Members of this body will stand for the proposition that has been part of our history that war is too big an issue to allow one person to make the decision that sends our sons and daughters into harm's way.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: Senator Sanders for up to 10 minutes, Senator Graham for up to 10 minutes, Senator Risch for up to 10 minutes, Senator Kaine for up to 3 minutes, and Senator Schumer for up to 3 minutes.

Mr. President, the remaining two speakers and Senator Schumer have yielded their time to me. I will be the last speaker before the vote.

My colleague from Idaho says this is driven by hate and vitriol toward President Trump. He well knows that from my first months in the Senate, I have taken this position, now, against four Presidents, Democratic and Republicans.

The principles that have been stated on this floor about the Constitution and War Powers Resolution are very,

very clear. Congress declares war. Once declared, the President is the Commander in Chief. There is no war without a declaration of Congress.

The President, as Commander in Chief, can defend the United States against imminent attack, but there was no such imminent threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program, as the President's own National Security Advisor testified to Congress shortly before this strike.

And as the Israeli Foreign Minister announced before the U.S. strike, that the Israeli actions had set the nuclear program back 2 or 3 years. No imminent attack on the United States, no imminent threat, that means Congress gets to declare war.

This is not about hatred for any President; it is about standing up and doing what we took an oath to do. My colleague from South Carolina says we have only declared war five times, ending with World War II. That is not accurate.

Congress has had the guts to at least vote on authorizing war up through 2002. But in 2002 something happened in this body; the Senate and the House got lied into a war with bogus intelligence about the weapons program of the nation of Iraq. We should be haunted by that. We should be haunted by that.

The claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction led us into a war where thousands of troops and thousands of U.S. contractors were killed. And so what should have been the learning that came out of that is that we should do a good job kicking the tires, as Congress, before we go into a war and not get lied into a war. Instead, what I fear, since there has been no willingness of Congress to vote on any war since 2002, is what Members of this body have decided is, Wow, we got it wrong. We were lied into a war. We voted in a way that we regretted so let's not vote at all. Let's not vote at all. Let's overturn the congressional and constitutional history that says we only go to war with Congress and try to hide in the grass.

Many of my colleagues have said things about Iran and how bad Iran is. None of them have ever introduced an authorization for war against Iran. If Iran is so bad, do that.

People in this body would rather not vote so they can't be held accountable. I get that. That is a human impulse. It is just a human impulse that so disrespects the service of our men and women in uniform. If we are going to send troops into harm's way, our sons and daughters, whether they are flying bombing missions or ground troops or covert operations, we ought to have the guts in this body to cast a vote saying that that war is necessary, not just act as cheerleaders and hide from culpability, hide from accountability, hide from responsibility.

If you vote against S.J. Res. 59, what you are saying is this President should be able to wage war without coming to Congress. If you think the President should have to come to Congress, whether you are for or against the war in Iran, you will support S.J. Res. 59. You will support the Constitution that has stood the test of time. You will support your oath.

I urge a positive vote on the resolution.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Motion

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise at a late hour with few folks on the floor to talk about the most serious issue we could ever talk about on the floor of the U.S. Senate: the prospect that America may soon be in a war.

There is no part of the Constitution that is more important than the article I provisions making claim that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress. Yet the news of the day suggests that we are potentially on the verge of a war with Iran.

When I was elected to the Senate in 2012, having served as a Governor from 2006 to 2010 during a tremendous upsurge in the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I visited our troops multiple times in the Green Zone in Baghdad and in Afghanistan. I went to the deployments and the homecomings; I went to the wakes and funerals, and I told myself when I came to the Senate that, if I ever had the chance to stop this Nation from getting into an unnecessary war, I would do everything I could to stop us from getting into an unnecessary war. I happen to believe that the United States engaging in a war against Iran--a third war in the Middle East since 2001--would be a catastrophic blunder for this country.

I think there are some in this body who have a different point of view than I on this point, but I think we should all be able to agree in the fundamental constitutional principle that says we shouldn't be in a war if Congress doesn't have the guts to debate it and vote on it; that we should all, in having taken an oath to the Constitution, at least support the principle that war is something that should be for Congress to declare.

Just recently--right before I walked on the floor--the New York Times published this article, and I am just going to read this to demonstrate the imminence of the threat that this country faces.

The article from the New York Times, dated today, reads ``Iran is Preparing Missiles for Possible Retaliatory Strikes on U.S. Bases, Officials Say,'' and I will just read the first few paragraphs.

Iran has prepared missiles and other military equipment for

strikes on U.S. bases in the Middle East should the United

States join Israel's war against the country, according to

American officials who have reviewed intelligence reports.

Fears of a wider war are growing among American officials

as Israel presses the White House to intervene in its

conflict with Iran. If the United States joins the Israeli

campaign and strikes Fordo, a key Iranian nuclear facility,

the Iranian-backed Houthi militia will almost certainly

resume striking ships in the Red Sea, the officials said.

They added that pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria would

probably try to attack U.S. bases there.

Other officials said that in the event of an attack, Iran

could begin to mine the Strait of Hormuz, a tactic meant to

pin American warships in the Persian Gulf. Commanders put

American troops on high alert at military bases throughout

the region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and

Saudi Arabia. The United States has more than 40,000 troops

deployed in the Middle East.

I met the father of an Apache helicopter pilot currently deployed in Syria yesterday.

Finally, from the article:

Two Iranian officials have acknowledged that the country

would attack U.S. bases in the Middle East, starting with

those in Iraq, if the United States joined Israel's war.

We stand tonight as close to the potential initiation of a third war in the Middle East--the United States against Iran--as we have been during my time in the Senate. So, yesterday morning, when the Senate came into session, I announced and then I followed up with a filing of a War Powers Resolution in this body--a privileged resolution--that, by my clock, will mature and be subject to a vote on this floor because of its privileged status a week from Thursday. Ten days from the filing of such a motion, even by a single Senator, the Senate is required to take this matter up for an up-or-down floor vote about whether or not war should happen without a vote of Congress.

A little bit about the Constitution. Many in here have heard me speak about this over the years about the Constitution. The Framers of the Constitution grappled with the question about how wars should begin, and they grappled with the question in a most unusual way.

