Tim Kaine

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today to honor and celebrate the remarkable leadership and dedication of Nathan Monell, who will retire as executive director of the National Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) this year. Nathan's tenure at the PTA has been defined by his steadfast commitment to advocating for the educational success and well-being of our Nation's children. His vision, expertise, and passion for family engagement have made a lasting impact on the lives of millions of children and families across the United States and beyond. Since Nathan's appointment as executive director in 2015, the National PTA has flourished under his leadership. With more than 20,000 local units and over 3 million members, PTA is the oldest and largest volunteer child advocacy association in the country. Nathan's leadership has been instrumental in advancing family engagement and public policy, and his work has reinforced the PTA's mission of uniting parents, teachers, schools, and communities to ensure every child's potential is realized. His lifelong commitment to empowering families and fostering educational equity is evident in his contributions to a wide range of initiatives, including youth and family services, mental health, foster care, HIV and substance abuse prevention, and education. He has led public policy efforts at the local, State, and Federal levels, forging partnerships with foundations and corporations to improve outcomes and advance equity in communities nationwide. Whether advocating for school funding, digital safety, or mental health, Nathan's tenacity has driven the organization to take bold actions that support the needs and concerns of parents, teachers, and students alike. As Nathan prepares for retirement, I join the National PTA, his colleagues, and countless individuals whose lives he has touched in expressing our gratitude for his years of service. I know that his legacy will continue to inspire the next generation of leaders committed to making a difference in the lives of children and families. I wish him and his family the very best in the next chapter of his life.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I can make it fast or slow. I am joining all of my colleagues to advocate for this bill. One-third of the Virginia population is a resident of the DC metro area and enjoys this Capital, and 150,000 Virginians come to work in DC every day. They want DC police and services to be well funded. Please support this bill. Thank you. Vote on S.1077

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to discuss the House continuing resolution that will be before this body over the next couple of days, and I want to begin by talking about a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting that we had yesterday morning at 9:30 a.m. So if we are all paying attention, the House acted on a continuing resolution on Tuesday night. The budget deadline is at the end of the day Friday. And it takes two Houses to do a budget, but what happened is when the House acted on their portion of it, they decided to leave town. They thought it would just be great if they just left town before the budget was even done, and they sent us a ``continuing resolution'' that would be unprecedented because it would mean that the Government of the United States would have operated not under a traditional appropriations bill but, instead, under a CR for the entire year. To those who don't do the Washington speak, what is the difference between a CR and a real appropriations budget? The way I describe it is this: If you are driving a vehicle, you want to drive by looking through the windshield, where you are going. That is what the budget does. You budget for the year ahead of you, based upon the facts on the ground, the realities in the world, the priorities that you have embraced, the challenges that you will face. That is what a budget is supposed to do. When you operate under a continuing resolution, you are driving by looking in the rearview mirror. You are instead embracing decisions that were made a while ago and just saying: Well, we can't even reach an accord about going forward. So let's instead just--let's do what we did last month. Let's do what we did last year because we are unable to reach an agreement. A continuing resolution has been somewhat normal for a couple of months. If we don't reach a budget deal by September 30, it is pretty normal that we do a CR through the end of the calendar year. But in every year that I have been here, Congress has been able to, at some point, find not the backward-looking CR but the forward-looking appropriations bill and put it in place so that we are spending money based on the priorities that are important right now. What is pending before the Senate now is not that forward-looking budget. Instead, it is this vehicle that has come over from the House that would, for the first time, have us not budgeting based on the windshield but, instead, driving by what is in the rearview mirror. We had an Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday, and it was a hearing that was called by the Readiness Subcommittee, on which I sit. Readiness looks at this very important metric: How ready are the different branches of the American military to fight tomorrow, if we need to? And we have this hearing every year, and we usually invite to the hearing the vice service chiefs of each of the service branches--so instead of the service chief of the Navy, the deputy, Vice Admiral Kilby. We will invite the deputies of all the branches, and they come and talk to us about how they measure readiness and where we stand. And they were all before us, yesterday, in a hearing that was chaired by Alaska Senator Sullivan, with the ranking member, Hawaii Senator Hirono, and a number of others there at the hearing. Now, remember, it had just been 12 hours before that the House had passed the continuing resolution, and so folks were aware of what was on the table in this hearing yesterday morning. And what did our military leadership say to us about the continuing resolution that we were going to be asked to vote on in the next day or so? Well, let me just read a couple of quotes from the military leaders. Admiral Kilby: Consistent and predictable funding is foundational to our improvement efforts. The Navy will need to make hard choices this year if we are operating under a full-year continuing