Cory Booker

Mr. BOOKER

Mr. BOOKER. I love that you focused it there because that is who President Trump made promises to, in my State, that things are bad with this economy because it is not serving people who are working every day. He promised that he would make things better. I will make grocery prices go down--he said that. So people were expecting that is where he would focus. They didn't think he would focus on Greenland. They didn't think he would focus on the Gulf of Mexico. They didn't think he would focus on bullying Canada. They didn't think he would focus on turning his back on Ukraine. They didn't think he would focus on gutting the Department of Education and ending it. This is not the reason why people voted for him. They did something that Reverend Warnock calls--that vote is a sort of prayer. He says it is like a civic prayer: that I am putting a prayer out there that you will be who I hope you can be; you will be a blessing to my life and not a burden. But you are talking about the burdens that he is bringing. This economy, under 72 days, has not gotten better for working Americans. And they don't even see the President trying to make it better; they see what he is doing to make it worse. And one of the things is going to be these tariffs, which are going to raise costs on working Americans. Then we--what Chuck Schumer said to me is sounding like, it is going to just sail through--a plan that is going to blow trillions of dollars of holes to our budget, give trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the wealthiest, and gut your Medicaid and gut your services for your grandparents in nursing homes. People believe. People put their trust. I don't blame them. They are my fellow Americans. They wanted for their families--they wanted an America that was more affordable. They wanted America to be first, prioritized. They wanted a safer America, a stronger America, a more prosperous America. I heard that. So when I am back home this weekend, I know that I am going to encounter a lot of folks who are workers in my State who are getting hurt. They want better. They want better from their government. So the burden upon us and each other is: What are we going to do? Are we going to do the same old thing over and over again or are we going to try to do things differently? Are we going to be willing to, again, get in good trouble, necessary trouble to try to save the soul of this Nation? I think my colleague, my dear sister, my prayer partner, my soul lifter--I thought I heard you say something?

Mr. BOOKER. Ah, yes, I yield for a question while retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. I am so grateful for the question from my friend--and that is the centering that we have been trying to do--which is, What are families around New Jersey and America thinking? As you said, the Department of Education--we read that earlier today--it doesn't dictate educational policy of the States, but it does do a lot to provide funding for special needs kids in the States. So I am already hearing from parents of kids with special needs regarding the impact it will have if those resources are cut, everything from programs that help young people afford college, to programs that I have worked with people that help schools afford advanced scientific equipment so the bright minds, the geniuses of our State and the country, can have the equipment they need. This administration is cutting things that are hurting families, and we are hearing from them. We are hearing from veterans. We are hearing from the elderly. We are hearing from people who are taking care of the elderly. We are hearing from people who run our hospitals. We are hearing from people who run our universities and who talk about the science funding and the cutting of Ph.D.s. We are hearing from people who rely on Medicare and Medicaid, who rely on Social Security. We are hearing from people that are appalled that their Nation bullies smaller nations like Canada or Greenland. We are hearing from people that are shocked at what they are doing to the most vulnerable people who come to our Nation, who have American children or an American spouse, who are being disappeared off of our streets, who have no criminal record. We are hearing from people that don't think it is right that a President should have a meme coin that allows him to enrich himself, to hawk his power and position for even greater wealth. So I have done everything I can, and I am going to do more--I still have a little gas in the tank--to elevate those voices, to elevate those voices.

Mr. BOOKER. Before I yield, because I just keep wanting to exercise this power that I might have for a little while longer and exercise it over a man that I have a real chip on my shoulder for--the Senator from Arizona. Yeah, he has been a military fighter pilot. He has been an astronaut. He has been out of this world. But what ticks me off, sir--I have said nice things about everybody else, but I am not saying them about you, sir, because when I go home through New Jersey and I walk through my airport--I was the Newark mayor--I see your big bald head up and a big, big picture of you saying ``New Jersey Hall of Fame, Mark Kelly.'' Who the heck am I? You are the Senator from Arizona, but yeah, yeah-- you are right, OK--he was a great, celebrated military veteran and astronaut who grew up in New Jersey, who went to high school in West Orange, whose parents were cops. So you have the accolades in my State, and I am proud of that. I am proud I get to serve with you. I still have the floor. Stop trying to speak. There are rules in this place. Don't make me sic the Parliamentarian or the Presiding Officer--thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Mr. BOOKER. Well, with that kind of deference, I now will yield for a question while retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. Where you overshadow me, literally.