In the Constitution of 1787, the article I power is the congressional, the legislative power, and the article II power is the executive power. The Framers of the Constitution split war powers into a legislative responsibility and an executive responsibility. The legislative responsibility is clear: Congress declares war. It is in article I. The executive responsibility is to be the Commander in Chief. Once Congress--535 people--has declared war, you don't need 535 Commanders in Chief. That would lead to chaos. So a war once declared by a debate and vote by the people's elected body then gets handed to the President, who as Commander in Chief is responsible for executing on that declaration.

The Framers of the Constitution did understand one thing about the President's power, which is the President as Commander in Chief should defend the Nation. The President always has the ability to defend the United States without asking Congress's permission.

Back in 1787, Congress might adjourn and ride horseback back to Vermont. What if the United States were attacked? You couldn't wait for all of Congress to come back to enable the United States to defend itself. So a President has the inherent power under article II to defend the United States without asking for permission. But it has been the understanding since the very beginning of this Republic that, if it is more than defending the United States--if it is going on offense in any

way--congressional authorization is needed.

It is so rare. In other countries and at other times, war has been for the Executive. It has been for the King. It has been for the Emperor. It has been for the Monarch. It has been for the Czar. It has been for the Sultan. But in the United States, we made a very careful choice to do it differently, and that choice was described most eloquently in a letter from the main drafter of the Constitution James Madison to President Thomas Jefferson. Actually, he was not yet President. This letter was dated April 2, 1798, and James Madison described what were they getting at when they vested the power to declare war with Congress.

Here is what James Madison wrote:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. [Our

Constitution] has accordingly with studied care, vested the

question of war in the Legislature.

Other countries don't do this, but the Framers of our Constitution in 1787 decided we are going to be different. Before we send troops into harm's way where they could be killed, where they could be injured, where they could see people they love and their colleagues killed and injured--before we are going to send troops in harm's way in war, we want to see the people's elected bodies--both Houses--have a debate about what the stakes are and whether we should force our troops into harm's way and potentially lose their lives, and that debate will be in full view of the American public so the American public can understand what is at stake, and then they can call their Representatives or write them a letter and tell them what they think about whether war is necessary and whether the sacrifice we ask of our troops should be the ultimate sacrifice that we are often asking of them in war.

That has been the Constitution since 1787. The Constitution has been amended, probably, in 25 or 26 amendments now. That has never been amended. That has never been amended.

In 1974, Congress grappled with a challenging problem and passed the War Powers Resolution of 1974. What was the problem?

The problem in 1974 was this: A President began war without telling Congress. In 1974, we were in the midst of the Vietnam war. Congress did know that, and Congress had passed some legislation at least appropriating funds for it and somewhat authorizing it during the Johnson administration. Congress knew about the war in Vietnam.

Obviously, there was a draft, and 56,000 Americans were killed in that war. But President Nixon, without informing Congress, extended the war and started bombing Cambodia--it was called the secret bombing of Cambodia--a new country that had not been covered by war authorizations. So Congress stepped up and acted and passed the War Powers Resolution of 1974.

That resolution did a number of things. It established some protocols for when the President initiates military action, providing notice to Congress so that there can't be a secret war; giving Congress some ability, once notice is provided, to try to withdraw notice if it thinks that the war is ill-advised.

But the War Powers Resolution also did something else: It gave the power to even one Member of Congress, one Senator or one House Member, if a President initiates war or is on the verge of initiating war--the War Powers Resolution gave to one Senator, one Congressman, the ability to file a resolution to stop a war before it starts or to stop a war once it started.

The War Powers Resolution over time has made that a privileged motion, meaning it can bypass committee and be brought up on the floor of the Senate for a vote within an expeditious period of time.

A privileged motion is one that sort of elbows everything else out of the way because Congress has judged that the matter is so important that it should take precedence over normal committee proceedings and it should be considered in a prompt fashion. It is a simple majority vote, not subject to filibuster and cloture. It can't be buried in a committee. It has to be debated on the floor. It is amendable. It can be amended.

But as long as you meet the criteria, the privileged criteria, under the War Powers Resolution of 1974, you are entitled to try to stop a war before it starts. The criteria that you have to meet to have the privilege are two:

One, hostilities between the United States and another actor nation-- Iran in this case--have to either be underway or they have to be imminent. That has to be the case. You can't just say: I want to stop a war that no one has contemplated and nothing is happening. So you have to demonstrate imminence. You also have to show that there is no existing congressional authorization authorizing the United States to be at war--in this case, with Iran. That second criteria has been met.

We had a similar resolution on the floor a few years ago following the U.S strike that killed the Iranian military leader Soleimani, and the ruling of the Parliamentarian and really the acknowledgement of the body was that there was no current congressional authorization authorizing war against Iran.

So the question is, Is the imminence standard met? I would argue that it clearly is. The United States is already using U.S. weaponry to knock down Iranian missiles. That is more than imminence; that is actual kinetic hostility.

The United States is being urged to enter the war. The United States is moving military assets into the region and withdrawing diplomats from the region.

The Iranians are acknowledging that: If the United States enters the war, we have plans to go after U.S. troops, the 40,000 U.S. troops in the area.

Since Congress clearly wanted a Member to be able to file such a motion to be heard before a war begins, I believe the imminence standard is clearly met in this case with actual kinetic activity between U.S. weaponry and Iranians.

So over the course of the next few days, you will likely hear me talk more than once about the need for Congress to stand up and say there shall not be a war against Iran without a congressional vote. It is a pretty simple proposition: No U.S. war against Iran without a congressional vote.

Let me answer a couple of questions that colleagues of mine have asked about the resolution that I filed yesterday.

First, what about self-defense? What about if Iran does take action against the United States, the homeland, or at a U.S. base in the Middle East or at a U.S. consulate in Erbil in the Kurdish area of Iraq? What if Iran takes action against the United States?

The answer is pretty straightforward: Under the Constitution, the President can defend the United States, and the President doesn't need Congress to do that. So if there is an Iranian attack on the United States, the President can and has said he will--and I would strongly support him, as I know everyone in this body would--defend U.S. interests against an Iranian attack.

So the self-defense question is mentioned in the resolution. The resolution says: Nothing in this resolution will block the ability of the United States to take legal action to defend itself, and that is clearly contemplated by article II.

The second question I am asked is, What about the United States helping Israel defend itself?

I have been here since January of 2013. I have voted for every Israel defense package that has ever been before this body, and there have been many. Israel receives more defense aid from the United States than any other nation year after year after year with my support. And I have done more than vote for Israel defense aid; on a couple of instances, I have whipped votes to make sure that we found enough aid for Israel.

In April of last year, we passed a supplemental bill in this body that had billions of dollars of aid for Israel in the aftermath of the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7. It was shortly after that vote that Iran launched a set of attacks against Israel.

The defense aid that the United States provided enabled us to knock down and assist Israel in knocking down Iranian drones and missiles. That was a good thing. Had those drones and

missiles landed in Israel, they would have not only killed and wounded tons of civilians, but they would have led to escalation in the region that would have been unhelpful for all countries in the region.

So I stand strong for Israel's right to defend itself, and I stand strong for the United States in providing Israel support so that they can defend themselves, but that is a different question. That is a different question than whether the United States should go to war with Iran.

In my view, there is no compelling security reason for the United States to go to war with Iran.

The last question that I want to ask and sort of reflect upon before concluding is this: What about diplomacy? What about diplomacy?

The pages are here. You have a lot of time on the floor. Sometimes there are speeches, and sometimes there aren't, and I imagine you have looked a lot in this room and what is in the room. One of the things you have noticed is that in the panels--all around the room, the blue panels--at the top of the panel is the seal of the United States. That seal of the United States was designed and embraced by the United States in 1782. The seal of the United States is also in the skylight in the ceiling of the Senate Chamber, and that seal has essentially been constant since 1782. There is a seal of the President of the United States that has changed a little bit, but the seal of the United States that Congress has used has been constant since 1782.

One thing that is very notable about the seal is the eagle and two claws holding the arrows of war and the olive branches of peace. But since the very beginning of this Republic, the eagle's face has been turned to the olive branches of peace. It was designed that way to send a symbol that the United States always prefers peace, always prefers diplomacy, and only uses war as a last resort when diplomacy fails.

We had a diplomatic deal with Iran that was entered into in 2015 that was limiting their nuclear program--peacefully, without having to bomb them, without having to kill civilians, without having to assassinate scientists.

The United States, together with other nations, used the power of congressional sanctions--Congress did this well--to leverage an agreement whereby Iran agreed--in the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page of the agreement, Iran reaffirmed that it would ``never seek to purchase, acquire, or develop nuclear weapons.''

In the body of that agreement, Iran agreed to a whole series of limitations upon nuclear research, nuclear activity, centrifuge construction, and the percentage of enriched uranium it was allowed to have. Also, Iran agreed to the most comprehensive inspection regime of any nation on the planet, overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ensure that they were meeting their requirements that they would never seek to purchase, acquire, and develop nuclear weapons and that they would abide by their limits on centrifuges and the limits on enriched uranium and other activities.

The agreement was working. Don't take it from Senator Kaine; the International Atomic Energy Association said the agreement was working. The allies and adversaries--Russia and China--were part of this deal, as were the UK and France and Germany. Those who worked on the deal said the agreement was working. It wasn't turning Iran from a bad actor to a good actor. It wasn't stopping all of Iran's bellicose behavior. But it was limiting the very nuclear program that is now trying to be bombed out of existence. We had an agreement that was working.

President Trump became President in January of 2017, and he said: I don't like the agreement that President Obama did. I want to get out of it.

President Trump's own Cabinet--his Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said: Don't get out of this agreement. It is working.

His Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: Don't get out of this agreement. It is working.

His National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, a former general, said: Don't get out of this agreement. It is working.

For God's sake, we have used diplomacy just as we are supposed to--by preferring peace and diplomacy first--to deprive Iran of a path to a nuclear weapon. Shouldn't we prefer diplomacy rather than putting at risk the lives of American troops, the 40,000 troops who are in the Middle East?

So what happened to the diplomatic agreement? President Trump started to talk about abandoning it.

I wrote a piece in Time magazine in 2017, and I said: If you abandon this agreement when it is working, what will Iran do? They will go back to developing nuclear weapons, because if the United States backs out of it, they will as well.

If you abandon this agreement, North Korea will never do a nuclear deal with the United States because why do a deal with the United States if the United States is going to abandon the deal even when it is working?

President Trump didn't listen to me. He didn't listen to his Secretary of State. He didn't listen to his Secretary of Defense. He didn't listen to a lot of people in his administration. He tore the deal up. What a tragedy.

You have Israeli civilians who have been killed in the Iranian missile attacks who have nothing to do with the military and Iranian civilians who have been killed in missile attacks who have nothing to do with the military. They would be alive today and 40,000 U.S. troops in the region would be safe today if we had decided to act in accord with our values and put diplomacy first and put peace over war.

That is water under the bridge. But the question for this body that we will grapple with over the course of the next couple of weeks is whether the United States should be in another war in the Middle East-- in particular, whether we should allow a war to start without us, whether we should hide in the tall grass rather than exercise our constitutional responsibility under article I.

This is fundamentally a debate about Congress being true to its oath of office and actually also being true to the obligations we have to our public.

The Framers put this in the Constitution so that we wouldn't be at war without a debate in front of the public. They had a view about the morality of war, and I think their view was basically this: There would be nothing more publicly immoral, in the public space, than to send troops into harm's way, risking death, if Congress was too chicken to have a debate and vote about whether the war was in the national interest.

If we had that debate and we decide that war is in the national interest, then the troops go into war knowing that the civilian leadership of this country have had the hard debate in view of the American public and decided that the stakes are sufficient to ask people to make the ultimate sacrifice.

But how dare we--how dare we--and I say this as the father of a U.S. marine: How dare we ask people to make the ultimate sacrifice if we don't have the guts to have a debate and decide whether a war is in the interest of this country?

I know what the American public thinks about this. There was a poll that was released today, and this is completely consistent with what I have heard from Virginians. And Virginia is one of the most pro- military States in this country. I am on the Armed Services Committee. One out of every eight Virginians is a veteran. That is not one out of every eight adults; that is one out of every eight Virginians is a veteran--and you add Active Duty, you add the Guard, you add the Reserve, and you add the civilian DOD and the military contractors and their families. We train all the Marine officers in the world. We have the biggest shipbuilding enterprise in the world. We have the Pentagon, the largest military office in the world. We have been the site of more battles on U.S. soil than any State in this country, in Virginia: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the attack on 9/11 at the Pentagon.

We are as pro-military a State as there is, but I can tell you this: Virginians do not believe the United States should be in another war in the Middle East. Neither do Americans.