Mr. BOOKER. I appreciate a New Jersey Hall of Fame member, the only one in the U.S. Senate--I appreciate his question. I appreciate the service of his parents, out there every day putting their heart and soul into serving the community in a dangerous job where you often see people at their worst. I said this earlier, James Baldwin said: Children are never good at listening to their elders, but they . . . never fail to imitate them. You are living up to the example your parents set in so many ways. Then you go and pull something off that really makes me jealous is you are one of the guys in the Senate that probably most married up. We are both are Jersey boys. We both grew up there in grade schools and high schools. We both know those teachers that did so much for us, that coached sports. They taught us. I am going back for a funeral for a great man in New Jersey, Ed Koehler, this weekend, who was one of the greater influences in my life in high school, and you know how much people invested themselves. I remember learning Little League from a guy that would come back from working at a gas station, a parent of another kid. I still remember his big thick hands teaching us how to hold a bat. This guy is working a job at a gas station and rushes home to teach his kid Little League and treated me--the only Black kid--like one of his own kids. Special communities, special heritage, special culture that we share--this is the Jersey culture. We got a chip on our shoulders. We are tough. We are strong. We are proud. And a lot of New Jersey is watching. Thousands of letters and emails and phone calls from all over New Jersey. Andy Kim and I are hearing from so many people, and they are afraid. They are angry. They are worried. They don't understand why they are going after our Social Security programs, cutting benefits by cutting so many employees and cutting the service people get. They don't understand why they are seeing veterans being laid off from their government jobs. They don't understand why Social Security is being called a Ponzi scheme. The President of the United States is making up lies. They don't understand why veterans and Medicaid and Medicare--there are so many things that are making people worry. I am hearing their letters, and they are praying we stop some of these things like $880 billion dollars' worth--and the question is, Why? Why are we doing this? We are doing this--and they are saying it is to extend or make permanent the Trump tax cuts, the overwhelming disproportionate benefit that went to the wealthiest amongst us, the wealthy corporations. So Trump's economy in the first 72 days is pretty bad because of his reckless chaotic behavior: Prices are up. Inflation is up. The stock market had its worst quarter in 2, 3 years. Consumer confidence is down. And now we are going to see tariffs tomorrow, which are going to further drive up prices, create more chaos. Trump squandered the progress we were making on the economy. He tanked the market, jacked the prices. Is it any surprise that Americans are feeling more pessimistic, as I said, with consumer confidence going down? And what is his first major legislative push? This is what we are talking about, my colleague, my friend, my fellow New Jerseyan: His first big legislative push in this body is not to help families. No plan to lower costs. That is what he said he would do. Is his first legislation coming here while lowering costs? No. Is it any relief for seniors? Is it some big idea like we did to lower prescription drug costs? No, that is not what he is doing. Is his first priority helping our veterans? What is his first priority? As I said, it is extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts, a multitrillion dollar giveaway that slashed corporate taxes and overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and left the middle class with crumbs, relative crumbs. He and his allies promised that the benefits would trickle down to workers. That is what we heard. It would ``pay for itself,'' he said. But in 2022, the Fed and the Joint Committee on Taxation confirmed the truth: 90 percent of workers--90 percent of folks in our States saw no benefit. Now Trump and his GOP allies want to double down with even bigger tax cuts that will increase the deficit by over $4.5 trillion, a majority of which would go to the wealthiest people. Let me read what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--how they described the plan. Here is a quote: Following a presidential campaign in which Donald Trump promised to improve the economic circumstances of working families, House Republicans are instead pushing to extend all expiring provisions of the costly 2017 tax law--which are heavily skewed to people with high incomes--and add new tax cuts on top. The Republican-controlled House passed a budget resolution on February 25 authorizing $4.5 trillion in tax cuts through 2034 and calling on committees to partially offset the cost with $2 trillion in cuts; these cuts will inevitably hit programs such as Medicaid and SNAP, which help millions of families afford essential needs. Are they cuts to the wealthiest? No. These cuts will inevitably hit programs such as Medicaid and SNAP, which help millions of families afford essential needs. Extending the expiring tax cuts for individuals and large estates would double down on the flaws in the 2017 law by: Giving the biggest benefits to the wealthy. Households with incomes in the top 5 percent, who have incomes over around $320,000, would receive roughly half of the benefits. So billionaires above that, altogether, they would receive roughly half of the benefits. Ballooning the deficit. Along with the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts enacted under President Bush, the 2017 law has severely eroded our nation's revenue base. The House budget would compound the damage, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to deficits each year. Extending the 2017 tax cuts would cost $3.6 trillion through 2034. Failing to significantly boost economic growth, workers' earnings, or other benefits for workers [would not be seen.] The trickle-down benefits that proponents claimed the 2017 law would produce never materialized, and the law hasn't come close to paying for itself. As I heard on the Senate floor from my colleagues, they said: Oh, this is going to pay for itself; oh, this is going to pay for itself. Yet the House budget claims that extending the tax cuts would generate trillions in revenue--far more than any independent estimate. As in 2017, an alternative path is available. Congress should work toward creating a fairer federal tax system that raises more revenues from wealthy people and corporations and supports high-value investments that expand opportunity and promote shared prosperity. During the 2017 debate, Trump Administration officials and prominent proponents claimed the tax law would yield broadly shared benefits by boosting economic growth. President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers claimed the centerpiece corporate tax rate cut would ``very conservatively'' lead to a $4,000 boost in household income. What a lie. But research to date has failed to find evidence that the gains from the corporate rate cut trickled down to most workers. Surprise, surprise, surprise. A study by economists from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Federal Reserve Board found that workers below the 90th percentile of their firm's income scale--a group whose incomes were below roughly $114,000 in 2016--saw no change in earnings from the rate cut. Proponents' claims that the tax cuts would pay for themselves haven't panned out either. In fact, a study by economists from Harvard, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the Treasury Department estimates that the law's total corporate tax cuts--the rate cut as well as full expensing for capital investments and international tax changes--reduced revenue by roughly 98 cents for every dollar of tax cuts, even after accounting for increases in economic activity due to those cuts. Similarly, proponents argued the law's 20 percent deduction for pass-through businesses (partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietorships) would boost investment and create jobs. Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for example, argued the deduction would ``be good for the economy; good for growth.'' But researchers have found no evidence that it provided any significant boost in economic activity and little evidence that it increased investment or broadly benefited workers, other than the owners themselves. Despite this underwhelming performance, the House Republican budget resolution assumes that enacting $4.5 trillion in new or extended tax cuts will produce enough additional economic growth to generate an extra $2.6 trillion in revenue through 2035. They think it is going to offset the tax cuts. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has derided this claim as ``fantasy math,'' noting that it is many times greater than even the most optimistic independent estimate. They lied to us, or at least just put out really expansive hope in the past, and none of it came true. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool the American people twice, well, we should not let it happen. This idea in this country that if you make the wealthiest more wealthy by giving them more tax cuts and deny services to our veterans, deny healthcare to our seniors, cut Social Security benefits, cut scientific research, cut programs that protect people's safety and security, that that is going to somehow help our Nation to prosper as a whole, you are kidding yourselves. We have the evidence. We have the analysis. And this is the crazy thing, as I heard from Chuck Schumer, the Republicans are now trying to hide the true cost of their billionaire tax cuts with accounting gimmicks. The New York Times interviewed budget experts from across the political spectrum to shed light on the Republicans' trickery. And this is the article I want to read. I know some people have questions, but I want to read this article because Schumer shook me. Shook me. So here is the New York Times. The title of the article is ``The Budget Trick the G.O.P Might Use to Make $4 Trillion Tax Cuts Look Free.'' How much does a tax cut cost? It depends on what you compare it to. Republicans in Congress trying to advance a giant bill that includes $4 trillion in tax cut extensions are considering a novel strategy that would make the extension appear to be free money. The trick: Budgeting with the assumption that current policies extend indefinitely into the future--even those with an expiration date, like the 2017 tax cuts set to end next year. It's the difference between making the extension appear to cost $4 trillion. Which is the true cost, or hiding it and saying it costs nothing. Using this ``current policy baseline'' wouldn't change the bill's real effect on deficits or debt. But it would make it easier to actually make the tax cuts lasting by sidestepping a rule governing budget reconciliation, the process Republicans are using to pass the bill. Yes, this sounds technical! That's why we've enlisted some of Washington's top budget veterans to explain this maneuver using a metaphor. Across the ideological spectrum, nearly all of the more than 20 experts we heard from disliked changing the baseline. And Chuck Schumer just came in here and said the Republicans have already decided they are going to do it. This is outrageous. But here the New York Times interviewed across the ideological spectrum, whole bunch of experts from the center, from the right, from the left, and let's hear what they are saying about this gimmick. ``If budget reconciliation is like taking the express lanes on a highway (there's extra rules and tolls, limited stops, but it gets you to where you want to go faster), using a current policy baseline for taxes is like slapping a fake license plate on your car.'' Zach Moller, Director of the economic program at Third Way, which describes itself as a ``center-left'' research group. They don't like this gimmick. They think it is fakery. Here is another person using an analogy: ``It's like taking an expensive week-long vacation and then assuming you can spend an extra $1,000 per day forever since you are no longer staying at the Plaza.'' Marc Goldwein, Senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that tends to be hawkish on deficits. Here is another person, Jessica Reidl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute--I have worked with them in the past--a conservative research group, and the chief economist for the former Republican Senator Ron Portman of Ohio. ``Last year, despite being deeply in debt, I bought a $100,000 sports car. So next year, buying another $100,000 car is not irresponsible because I am merely spending the same amount of money as the year before. And if I purchase ``only'' a $70,000 car, then I should be congratulated for reducing my annual spending by $30,000.'' A conservative think tank is basically calling this a hoax and a lie. Lying to yourself, that if I keep spending, spending, spending the same amount I kept spending, spending, spending to drive up the costs, then I am just doing the same thing I have done before, so it is not adding. Well, it is adding. There is no way to not call what the Republicans are trying to do a gimmick that is trying to hide the truth that they are going to add trillions of dollars to the deficits that we, that our children, that our children's children are going to have to pay for. The debt payments alone to service the debt are going to be bigger than any of the programs we think we should be investing in like science research or education or affordable childcare, or lowering prescription drug costs, or expanding the child tax credit. Things that we know if we invest in, we will get some returns. But, no, what they are investing in is bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest. Conservatives, independents, left-leaning folks all come to the same conclusion. Pretending $4 trillion in tax cuts will cost nothing may not be easy. Many Republican lawmakers who are concerned about the deficit are well-aware that the bill will increase the deficit by a lot. Here is the integrity call. One Republican in the House showed his integrity. One budget hawk named Massie said: I can't vote for this stuff. I am a budget hawk. I do not want to see increased deficits. He called it what it was. I saw him in an interview say, hey, hey, wait a minute, by your own numbers, Republican colleagues, you are driving up the deficit by trillions of dollars, and you are making the rich richer, and you are leaving future generations more bankrupt. So this article assumes that this was all going to be decided by the Senate Parliamentarian ``who advises legislators on Chamber rules.'' The Parliamentarian, I thought, ``could rule that the current policy baseline isn't allowed.'' Forcing the Republicans to have to make a choice, overruling or replacing my friend the Parliamentarian, somebody that on both sides of the aisle we respect, it is very rarely done. I have been here for 13 years. We have had the same Parliamentarian. But that doesn't mean Republicans won't try, this article assumes. And I guess they did try. They found a way around the Parliamentarian. They found a way around the rules of the Senate. They found a way around the ideals of reconciliation and the Byrd Rule. They are deciding the way we are going to do this is break the Senate and make up our own rules. This is how they are going to get a bill through that gives trillion dollars of tax cuts to the wealthiest in our country who are doing very well. It is not hate on other Americans. I celebrate success, God bless you. But you don't need tax cuts, especially not that are going to be given to you on the backs of the poor, on the backs of our elders, on the backs of our children, on the backs of expectant mothers, on the backs of my mom's, your mom's Social Security. What does it say about our values and our priorities to allow that to happen? Who are we, America, if you don't think this is a moral moment where the character of our country is being tested? I tell you, the Senate has stopped crazy gimmicks like this before, but the persuasive power of Democratic Senators probably won't be enough. We, as a country, like these economists that are Republicans, that are Democrats, that are nonpartisan, who called out this budget gimmickry for what it is--when is it enough? When they came after journalists? When they came after colleges and universities, research and science? When they came after law firms who had the audacity to defend clients or to represent clients that were suing the President, who, God bless America, lost in civil courts, lost in criminal courts? When do you cross your line? We can't let this happen. It is not a right or left moment. It is a right or wrong moment. It is a moral moment in America. I have read Republican after Republican from Republican Governors to Republican mayor groups, from the Cato Institute to the Manhattan Institute to AEI, calling out this budget gimmickry for what it is, and the result will be the same, blowing up our Federal deficit to stratospheric, almost unimaginable levels. This is wrong every way you look at it. And if your values aren't fiscal conservativism, then vote with your integrity and vote against that. If your values are fiscal hawk and you hate deficit, then vote against the bill because it violates you. Don't make up some fantasy that this is going to pay for itself. The 2017 tax cuts didn't, and you are going to extend them and say, well, it is going to happen this time. Oh, don't worry about it. It is going to happen this time. No, it is not. Here is an article. ``Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big That It'll Weigh Down the Economy For Years.'' One of President Donald Trump's lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he's inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump's time in office. That's nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt, other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country. Every person, $23,500. The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war. In peacetimes, he is No. 3--not the reason you want to be like Lincoln. Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump had become dire even before the pandemic. That happened even though the economy was booming and unemployment was at historically low levels. By the Trump administration's own description, the pre-pandemic national debt level was already a ``crisis'' and a ``grave threat.'' To our Nation. The combination of Trump's 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error. Our national debt has reached immense levels relative to our economy, nearly as high as it was at the end of World War II. But unlike 75 years ago, the massive financial overhang from Medicare and Social Security will make it dramatically more difficult to dig ourselves out of the debt ditch. Falling deeper into the red is the opposite of what Trump, the self-styled ``King of Debt,'' said would happen if he became president. In a March 31, 2016, interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Trump said he could pay down the national debt, then about $19 trillion, ``over a period of eight years'' by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth. God, this man breaks his promises over and over. After he took office, Trump predicted that economic growth created by [his] 2017 tax cut, combined with the proceeds from the tariffs he imposed in 2017 on a wide range of goods from numerous countries, would help eliminate the budget deficit and let the U.S. begin to pay down its debt. On July 17, 2018, he told Sean Hannity of FOX News: ``We have $21 trillion in debt. When this [the 2017 tax cut] really kicks in, we'll start paying off the debt like it's water.'' That is Trump on FOX News lying. Nine days later, he tweeted, ``Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated much by the Obama Administration.'' The guy can't help blaming Obama. That is not how it played out. Nothing he said came true. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that the Federal deficit would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump's term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019. There were multiple culprits. Trump's tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%-- Again, what is here--a lot of my colleagues were here. The big business groups were coming in and asking for 25 percent from 35 percent, and Trump said: No, you are asking me for 25. I am going to give you 21 percent, cut your taxes even more. It took a big bite out of Federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years. Meanwhile, Trump's claim-- I wish the author wrote ``Trump's lie.'' But he says: Trump's claim that increased revenue from the tariffs would help eliminate (or at least reduce) our national debt hasn't panned out. Surprise, surprise. In 2018, Trump's administration began hiking tariffs on aluminum, steel, and many other products, launching what became a global trade war with China, the European Union, and other countries. The tariffs did bring in additional revenue. In fiscal year 2019, they netted about $71 billion, up about $36 billion from president Barack Obama's last year in office. But although $36 billion is a lot of money, it is less than 1/ 750th of the national debt. That $36 billion could have covered a bit more than three weeks of the interest on the national debt--that is, had the Trump administration not unilaterally decided to send a chunk of the tariff revenue to farmers affected by his [horrible] trade wars. Businesses that struggled as a result of the tariffs also paid fewer taxes, offsetting some of the increased tariff revenue. By early 2019, the national debt had climbed to $22 trillion. Trump's budget proposal for 2020 called it a ``grave threat to our economic and societal prosperity''-- He called his own damage that. --and asserted that the U.S. was experiencing a ``national debt crisis.'' However, that same budget proposal included substantial growth in the national debt. By the end of 2019, the debt had risen in our country to $23.2 trillion and more federal officials were sounding the alarm. ``Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project--nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project'' [said the CBO]. Weeks later, COVID-19 erupted and made the financial situation far worse. As of Dec. 31, 2020-- About a month left, 3 weeks left in his term. --the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39% from the $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in. He increased our deficit by 39 percent. The government ended its 2020 fiscal year with the portion of the national debt owed to investors, the metric favored by the CBO, at around 100% of GDP. The CBO had predicted less than a year earlier that it would take until 2030 to reach that approximate level of a debt. But not under Donald Trump. Including the trillions owed to various governmental trust funds. . . . Under his leadership, the total debt grew and grew and grew. It is now at about 130 percent of GDP. Where are the fiscal hawks? Normally, this is where we'd give Trump's versions of events. But we couldn't get anyone to give us Trump's side. Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, referred us to the Office of Management and Budget, which is a branch of the White House. OMB didn't respond to our questions. Treasury directed us to comments made by OMB director Russell Vought in October, in which he predicted that as the pandemic eases and economic growth rebounds, the ``fiscal picture'' will improve. The OMB blamed legislators for deficits when Trump submitted his proposed 2021 budget: ``Unfortunately, the Congress continues to reject any efforts to restrain spending.'' It ain't me, he is saying, it is them. ``Instead, they have greatly continued to the continued ballooning of the Federal debts and deficits, putting the Nation's fiscal future at risk.'' Still, the deficit growth under Trump has been historic. . . . [T]he Tax Policy Center . . . has done a comparison of every American president using a metric called the ``primary deficit.'' They are saying Trump had the third biggest primary deficit growth, 5.2 percent of GDP. He is our biggest debt man. Deficits have ballooned under this President because of his tax scam, of his lies about his tax bill in 2017, none of which came true. It didn't pay for itself. It didn't close the deficits. It blew up our deficits. The benefits didn't go to working people. The benefits, as it says--over 90 percent would go to wealthy Americans and corporations. Even some Republicans have been calling out hypocrisy. One of our colleagues, Rand Paul, in 2018: ``I can't in all honesty,'' Rand Paul says, ``in all good faith just look the other way because my party is now complicit in these deficits.'' The other thing is there is a huge hypocrisy factor. Republicans lambasted President Obama to no end for trillion-dollar deficits, and now they have to put forward a multitrillion-dollar deficit. Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former Chief of Staff, said in 2020: My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we're a lot less interested [in deficits] as a party. We don't care at this point. Here is a guy I mentioned numerous times. Thomas Massie, a Republican Member of the House, said earlier this year about Republicans: We have no plan whatsoever to balance the budget other than growth, but what they're proposing is [going] to make the deficit worse. This is what our President is trying to do, with the complicity of a lot of people who call themselves deficit hawks, who call themselves fiscal conservatives. They are going to try to blow it through here, gaming the system, creating some kind of scam to obscure the real cost of this. We--all them on the Republican side, us on the Democratic side--we all know the truth about these tax increases and what they are going to do, how much they are going to cost, but we are going to play a game, it looks like, here unless more Americans speak up. Republican and Democrat, people who know numbers, who know what we are doing to future generations in this country, this is wrong. And I say again that this is not right or left; it is right or wrong. This is a moral moment in America. What are we going to do? I am so glad my friend the Senator from Hawaii is here. I try to keep M&M's in my desk in case she wants to partake in New Jersey's State product. The M&M was invented in Newark. True. I give great trivia here. I am waiting for the Senator from Hawaii, my dear friend, to ask me a question. I have the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. Thank you for the question. You said it with the same words that literally--I didn't write these words. My staff wrote this little paragraph here: Trump is pulling the rug out from under producers that need stability and reliable markets. You and I are sitting right by each other in the Ag Committee, and we see this connection that you so beautifully say, this idea that we are separate from each other. These visible lines that divide us in this country are bunk compared to the strong ties that bind us. That farmer-producer in a rural neighborhood is deeply connected to the person in my community, and I live in an inner city--Newark, NJ. There is a powerful spiritual connection. And if you talk to that farmer, they have got pride that they are feeding America, and they have pride in the ground. You describe it so beautifully. They have pride in their soil, and they want to be stewards of the land, and they want to create a vibrant American food system. And they rely on people that empower them in that process and don't pull the rug out from under them, drag back contracts, cut programing--especially not those programs that help them get fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy foods to food banks. If you talk to the food banks, they will attest that families--how grateful they are for those fresh fruits and vegetables. You said it right: Parents want the best quality food for their kids. But this food system is killing them. And when I heard the new Secretary of HHS talk about: Hey, we need to get greater access to fresh, healthy foods; food is medicine--things I have been saying for years--and then what do they do when they get in there? They cut the very programs that help our farmers get fresh fruits and vegetables to kids to deal with chronic diseases. How could you say out of one side of your mouth--Trump--oh, I am going to let the MAHA people go their way, and then the first thing you do is cut the programs that help kids get healthy, nutritious foods? It makes no sense. It makes no economic sense. It hurts our farmers. It hurts our farmworkers. It hurts our end users. It is not fair, and I appreciate your question, sir. Thank you.