A poll today suggests 16 percent of Americans think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran--one-sixth, 16 percent--60 percent say we should not; 24 percent are not sure.

We need to have this debate in front of the American public and let them

watch us debate the stakes of this. And it might be that colleagues in this body or in the House think a war with Iran is a good idea. Let them put a war authorization on the table. Let's debate that. Let's debate that in front of Virginians and Kansans and Californians and hear what our constituents have to say. Let's debate that in the full view of people whose spouses are in the military or whose kids are in the military. Let's have that debate in front of them and hear what they think before we cast a vote that would be one of the most serious votes that you ever cast on the floor of a body like this.

But we should not allow a war of the magnitude of this to begin with Congress hiding from the responsibility that was put on Congress's shoulders in 1787.

I will be asking my colleagues to support my simple resolution as early as next week: No war without a vote of Congress. I will be asking my colleagues to support it and uphold the oath we have all taken to support the Constitution that established that most unusual principle, most unique principle, that is part of what makes this Nation special.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 2 days from today, June 14, is Flag Day in the United States. It is the day every year where we celebrate the flag, but it is not the piece of cloth that we celebrate; we celebrate core American values. And the most core American value is the one that we take an oath of office to, the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution includes a Bill of Rights, and one of the most important pieces of the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment. It was drafted by Virginian James Madison, and it talks about the fact that there can't be laws or legal restrictions against the right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of grievances.

That right is not something we are allowed. That right is something we are guaranteed.

My colleague and our friend Alex Padilla, born and raised in Los Angeles, loves his hometown--an MIT-educated, baseball-playing engineer who returned to his home, who served on the Los Angeles City Council and now serves in this body--has some very legitimate questions about why, in an unprecedented way, the National Guard and the U.S. Marines have been deployed into his city, over the objections of the mayor, over the objections of the Governor, in a historically unprecedented way and in a way such as to escalate tensions in his town rather than to reduce them.

So he decided to go to a peaceful public assembly. It was a press conference. It wasn't a private meeting to which he was not allowed entrance. A press conference's purpose is to share information with the public.

My colleague Alex Padilla, who goes to Wednesday prayer breakfast with me every week with a bipartisan group of colleagues, attended a public event so he could ask a question about why his hometown was being besieged by the Marines and National Guard over the objection of the mayor and the objection of the Governor.

His question was a grievance. He doesn't agree with the policies of the administration. He is guaranteed in this document the right to petition government for redress of grievances as an American, which is what we are supposed to do.

The Framers of the Constitution who put this in the First Amendment did it to protect the rights of Alex Padilla and all of us, but they did it for another reason. They did it because they believed it would help democracy work better, that democracy works better when people can speak freely. Democracy works better when people can profess their religion, when the press can operate freely. And democracy works better when people can gather peacefully and share their dissenting points of view. It makes our democracy work better.

Make no mistake, the effort to manhandle our colleague to push him out of the room for asking an inconvenient question, to handcuff him, is an attempt to shut him up. It is an attempt to shut everybody up if you have a dissenting view from this administration. That is why the administration has deployed the military in an unprecedented way. They want to intimidate you.

They want to make you decide that although you were granted this as a right, they want to make you afraid to exercise the right. As I conclude, I would just say this: On Flag Day, I would encourage Americans of all kinds, find a peaceful assembly on June 14--on Flag Day--and attend it and show that you are a brave and patriotic American that embraces the First Amendment to the Constitution, and you will not allow anyone to intimidate you.

I was a missionary in Honduras in 1980 and 1981, and it was an authoritarian society. And no one was guaranteed the right to assemble or complain. You might do it and be OK one day; the next day you might be arrested; the next day you might be disappeared or even killed.

That is not who we are. We need brave, patriotic Americans to stand up, just as Senator Padilla has done, and insist upon their right to peacefully assemble and present whatever critiques or complaints they have about policies that they find to be objectionable.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I move to discharge S. Res. 195 from the Committee on Foreign Relations, as provided under the previous order.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss S. Res. 195, which is a vote on a motion to discharge that will be the next pending vote in the Senate.

It is actually a pretty simple bill about very basic concepts: Do you believe in the Constitution or not? Do you believe in the rule of law or not? Do you believe in due process or not? Do you believe that final orders of the U.S. Supreme Court should be respected or not? Those are the questions at issue on S. Res. 195.

Our President, President Trump, has entered into an agreement still shrouded in some secrecy with the President of El Salvador, President Bukele, to deport American residents into El Salvador and imprison them in prisons in a country that has been charged by the United States and others with gross human rights violations.

The Congress that is in charge of appropriating taxpayer dollars should want to know the circumstances of this imprisonment and whether U.S. law is being followed. The $6 million payment to the El Salvadoran prison likely violates human rights law in accord with many experts who looked at the details as they emerged, and that is where we begin. These are dollars that Congress has appropriated, but the precise mechanism for the transfer of these moneys and the President's authority to both spend the money and carry out the deportations is questionable.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of one of these individuals who it admits was deported by mistake--and there are many others similarly situated--is defying an order of the Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a nine-to-nothing ruling that the administration should facilitate the return of Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Thus far, nearly a month later, that has not occurred.

This is about fighting lawlessness. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, to which we all pledge fealty, is pretty straightforward:

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property

without due process of law.

That was the clause that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously interpreted to mandate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia.

The President was asked recently whether he had an obligation to uphold the Constitution, which he swore an oath to in the witness of all of us on Inauguration Day. He was asked if he had to uphold the Constitution. Just within the last week, he said he did not know. We know the answer to that question, but the President does not. The particular country to which these American residents have been deported, El Salvador--this now goes back a year--has a track record of imprisoning individuals--innocent individuals. The last thing any of us should want is an innocent individual in prison, especially if that innocent individual is an American.

But this is the punch line: The President has indicated that this is not just for those who are here with questions about their legal status. President Trump has said ``homegrowns'' are next. Trump doubles down on sending American criminals to foreign prisons. We have a prison system in the United States--local jails, State prisons, Federal prisons. The notion of sending American citizens to foreign prisons without scrutiny is truly shocking, and that is the reason that I filed the resolution.

What is this resolution?