Mr. BOOKER. One of my favorite stories.

Mr. BOOKER. Yes.

Mr. BOOKER. Yep.

Mr. BOOKER. Chuck Schumer, I have yielded for a question, and you asked me did I know. I know now. (Applause.) I want to not quite wrap this up yet. I don't want to wrap this up yet. My mom's Senator--my mom has been watching. I know Catherine Cortez Masto has a podium in front of her. She could give me a rest. I would like to go a little further if we can, just a little further. I love, again, I know people are trying to train each other, in all of our media operations they give the worst images of the people of the other party, but I want to tell you one of the funny tweets my staff gave me is something Ted Cruz said around 1920 hours. He said: Maybe I should pull a fire alarm, he is going to break my record. I am going to pause in a moment, if she has a question for me, to Catherine Cortez Masto, because she is my mother. But I do want to just say again, two points, make if I can, one is how grateful I am to my staff. When we decided to do this many days ago-- (Applause.) When we decided to do this days ago, they were like, we have to do this, and we started preparing and working on this, and they did an extraordinary job. They were with me late nights, writing, writing, writing. I just feel guilty because they wrote about 10 books, and we didn't use all of them. There were really some stuff pulling from Republicans and Democrats, a critique of this moment. Pulling from Democrats and Republicans, Republican Governors that were saying: Do not cut Medicaid. States that know, as my colleagues do, that have a trigger; that if the Medicaid funding goes below 90 percent, that they stop the Medicaid expansion. My staff really worked hard to not make this just Democratic voices, to make it people in our country that Republicans and Democrats--you heard me mention in the speech, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, all people who are honest arbiters and were saying that what Trump is doing is wrong; that a budget like this that blows massive holes in our deficit, it will be something our children are trying to pay for. And what are they ultimately paying for that caused this big deficit? It is trillions of dollars of tax cuts that people like DOGE, multimillionaire, multibillionaire Musk will benefit from, but children won't. They did such a good job bringing together authorities on both sides of the aisle, I just want to thank them. I want to thank my cousin Pam and my family. Cousin Pam, like Chris Murphy, was here for the whole time. I want to thank Chris Murphy again. (Applause.) He never stopped telling me: We can do this, we can do this, we can do this, and said, I will stay with you. He has been with me on the floor. I hope you don't look as tired as I look because you look beat, man. Do I look that bad? All right. I want to go a little bit past this, and then I am going to deal with some of the biological urgencies. But I am going to wait here because I have the power, I have the floor, somebody has to ask me, perhaps from my mom's State, the way that is supposed to work.

Mr. BOOKER. My mom would be so upset with me, my Aunt Marilyn, Butch, my Aunt Shirley, all the people that are your constituents and not mine, they would be upset with me if I didn't yield to you for a question while retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. He was forced to say that. Look at you defying. The Senate and the House should be checks and balances on the President of the United States. The Senate and the House should not allow business as usual in this moment. When the President is insisting that no one has the power to check and balance him, when a judge does it, when a judge decides on the soundness of his legal observations to have a ruling and then the President of the United States doesn't appeal the ruling, like most people kind of do, but starts to drag and insult and threaten that judge with impeachment--and some people, astonishing to me, in our government, said: Oh, that is right. We should impeach this guy. That is not a question of left or right. That is a question of right or wrong. We are normalizing this behavior. We are letting him do things that Republicans and Democrats should say together are wrong. So I want to say--I am going to stop soon.