It is a privileged motion--available to any Senator--directing the administration to produce a human rights report about a nation--in this case, El Salvador. S. Res. 195 directs the Secretary of State to produce a report to this body that would be available not only to us but to the American public about the human rights record in El Salvador, and a couple of the clauses of the resolution, I think, are specific about this particular case.

The report should contain information about the treatment of citizens or residents of other countries, including the United States--non- Salvadorans--who are being detained or imprisoned in El Salvador, including any opportunity provided to such citizens or residents to demonstrate that they are being wrongfully detained or imprisoned.

We should all want to know whether Americans detained in El Salvador have an opportunity to demonstrate that they are wrongfully imprisoned. The report will require that.

The report would require an assessment from the Secretary of State of the conditions in El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, including an assessment of allegations of torture and other gross violations of human rights.

Remember again that the Trump administration has acknowledged that at least one of the individuals who was deported was deported mistakenly. He has been in prison for some time. If he is not there now, he was for some time in CECOT. We should want to know whether Americans in prison there are subject to torture or to other gross violations of human rights.

The report should include a description of any actions that the U.S. Government has taken to ensure that the Government of the Republic of El Salvador releases U.S. citizens being detained or imprisoned in El Salvador in compliance with U.S. court orders regarding their return.

Finally, the report would require information--a description of actions--the U.S. Government is taking to provide due process in compliance with U.S. law for relevant persons detained or imprisoned in El Salvador.

Why would anyone in this body, in understanding this record--the forceable deportation of American residents, some admittedly deported by mistake and whom the Supreme Court has ordered returned into El Salvadoran prisons--why would anyone in this body not want to get a human rights report about the conditions of that confinement, particularly given the fact that President Trump has indicated that he may intend next to send U.S. citizens into those same prisons?

This information will be very relevant to important decisions that we take in our relationship with El Salvador and also in our decisions we take with respect to the Appropriations Act. So I urge my colleagues to vote for S. Res. 195.

Mr. President, I will conclude prior to the vote just by saying this is a very basic resolution.

Everyone in this body, knowing that Americans have been deported without due process to a prison in a foreign country that has a grievous record of human rights abuses, should at least want to get information about the circumstances of that confinement, about whether that prison is according American residents any semblance of due process and whether the United States is undertaking efforts to ensure that that country and that prison are following final orders of the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you support the rule of law, if you support due process, if you support the Constitution, if you support human rights, if you support final orders of the U.S. Supreme Court, you will support S. Res. 195.

I now ask for the vote.

Vote on S. Res. 195

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize May 12 to May 18, 2025, as National Salvation Army Week.

Founded in 1865, the Salvation Army has been unfailingly committed to serving those in need without discrimination. For more than 150 years, the Salvation Army has provided essential social services, including disaster relief, food assistance, shelter, rehabilitation programs, and youth development initiatives in local communities across the United States.

The Salvation Army serves more than 27 million Americans annually, offering compassion, hope, and support to the most vulnerable populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness, veterans, seniors, human trafficking survivors, and those recovering from addiction. Across the Nation, the Salvation Army operates shelters, food pantries, job training programs, and emergency disaster relief efforts that strengthen communities and improve lives.

The Salvation Army continues to be a trusted partner at the local, State, and Federal levels, providing critical services that address poverty, hunger, and natural disasters. Volunteers, donors, and officers of the Salvation Army exemplify the spirit of service, working tirelessly to provide relief and opportunity for those in need--and should be recognized and commended for their commitment to the betterment of others. I am grateful for the work that the Salvation Army accomplishes every day and applaud its dedication to social service.

Mr. President, the Constitution of the United States puts two powers clearly--clearly--within the hands of Congress: the power to tax and the power to conduct trade policy, including the imposition of tariffs. These are powers for Congress, not the Executive. But President Trump finds Congress an inconvenience, and he has decided to take both of these powers onto his own shoulders by imposing a national sales tax--that is what his global tariff regime is--without any vote in Congress, purely on his own say-so, and to engage every nation in the world in a trade war on his own say-so without involving Congress.

President Trump has said in the past: ``I alone can fix it,'' and we know that that statement is false. No one alone can fix the big challenges facing our Nation. But I think if he were to say, ``I alone can break it,'' the results of the last 100 days would have proven him correct.

President Trump, on Inauguration Day, inherited the strongest economy on the planet Earth--not a perfect economy but the strongest economy, the envy of other industrialized nations. That is what he had just 100 days ago. And we know this morning that strong economy, which was growing for 3 years at a very solid pace, is now contracting.

It is not only the contraction of the economy, it is chaos in the stock market; it is declining consumer confidence; it is projections of recession by Federal Reserve districts and major economists.

All of this is happening because Donald Trump has pursued a three- step strategy of his own: massive layoffs of employees, contrary to congressionally passed appropriations bills, massive slashing of Federal spending programs, including those relied upon by everyday Americans in contravention of congressionally appropriated spending bills, and the waging of a tariff war against the entire planet.

And as my colleagues have said, it is a tariff war that gets announced and then suspended and then delayed and then announced again and then exceptions might be granted if we like you or not. It is chaos.

Last week, I traveled around the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I talked to businesses everywhere in my State. And they talked about the layoffs and they talked about the spending cuts and they talked about the tariffs and they added those three together and said what those three add up to is chaos--the chaos of unpredictability.

Many businesses told me that they want to make investments. They want to make investments to grow their businesses in Virginia, but they are unwilling to make a decision to invest as long as the rules of the road are chaotic and up in the air.

Businesses that import natural products to turn into finished products have to pay a tariff on the import. Businesses who sell their product abroad are losing markets as nations put retaliatory tariffs on the United States. And so these businesses are pausing their investment decisions.

Businesses in Virginia that are connected to multinational businesses are saying that their headquarters are deciding, well, we can invest in the United States or we can invest in another country. It is not wise to invest in the United States when everything is so chaotic.

Let's be clear, and I spoke about this with my colleagues when I talked

about the Canada tariff provision that we successfully rebuked the President on a month ago. A tariff is nothing more than a sales tax. It is a sales tax on the products that everyday Americans use, especially groceries and clothing and building supplies, for farmers, the cost of fertilizer that they need as they are engaging in spring planting. Trump's worldwide tariffs are nothing but a new sales tax.