Mr. BOOKER. God bless you. I will yield for a question while retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. Yes. Yes. Yes. You and I both know, in a bipartisan way, we created some of these programs principally to keep America safe. Many of us remember that dramatic hearing when Trump's Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, sat before the American people, and they were discussing the budgets for USAID and the State Department. James Mattis knew the power of those programs to keep us safe. You mentioned infectious diseases. We live in a world where infectious disease anywhere is a threat to public health everywhere. So pulling our scientists out of the fight against Ebola and pulling our scientists out of the drug-resistant tuberculosis fight makes no sense. Then, in terms of our safety, he just simply said: If you cut these programs, buy me more bullets because our fights are to spread democracy. There are nations in Africa, for example, where the Chinese are trying to influence a different way of life. That is why so many African countries now won't criticize China for things that the rest of the world says are bad. It is because they owe them so much debt that they are so engaged, and they are so overplaying the fact. Chris Coons said something. I think it was Chris Coons who said something painful earlier about Myanmar--this horrific thing. America is the most generous country on the planet. When there is a crisis, we lead the rest. I have sat in meetings in a bipartisan way with Ambassadors from other countries, where we had the moral authority to tell them: You are not doing enough. In the Myanmar crisis right now, as Chris Coons said, Who is standing there? Not Americans. We don't have the capacity anymore to help with a crisis like that, but the Chinese Government is there. Again, it is what defines us. I keep saying this is not a left-right moment; this is a moral moment, and we tell our truth with what we do with our resources. Here is the thing: When you poll people and ask them how much money we spend on USAID, they say: Oh, it must be 10 percent of the American budget or it must be 5 percent of the American budget. It is around 1 percent or less. A penny of what tax dollars you send down to Washington goes to help us to make sure that around the globe we are countering the hard power of some countries with the power of our light and our soft power. We have been the envy of the world, where people see and know how special America is because we live with the value of every major religion. We are going to love our neighbors. We are going to be there for you in your times of need. We all know, with a terrorist group far away and through the most horrific attack, that in a lot of these countries terrorist groups are trying to counter the democratic governments there. Look at the Sahil region. Look what is happening. When I was in Niger, I was shocked to hear what they were talking about--of instabilities in the north, threats of terrorism in the north. I am going to go for 7 more minutes and stop, but I want to use these last 7 minutes to return one more time to the people of my State and, actually, other States who demand that we do things differently and who ask for help. Before I do, I just want to thank Mike Lee today. He is my partner in antitrust--a specialty of my friend Amy Klobuchar. I don't know if you got my text--you got it?--where I said to you: Uh, I am kind of going to the floor to hold it for as long as I can, and I may not make our first subcommittee together on antitrust where we have a lot of common ground. So I am sorry I missed it today, but I know my friend will fill me in. So thank you. I want to close back where we started about us and about why I am here. I believe that there is an urgent crisis in our country that we are not talking about. It is not a left-right crisis; it is a right-wrong crisis. It is a moral moment again in America that is going to define our character about who we are and what we stand for. There is a threat to the bedrock commitments we have made to each other as a country. People are threatening that bedrock commitment of Social Security. They are calling it a Ponzi scheme. They are making up absolute lies about it. I read American after American who said that that is their lifeline. They told stories that they don't get their Social Security payments or they get caught up because nobody is answering their calls. Of the rural Social Security office, I read States red and blue where they are closing Social Security offices. If I now have to drive 100 miles or 150 miles at 93 years old, it doesn't make sense. One of my colleagues stood up here and said it is already cutting benefits if you can't access the folks. I stood here because it is a threat to these bedrock commitments--the bedrock commitment we have made in healthcare in this country. We won the defense of the Affordable Care Act, but my colleagues know, when you start talking about Medicaid, that is not 20-plus million Americans. It is 70, 80, 90 million Americans. It is our elders in nursing homes. It is our children with disabilities. It is our moms giving birth who are still giving birth in the country with the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrial world. It is a moral moment. Who do we stand for? Senator Schumer shocked me when they said they were going to use some kind of budget gimmick to push this through. You shocked me, Chuck. I thought this was going to come down to the Parliamentarian, but it doesn't sound like it now. It is just going to get dumped with the math that I read. The Manhattan Institute criticized it on the right. AI criticized it on the right. So what are you doing? What are you doing, America? You are going to rack up trillions and trillions of dollars in debt that our children and our children's children are going to have to pay for in passing the bucks that will grow. Are you doing that to help people get more access to healthcare and more access to retirement security and more access to the things we believe in? I think of ideas like universal childcare and paid family leave. No. We are doing that in order to renew the tax cuts that I read of conservative budget folks, moderate budget folks--all across the spectrum--who said it will blow up our deficit, and the benefits of those tax cuts--not all. Let's not use hyperbole. But most will go-- most will go to the richest people in our country, who I promise you--I celebrate people who brought their ingenuity and their expertise and their grit and their tireless work who have built wealth in this country. It should not be us versus them, but I am telling you that those folks do not need another tax cut. The corporations that came here, and you all remember, that said: We would like a 25-percent rate. The people I read said that when we kicked it to 21--not even what they were asking for, which was for 25-- it exploded. It is one of the main reasons it exploded our debt. We read from conservative groups who just said that all of these promises that we would grow our way out of our deficit didn't materialize. All of the promises that were made, Trump, for those who don't remember and weren't here when I read it, was going around, telling folks: Oh, my tariffs--this is 2017. The money that I get will be what we will use to pay down the debt. The math that they did would account for about 1/750th of the debt at that time, but he used that money to try and compensate the farmers who he was hurting with his tariffs. This is a moral moment and people are getting hurt and people are afraid because of the threats to Medicaid cuts. There are people writing in who said $880 billion would devastate me, but even small cuts to services--my whole family's fragile architecture of our finances--if you just pull out the transportation money that my disabled child uses, that will crumble my financial world. So, when you talk about the bigger cuts, we know the math. Many States that expanded Medicaid have a trigger, that if it goes below 90 percent, all the Medicaid Expansion goes off in that State, and millions of Americans will be hurt. That is not right, guys. That is not right. So these are the choices before us--our veterans and the VA. I am mad at you now as you made me get very emotional with your story. We read John McCain's story. We read the stories of the poems of the unknown soldier looking over us and saying: What are you doing to the Gold Star families? What are you doing to the veterans? Are you living up to your promises that you made? Well, right now, there are cuts of tens of thousands. There are 80,000 veterans who work for the VA, but there are even more because about 20 percent or so who are Federal workers are also veterans. We read stories from veterans in America who are shaken by what is happening, who are losing their jobs. Yet all they want to do is serve. They are not what they are being called. They are not leeches. They are not criminals. They shouldn't be degraded for wanting to serve their Nation. This is what we are talking about: Our veterans, our seniors, our healthcare, our financial security going forward. I asked the question to all those people who voted for Donald Trump who believed in him that he would lower your grocery prices. I ask you: Look at your financial self. Are you better off than you were 72 days ago financially? The answer, for most people who believe in him, is no, because he didn't set out to do anything to lower prices. He set out to rename the Gulf of Mexico, to threaten Canada, to say I am going to take over Greenland. He has done a lot of things--140 Executive orders. Many of them actually drive up your costs, make it more expensive to enroll in the ACA, reduce a lot of the tax credits there. He has increased your costs. He has taxed your bedrock services. The stock market tumbles. Your 401(k) accounts are less. Inflation is up. Consumer confidence is down. These are the voices we brought into this Chamber, the voices of all of our constituents--red States, blue States--the voices of Democrats, Republicans, Republican Governors, Democratic Governors. We brought all of the people who are saying no, this is a moral moment, not left or right, right or wrong. So I have tried over the last 25 hours and 1 minute to center the conversation back on what will we do in good consciences. People who are saying, I served this country, I risked my life, shouldn't I be able to keep my job? People are saying this country once made itself the envy of the world because we invested in high-quality education for every child. I don't like what is going on, the end of the Department of Education. People are saying I worked harder than I ever have, but the prices on everything in my life are getting higher. People who are saying that the America I learned about in school, the one where people's rights are protected, the people are saying why are we yet again going through another healthcare battle, threatening millions of people. People are saying that I am worried about the financial security and the future of my country. The voices of folks. So I end by saying simply this: Where I started was John Lewis. I don't know how to solve this. I don't know how to stop us from going down this road. Chuck Schumer has now told me that they are greasing the skids to do these things. I am sorry, but I know who does have the power--the people of the United States of America. The power of the people is greater than the people in power. It is time to heed the words of the man I began this whole thing with, John Lewis. I begged folks to take the example of his early days, where he made himself determined to show his love for his country at a time when the country didn't love him, to love this country so much, to be such a patriot that he endured beatings savagely on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at lunch counters, on Freedom Rides. He said he had to do something. He would not normalize a moment like this. He would not just ago along with business as usual. He wouldn't know how to solve it. But there is one thing that he would do that I hope we all can do, that I think I did a little bit of tonight. He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the sole of our Nation. I want you to redeem the dream. Let's be bold in America, not demean and degrade Americans, not divide us against each other. Let's be bolder in America, for the vision that inspires with hope, that starts with the people of the United States of America. That is how this country started, we the people. Let's get back to the ideals that others are threatening. Let's get back to our Founding document that those imperfect geniuses had some very special words at the end of the Declaration of Independence. It was one of the greatest in all of humanity, the Declaration of Interdependence, when our Founders said we must mutually pledge, pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. We need that now from all Americans. This is a moral moment. It is not left or right, it is right or wrong. Let's get in good trouble. (Ms. LUMMIS assumed the Chair.) My friend, Madam President, I yield the floor. (Applause, Senators rising.) Madam President, thank you to the pages. Thank you to the Parliamentarian staffs. Thank you to the clerks. Thank you to the doorkeepers. There were so many people who make this place special. I kept you up all night. I kept you up 24 hours. I just want to say thank you. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.)

Mr. BOOKER. Yes.

Mr. BOOKER. Heck no, not to you. Not to you. Not to you. Let me tell you, I have something to get off of my chest about you. I woke up yesterday morning, and the first thing I did--now, this shirt is all wrinkled and a little ripe. But the first thing I did is grab a gift from you. People, don't get upset ethics-wise. We are allowed to give each other gifts. This looks like--I don't know how much it costs, but you gave me--I was talking about traveling and how we have to pack bags and go all the time. And you told me: I travel with a steamer. And I pulled out this little steamer for this shirt that I am wearing right now. You are one of the kindest, sweetest people I know. You are one of my closest friends here in the U.S. Senate. And I want to say something about you because, in this moment, as people are watching, I want people to go there. We had a conversation. You came to my office. It is always a sign of respect when you come to a Senator's office. And you came to my office, and we were talking about social media. And I was encouraging you. You were a little resistant--if you don't mind me outing you--to open up and get more on the platform. We were talking about ideas and talking about Social Security, talking about Medicare and Medicaid. You opened up to me. And I hope I am not betraying confidences. I asked you just like, what do you do? You are such an amazing human being. You are one of the kindest people I know. I asked you: What do you do on your weekends? What do you do for fun? Let people see it. Then you kind of made me pause when you said: Well, my mother is kind of getting old--is getting older. I love her so much. You said: My siblings and I, we alternate weekends, just spending time with our mother. It was one of the sweetest things I heard. I said to you: What do you do with your mom? And then you brightened up. And you choked me up, you jerk, because you said: What I love to do with my mom is to dance with her in the kitchen. When we are in the kitchen making food or something, I just love sometimes to put on a song, and we dance. I don't know why it struck me as beautiful. And this is what I hope people will do right now. I said: Well, why don't you record that? I didn't think you would do it, that you would ask her if you could do it. But you then put up one of the most beautiful videos I have ever seen, from one of my colleagues, of you and your mom in the kitchen. I think it is on your Instagram page. And I have looked at that video--I am probably all the views right now--of my colleague, this big U.S. Senator, loving his mother so much. And we are talking about that. I have talked about this on the floor. Great nations respect their elders. They take care of them. One of my colleagues, when they asked me a question about Social Security, they reminded me of what it was--the greatest anti-poverty program in the history of America; that Social Security rescued millions of Americans from being in poverty. It virtually ended poverty, although the checks now are becoming meager and meager. As prices are going up, more people are getting lower and lower toward poverty. And people who live on those checks live very austerely. But you are just this amazing guy who turns your own lived experience into greater and greater urgencies to fight for the people of New Mexico. So I did not want to yield for a question before getting that off my chest. You are my friend. You are my colleague. You are my brother. And more than you know it, you are my inspiration. So, yes, I yield for a question while retaining the floor now. I feel like I have so much power here to yield to my colleagues. They are often more eloquent. I am like afraid of Whitehouse because he is one of the brainiest people in the Senate. But I now have the control. But for you, now that I have gotten this off my chest and, hopefully, embarrassed you but maybe added a few more views to my favorite video, I yield for a question while retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. Thank you very much. I take your compliments because you don't give them abundantly or overly well. So thank you very much.

Mr. BOOKER. A hundred miles. Now, what is that hardship to a senior? I have heard from people in their nineties. They already are having benefit cuts. The Wall Street Journal--I told you, I was trying to make you proud. I wanted to get as many sources from anybody that was more center to right, and I read from the Wall Street Journal and said the customer service--the customer service--in Social Security is going from bad to worse. That was the title of the article. So they are already doing cuts. They are already heaping insecurity on our seniors, heaping inconvenience on our seniors, heaping fear upon our seniors, heaping insecurity, making people lose sleep. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is not a model of leadership. It is a model of cruelty and mean-spiritedness and hurting people. When is it enough, America? When is it enough that we say, it may not be my grandmother who depends on that Social Security check, but I love America. And you cannot love Americans, you cannot love America, you cannot call yourself a patriot--please listen to me. You cannot say you love this country and you are a patriot because patriotism is love of country, but you can't love your country unless you love your country men and women. And love means that if somebody's mother or grandmother is hurting, is afraid, that I am going to stand up and do what I can to comfort them and fight for them because, today, it might be your grandmother; it might be your family with a disabled child. This is not right or left; it is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment; it is a moral moment. Where do you stand? We started this by talking about John Lewis. It is time for good trouble, necessary trouble. Thank you. Thank you, my friend, even though you made fun of me, before my entire State, for not remembering the very important preamble to the Constitution.