And the analysis, as this chart shows, of who the tariffs raise taxes on, like every other form of sales tax, tariffs are regressive. They hit lower income people the most. The average tax change as a share of income if the Trump tariffs are implemented, it is essentially on the poorest 20 percent of the American population, the equivalent to an additional 6.2 percent sales tax. For the next wealthiest quintile up, it is a 5.5-percent increase on the sales tax. For the next, it is 5.0, all the way up to the richest 1 percent will see their effective sales tax rate go up by 1.7 percent. This is a sales tax on everyone in the country, but it is a sales tax that, as all sales taxes do, fall hardest on those who can least afford it.

The new sales tax is affecting retirees particularly. So from NBC News:

Retirees `stunned' as market turmoil over tariffs shrinks

their 401(k)s.

We have a Social Security system that is a good foundation for retirement so long as this administration doesn't mess it up, but it is not sufficient for retirement. And what you need for a dignified retirement is Social Security plus private savings, in most people's case, 401(k)s. The turmoil in the market driven by tariff uncertainty is hammering retirees more than just about any other group of people in this country.

The new sales tax is also a drag on economic growth--we saw this in the announcement this morning--but not just economic growth in the United States. I am on the Armed Services Committee, and I had a chance to go visit 2 weeks ago with the new government, incoming government in Germany.

Germany is a great ally. More U.S. troops are on the ground in Germany than any nation other than Japan outside the United States. We are security partners in Ukraine and in European security generally. The new German Government was just elected, the Chancellor will be installed in the first week in May with a mandate to restore the German economy, which has been in the doldrums since about 2019.

And as I talked to German leaders, military leaders and leaders in the civilian government, they said this is going to be the most pro- American, pro-transatlantic Chancellor you will have seen for a very long time, but he is coming in with a powerful mandate to grow the German economy so that we can be even better security partners, so that we can work better together on the manufacture of the F-35 and to help Ukraine in its defense.

But the Trump tariffs are standing directly in the way of this new, pro-American government being able to achieve what they need to be able to achieve. And that is why the IMF said that the Trump tariffs, this new sales tax, will be a drag not just on U.S. economic growth but on global economic growth.

This is a story from less than a week ago. U.S. manufacturing was already slowing before the GDP numbers came out today. A larger share of manufacturers are reporting declines in new orders rather than increases. Some of those declines are driven because of the price effect of tariffs, the price effect of retaliatory tariffs, but some are also being driven by the uncertainty.

There is a chaos penalty on the economy. When you are not sure what is going to happen, you slow your investments, and that is why you see a decline in manufacturing.

The Trump new sales tax, again, as proof from Reuters, ``Trump tariffs would harm all involved, U.S. trade partners say.''

This is not just something that is hurting everyday Americans--those are those to whom we have a responsibility in this body, but this is affecting the global economy in a way that is shocking.

And China, Japan, South Korea--a company from South Korea just announced a huge investment in Virginia yesterday in the clean energy space. Japan and South Korea, especially, are countries that do a lot of foreign direct investment in the United States. Japan and South Korea are two of our strongest partners, but even they are responding in a hostile way to U.S. tariffs. In fact, you see China, Japan, and South Korea starting to cooperate together to ward off some of the negative economic effects of U.S. tariffs. The last thing we want to do is encourage Japan and South Korea to work closer with China. We want Japan and South Korea to work closer with the United States. But the Trump tariffs are chasing allies into the arms of adversaries. How foolish is that?

And then we end up with the chaos argument that my colleagues had mentioned before. From the New York Times last week: ``With Only Bad Options, Businesses Scramble for a Tariff Chaos Playbook.''

A tariff chaos playbook.

When the cost of your imports is going up, when your export market is shrinking, when you don't know what the end of the story will be, the options that you have are very murky. Businesses want to have predictability. They want to be able to look into a crystal ball, and if they don't completely know the future, they want to be able to make enough of a prediction about the economic climate that would justify sizable investments.

And in a time of chaos, those investments are not going to be made, and that raises the danger that this first quarter economic contraction will be followed by another, which would be the textbook definition of a recession.

So how did we get here? From an economy on Inauguration Day that was the strongest in the world, when President Trump stood 50 yards from here and said it was a golden age, to an economy that has nothing but red lights and question marks all over it, we got here because one individual decided to bypass Congress and take both the taxing power and the trade power into his own hands without a debate, without committee hearings, without deliberation, without considering what the people thought about the plan, and that one man and his decisions have taken a chain saw to the American economy.

We must turn this around, and the good news is the Senate has the ability to turn it around. When the Congress passed the IEEPA law decades ago, it recognized the potential that an Executive can overuse the emergency power, and that is why Congress did something rare in IEEPA. They gave the power even to a single Senator, even to a single Senator in the minority party to say: Wait a minute, Mr. President, you have declared an emergency and, guess what, you are wrong. And even at the request of a single Senator, this body is put on the board to have to declare whether we own the policies of the President, this Trump madness, or whether we disown it and urge him to take a different path.

All the economic trends are pointing in the same direction. We should take a different path on the economy before this gets worse. The vote we will have later today gives the Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world, the chance to stand up and say: Let's take a different path.

I thank my colleagues for their work together on this important resolution and urge a favorable vote on the resolution that we will have later today.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for locking us in, and I think we will complete our comments well on time for the vote.

I am very pleased to be joined by my colleague Senator Collins as we introduce a bill called the Religious Workforce Protection Act. Our third cosponsor, Senator Risch, is chairing a Foreign Relations Committee hearing right now but wanted me to comment that he is also a cosponsor of the bill.

This bill deals with a problem that I first saw in my parish, that, at the time, when I was talking to folks in my church about it, seemed like a small local problem, but it turns out it is a big national problem.

My church, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, in Richmond, VA, was founded as an immigrant church. It was heavily for Italian- and German-American Catholics, right after World War I, who felt sort of looked askance upon because of the war, and they wanted to have their own parish that could be a haven for them. Now, a hundred-plus years later, my church is still an immigrant church, but it is about a third Congolese.

But in addition to the fact that many of our churches of all denominations--synagogues and temples and gurdwaras and mosques--in the country serve new American populations, it is also the case that many of our religious workers in the United States are also immigrants.

Two of the last three priests in my parish were immigrants, one from India and one from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and I began to hear about a problem with the way our immigration laws work for religious workers.

There is a visa called an R-1 visa that allows, upon the petitioning of a church or a mosque or a synagogue, for a religious worker to come and work for a congregation for a period of 5 years.

The R-1 visa lasts for 5 years. Often, during the course of that 5 years, the faith congregation decides, ``Here is somebody who is really great; we would like to keep him''--or her--and they apply for an EB-4 visa, which is a more extended visa. And the idea would be you would apply, and the application process would finish before your R-1 visa expires.

Well, it turns out we have huge backlogs in processing these EB-4 visas. So many religious workers get to the end of their 5-year term, and their EB-4 is pending--likely to be approved but not yet approved-- and they have to depart the country. They are required to go back home and stay for at least a year before they come back.

There can also be some challenges for religious workers. If, say, one starts working at St. Elizabeth's parish and gets moved to St. Paul's Parish just a mile or two away, they have to restart the process because it is a new employer even though they are essentially doing the same thing.

So Senator Collins and I--and she will describe her own story that she sees in her native Maine with the same topic. We started to talk about this, and it turns out this is an issue in Catholic parishes, but it is an issue much more broadly.

So what we have done is introduced a bill we call the Religious Workforce Protection Act. It would allow someone in this R-1 category to file the application for the EB-4, and if the 5-year R-1 period ends before the EB-4 has been granted, this bill would give discretion--not a mandate but discretion--to the Secretary of Homeland Security to grant an extension of the R-1 visa for a worker who has applied for the EB-4 and who fully qualifies, has no disqualifying factor that would suggest that they would not be eligible for the EB-4.

It also allows a little more flexibility so that a religious worker can move from one parish to the next or get a promotion from associate pastor to pastor without restarting the application process as long as they maintain continuous work as a religious worker, as the R-1 program was designed for.

We think this is going to be a good fix for many of our religious communities.

I am happy to say, before I yield the floor to Senator Collins, that the support we have gained from religious communities nationally is pretty notable. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, the Hindu American Foundation, the Immigration Committee of Agudath Israel of America, and the Episcopal Church of America have all weighed in because so many different faith congregations are seeing this same challenge--the backlog in processing applications for R-1 religious workers to be able to convert their status to EB-4.

We think it is a basic, commonsensical provision, and giving the DHS Secretary on a case-by-case basis the ability to review and then extend someone's R-1 status while their EB-4 is processing seems like a way to solve this problem for so many faith congregations all around the United States.

With that, I am very, very pleased to be joined in this by my colleague from Maine, and I would like to yield to Senator Collins.

Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues--I really appreciate my colleague from Hawaii's leadership on this topic and the Senator from New Hampshire--to talk about the pending discussion about the budget reconciliation bill and the vote-arama that will start in a few hours.

I want to begin by thanking my colleagues for joining me to pass S.J. Res. 37 two days ago, which was the resolution that I had to challenge President Trump's Canadian tariffs--a horrible idea. We were able to get 51 votes in this Chamber. It was a privileged motion. The majority was sufficient to pass it to turn off the Canadian tariffs because they hurt consumers, they hurt businesses, they hurt farmers, and they also hurt our national security by raising the price of aluminum and steel. Thirty-five percent of the aluminum and steel that goes into U.S. ships and subs comes from Canada; the other 65 percent, from the United States.

It was an important bill to pass because we don't need to put an additional sales tax on goods purchased by Americans that come from Canada. We don't need to inspire a Canadian retaliation against American products. Finally, we need to send the message that we understand that Canada is not an adversary but that Canada is a friend.

That bill passed the Senate and is on to the House. We are already working on the House side to see if we can get it passed there.

But, today, what I want to address is not the Canadian tariffs that were announced now months ago but the new ``reciprocal'' tariffs that President Trump announced on Wednesday, on

the south lawn, at the very moment that we were voting to overturn the Canadian tariffs. President Trump deemed these tariffs as ``reciprocal'' tariffs, but I have another phrase for him: They are economic idiocy.

I want to talk about why they are so bad, why the policy is bad. And when the policy is so bad and seemingly inexplicable, something else is going on, and I want to conclude by focusing on what that something else is.

I went to the University of Missouri, and I majored in economics. I had some amazing professors, and I just want to give them a shout-out: John Kuhlman, Whitney Hicks, Walter Johnson, Ron Ratti. I had some amazing professors at Mizzou.

I graduated with an honors degree in economics in 1979. If they were standing here with me, they would say: Tim Kaine, you were my student. I hope you remember what we talked about in these economic classes.

They would point out what I am about to point out as to why these tariffs announced broadly against virtually every nation in the world at the say-so of one person--a national sales tax falling on American consumers at the say-so of one person--are, in fact, economic idiocy. They will hurt our families. They will hurt our businesses. They will hurt our farmers. All of the economic signs suggest that President Trump is flipping the world's strongest economy toward a recession.

When we were kids, we all learned the fairytale--I think it is a Brothers Grimm fairytale--of Rumpelstiltskin, the mysterious figure who turned straw into gold. What we are now seeing is ``Trumpelstiltskin'' turning gold into straw.

President Trump started with the strongest economy in the world on the day he was inaugurated--a strong stock market, strong consumer confidence, strong growth rates and growth projections, manufacturing up, infrastructure up, America building again. In 2 months, his chaotic economic idiocy has turned it around where the American economy--just go turn on the TV right now and look at what is happening in the markets. The American economy has nothing but red lights and question marks all over it because of the economic idiocy.

``Economic idiocy'' is a strong charge for me. I am not one to do a lot of name-calling but that is exactly what this is. Let me focus on some examples from President Trump's Wednesday announcement that show how idiotic these tariffs are.

Japan and South Korea are two great allies of the United States. We have been working very carefully to deepen the relationship they have with each other and with us to check against the nation that we all in this Chamber and President Trump also view as our chief adversary: China.

President Trump, in his Wednesday announcement, imposes a 24-percent tariff on goods coming from South Korea and a 25-percent tariff on goods coming from Japan. This is no way to treat a friend. And guess what these friends are doing. They met with China to talk about a free- trade agreement. They met with China to talk about how they need to band together to protect themselves from the economic policy of the United States.

Japan and South Korea are two of the best allies we have in Asia or anywhere in the world. The relationships we have had with both nations have been very strong, whether it is military-to-military cooperation, trade, diplomacy, working together on humanitarian issues, or on educational exchanges. Donald Trump's tariffs are chasing Japan and South Korea into China's arms--idiocy.