Mr. BOOKER

Mr. BOOKER. Yes.

Mr. BOOKER. First of all, I want to say this is when, when you ask me a question--to yield for a question--I want to say I yield for a question while retaining the floor, and I want to say to my colleague, I am familiar with some of this, but I--if as a part of a question to me and not anything resembling a colloquy, I will yield for a question while retaining the floor if you have another question. (Mr. MORENO assumed the Chair.) To my colleague, are you familiar with an article ``USDA halts millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks''?

Mr. BOOKER. I will yield while still retaining the floor.

Mr. BOOKER. I just want to answer you. Again, I would drive myself mad trying to understand what the ambitions of Trump were or the ambitions behind some of the crazy stuff in Project 2025 that he said wasn't there, and he tried to run away from it because it was so unpopular, and now so much of it is being done. It almost sounds too partisan, too insane. What I do want to do, Senator Murphy, in answer to your question--all I can do is try to be as fair and factual in describing what is happening in our country and appeal to people who are moderates in this country, the people who are fair arbiters of what is happening, to try to appeal to them that this is a crisis. So when university after university after university is cutting scientific research, stopping bringing in the best minds, Ph.D. candidates, post-docs, when they are telling you that they are stopping investment in state-of-the-art research buildings, when they are telling you that they are shutting down programs to bring the youngest, brightest minds in and our competitor China is doing the exact opposite, flowing money through because China understands if we get two steps ahead of America on quantum computing, we can break all kinds of encryptions. We can locate every submarine they have. China understands if we can get two steps ahead of America on artificial intelligence, it is an endgame for them. This is a global competition, and a President, in 71 days--if you are a moderate in America and just want America to win in human endeavor, look at what the President is doing. And here is to the point you were driving, Senator Murphy. It is Orwellian. The bastions of freedom that are our universities, as an article from Fareed Zakaria has said, even if universities got too woke and too excessive, the antidote to that isn't to try to shut down the thought of the left. It is to try to make a fair, more competitive marketplace for ideas from all around the political spectrum. But this isn't about politics; it is about science; it is about research; it is about cutting NIH funding, science funding. But I want to stick with that because that is the controversial nub, right? Like, we need to go after DEI programs. I am hearing it all the time. It was like the confusion I had 5 years ago when people were asking me: Oh, the Republicans are talking about critical race theory. As my father says, I have more degrees than the month of July, but I am not hot. But I had to go back and research: What is critical race theory? Oxford, Stanford, Yale grad, I wasn't sure what they were talking about. And this is the rub on that because I don't want to just talk about what is obvious, which should enrage people on both sides of the aisle, not just enrage people on both sides of the aisle because of the China outcompeting us, but because we allocated this money in a bipartisan way that he is now trying to pull back. That should raise a violation of article I of the Constitution. But I want to stick in this more controversial era that you talked about that has, all across the country, people banning books. When I heard Toni Morrison's ``The Bluest Eye'' was being taken out of libraries, when I heard my favorite author James Baldwin was being taken out of libraries--what kind of world do we live in where, somehow, studying what they call Black history is something that we have to--that Trump feels like it is a rally for people to stop, where a person working for the Department of Education can't look you in the eye and say: Yes, we need to study Black history? Black history is American history. I had a brilliant friend of mine, brilliant. He looked at me with deadpan embarrassment and told me he just found out that year about the bombing in Tulsa, OK, something I worked with Senator Lankford to do more to memorialize, but he just never knew about it; that this thriving African-American financial community was the first recorded aerial bombing--not Pearl Harbor--in the United States of America, and he was never taught it. Is that Black history or is that American history? Why do these people who attack our history think they have to sanitize, homogenize, ``Disneyfy'' American history to make us proud? I am more proud of our country when we tell the truth about what happened, when we learned from the wretchedness and the difficulties and the bigotries and the hates and demagogues who pit us against each other and how we all overcame that. That is our greatness. How the genius of inventors that were women or Blacks in the most oppressive of times still manifested their genius that transformed humanities. These are stories that should make every American more proud. So, yes, when you have a President now that is making people scrape through programs that they don't even know what they are doing, but if there were more diversity in it, that is bad? That is insanity. My mom worked for IBM before they used words like ``DEI.'' One of her jobs was to find a bigger pool of highly qualified applicants. You know what she did is what is being stopped by the Trump administration. She just made sure that they were going to HCBUs to find the brightest students so that their applicant pool would be better. This isn't about preferential treatment for one group over another; it is about trying to create a more competitive pool where we get the best of the best. It is about merit-based. And this President talked about merit--and I watched Senator Whitehouse ask one of the top lawyers of the EPA if he ever brought a case, if he ever had a hearing, if he ever did a deposition--no, no, no. Wait a minute. How are you qualified for this job? And that is the conflict in the logic that I am observing. In one sense, they are exalting the wealthy elites. I have never imagined that I would see a Presidential inauguration where the billionaires, leaders of tech companies, would sit in front of Cabinet members, many of whom were billionaires themselves--but that kind of elitism. Yet they call academic excellence, brilliance, and achievement in the sciences at these universities the elites we need to go after. If we start going after our educational institutions and weakening their ability to advance excellence in human endeavor, we are injuring ourselves, and we have models for that. As Fareed Zakaria says, the best example was Mao Zedong and the cultural revolution where one of the first groups they went after were their universities. Now they are reversing that. They watched what we did so well. They are doubling down on their funding of universities. They are taking their best scientists and taking away their passports because they don't want them to come here and study. They are trying to get ahead of us in DeepSeek and AI. They are trying to get ahead of us in quantum computers. They are trying to get ahead of us in robotics. They are trying to get ahead of us in biomedical engineering. They are trying to get ahead of us in all of these things. They know the way they do it is do what America did in the sixties, seventies, eighties, the nineties, the aughts, 2010--to do what they did all those times and look at them now.

Mr. BOOKER. Yes.