Here is one: Israel is an ally, and Iran is an adversary. I think we can get a 100-to-nothing vote on that proposition in this Chamber. Israel is an ally; Iran is an adversary. Guess what President Trump did with his tariffs on Wednesday--a 17-percent tariff on Israel and on Iran, a 10-percent tariff. A 17-percent tariff on our ally Israel and on Iran, a 10-percent tariff. What kind of friend is that? How is that the way to treat an ally?

We are rock-solid in sending military support to Israel. I helped with votes almost exactly a year ago on the Senate floor to get a $14 billion defense aid package for Israel. But we are going to put a higher tariff on Israel than Iran. It makes no sense. It is idiocy.

Here is another one: Trump says these are ``reciprocal'' tariffs. We are putting tariffs on nations that are treating us unfairly in trade, but he is imposing tariffs even on nations that put no tariffs on U.S. products, that have no trade barriers on U.S. products. Singapore has no trade barriers on U.S. products, but Trump is socking them with tariffs anyway. Israel has no trade barriers on U.S. products, but Trump is socking them with tariffs anyway. Idiocy. Idiocy.

Here is another one: Trump, in his rambling monologue on the south lawn on Wednesday, when he defined ``groceries'' as a bag with stuff in it--I was very happy to be enlightened about what groceries are--said that he was imposing tariffs on nations where the United States has trade deficits.

So the idea is we are going to put tariffs on them because they are not buying enough of our stuff. We want to penalize nations where the United States has a trade deficit. But guess what. We have trade surpluses with Brazil, Australia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the UK. So what did Donald Trump do? He put tariffs on them anyway. He said it was about trade deficits and that he is putting tariffs even on nations that are buying more of our products than we are buying of theirs. Idiocy. Idiocy.

In Donald Trump's first term, he encouraged American businesses to move their supply chains out of China, and a lot of businesses did. Many American businesses followed Donald Trump's instructions and moved their supply chains from China to Vietnam. In President Trump's first term, he boasted about that. He patted himself on the back. He told these American companies: Pull your supply chain out of China. And when they went to Vietnam, he patted himself on the back about that. So what is he doing now? A 46-percent tariff on imports from Vietnam.

Well, that is quite a way to treat American companies that moved their supply chains out of China at your request just a few years ago.

Some moved their supply chains to nations like Cambodia or other nearby nations. Trump socked them all. He socked them all with tariffs, even for these businesses that did move their supply chains at his request.

Then we get to something that has been more widely known, which is Trump putting tariffs on tiny, nearly uninhabited islands--Reunion, the Heard and McDonald Islands, and Norfolk Island. There is a tiny French island off the coast of Canada that I will admit I was not even aware of, St. Pierre and Miquelon--a 50-percent tariff on these places.

I mean, I will say one thing about Donald Trump's tariffs that is good, and it is the only thing that is good: It has made a lot of people pull out their globes and look at nations they didn't even know existed.

St. Pierre and Miquelon will now have a 50-percent tariff; Heard and McDonald Islands, a 10-percent tariff; Svalbard and Jan Mayen, which are actually not even countries but part of Norway, a 10-percent tariff; Norfolk Island, a 29-percent tariff; and Reunion, a 37-percent tariff.

Donald Trump at least has inspired interest in geography--a subject that, often, kids find boring.

OK. So I have gone through these examples of pure idiocy. The tariffs are not designed to punish adversaries, since we are hurting allies and treating them worse than adversaries, in many ways. The tariffs are not designed to lower trade barriers, since nations with no trade barriers are still getting socked. The tariffs are not signed to counter trade deficits, since nations where we have trade surpluses are getting socked.

So why do them at all? Why punish Americans with a national sales tax, which all the economists say is the largest peace-time tax ever imposed in U.S. history? If it is not to reduce trade barriers, if it is not to punish nations with trade deficits, if it is not designed to punish nations that are adversaries, why would we impose a sales tax on the American consumer, the American family, American businesses, American national security?

That is what we are going to be talking about tonight during the vote-arama. That is what you will see Democrats emphasizing with amendments that we are offering.

These tariffs are not about trade deficits, trade barriers. They are not about the behavior of adversaries. It is about raising money to fund a tax cut for the rich. That is what they are about.

Peter Navarro, the President's chief economic adviser, says--and I think this is probably optimistic. These guys like to puff up the numbers. He says that these tariffs will raise $6 trillion over the course of the next 10 years, about $600 billion, all taken out of the pockets of everyday Americans who are paying more for groceries, who are paying more for building supplies when they do a home renovation; farmers who are paying more for fertilizer because the key component, potash, 80 percent of it comes from Canada.

The $6 trillion that these tariffs will raise all comes out of the pocketbooks of Americans who are working hard and who don't want to pay more taxes. But they are going to fork over $6 trillion because of these tariffs.

Then President Trump and my colleagues here are setting up a budget where they will take that $6 trillion, and they will add to it all of these slash-and-burn cuts that the chain saw-wielding Elon Musk is finding by laying off 80,000 people at the VA or indiscriminately firing veterans in every Agency in the Federal Government. They will combine the tariff revenue with the savings from Medicaid cuts or cuts to school nutrition or cuts to the Pell Grant Program, and then they will take all of that revenue and hand it over to the richest people in this country, many of whom are the richest people on the planet Earth, in tax cuts for the wealthiest.

How do we know? How do we know to predict that? We know because that is what they did when Donald Trump was President in 2017.

In 2017, the tax bill that passed by a simple majority vote in this body was a big giveaway to the rich, and that is what Trump and my Republican colleagues are preparing to do yet again.

The only difference between 2017 and now is this: In 2017, when the Republicans and Donald Trump gave a tax cut to the rich, they didn't pay for it. It was all on the deficit. They just put it on the credit card for our kids and grandkids to pay. This time, they decided they don't want to continue to jack up the deficit--although, they are likely to anyway--and so they think they need to pay for the tax cut. How are they going to pay for it? By cutting programs that everyday Americans rely on and by socking families and businesses with a $6 trillion tariff-tax increase imposed purely to fund the tax cut for Donald Trump and his friends. That is what we are going to fight against in this budget.

In the same way that we succeeded by getting Republicans to vote with us against the Canadian tariffs, a few days ago, it is my hope that when we get to the end of this process, we will have some Republican colleagues in this House and the next who will stand up against the President who thinks one man can shatter the economy and impose costs on everyday people to benefit himself and his friends.

I yield the floor.