resolution. And so I asked him this question. I am just going to read the exchange that I had with him: Admiral Kilby, I think you testified in your open testimony that under a CR one-fifth of our ships will miss their maintenance schedule, did I hear that right? Admiral Kilby said: Specifically eleven ships, those maintenance availabilities are at risk. I followed up: OK, so we want to get to 80% ready on ships and subs, where are we now? Admiral Kilby said: Depending on the day, around 67%. I then said: What will one-fifth of ships missing their maintenance schedule under the CR, what will that do to our quest to get to 80% readiness for ships and subs? Admiral Kilby: It'll certainly be a setback, we'll take a penalty there. All of the other vice service chiefs said the same thing on behalf of the Marines and the Air Force and the Space Force and the Army: Operating under a full-year CR will hurt readiness, will hurt our national security. This is what the Pentagon is telling us about the bill we are going to be voting on in the next day or so. But it wasn't just the military leaders who said that. The chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, Senator Sullivan, said: The CR--from a readiness standpoint, I think that none of this is helpful. He described the frequent use of CRs as ``a failure on the part of Congress.'' Then my friend and colleague who was the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Wicker--here is what he said about the bill we are going to vote on in the next couple of days: I will say this about the fact that this is the first year- long CR for the Department of Defense. . . . This is a shame on our process and it is not in keeping with what the Founders intended. This is the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee's opinion about what a yearlong CR will do to our national security. So why are we going to vote for it? Why are we taking it up and rushing to pass it? When our military leadership says it is a bad idea and when the chairman of the Armed Services Committee says it a bad idea, why would we contemplate it? Well, Senator Sullivan sort of hinted at it when he said it is better than a shutdown. But those are not the options. This was a hearing Wednesday morning at 9:30 in the morning. The budget deadline is not until the end of the day Friday. We don't have to accept that it is either a security-damaging continuing resolution or a shutdown because we are the Senate of the United States. There is an attitude among Senators here that because the House came up with a partisan bill and sent it to us and then decided to skip town Tuesday night, that we just have to go along. I thought the Senate was an independent branch of Congress. I thought the Senate was the greatest deliberative body in the world. I don't think the Speaker of the House is the czar of the Senate, and when he sends us a continuing resolution 3 days before a budget deadline and then leaves town, I don't think the Senate of the United States is bound to follow his wishes. Instead, we should do our own jobs and do the right thing for the country. If the Armed Services chair says that this hurts defense, then let's get it right. If the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee says that the CR hurts defense, then let's get it right. The good news is that we have an opportunity to get it right. It is not completely clear as I stand on the floor, but it looks likely that there could be a vote today or tomorrow on an alternative that I will call the getting-it-right alternative. What is the getting-it-right alternative? We would extend the current spending level for 30 days and then finish the budget. We would decide we don't want to drive looking in the rearview mirror; we want to drive looking in the windshield. We would get an appropriations deal that wouldn't hurt our readiness. I am just talking about one priority. I could have other colleagues stand here and talk about how this CR hurts education priorities, health priorities, mental health priorities, transportation priorities, emergency response. We don't have to accept that, and frankly, to earn the label ``U.S. Senator,'' we shouldn't accept it. We should do the get-it-right alternative, and the get-it-right alternative, which has been proposed by Senator Murray and others, is to do a simple, 30-day extension of existing spending--no amendments, no adjustments, no anomalies, no quirks for 30 days--and then get an appropriations deal done that can pass this body and pass the House. We can do it. We are very, very close. I am not on the Appropriations Committee, but in my discussions with appropriators, they say: We are extremely close; we can do this. We should. So I will just urge my colleagues, as you contemplate a vote on this House CR that, in my view, does great damage to many priorities, you don't just have to go along with the House work product, especially when they show disrespect to the Senate by skipping town Tuesday night, thinking that they could jam us by doing so. You don't have to go along with the work product that even the chairman of the Armed Services Committee says hurts our national readiness. You don't have to go along with a work product when Pentagon officials who have made this their lives look at us and tell us this will hurt national security. There is a better strategy, and we should embrace it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that will take place, during today, about S.J. Res. 10, which is a resolution that my colleague Senator Heinrich and I have filed to challenge President Trump's day-one declaration of a U.S. energy emergency. And you will hear from a number of our colleagues today, expressing the basic point that the declaration is a sham. There is, in fact, no emergency, but it has been declared so as to gut various environmental laws passed by Congress, still part of U.S. statutory law, in order to advantage certain kinds of energy--i.e., oil, gas, and coal--and punish other forms of energy--wind, solar, et cetera. I am very, very happy to have the support of my colleague Senator Heinrich, who is the energy expert on the Democratic side in this body, and very, very happy to have so many colleagues who will be speaking on this matter today on the Senate floor. President Trump took a number of actions on his first day in office, and many of them got a lot of attention. One that didn't get so much attention was his decision, on day one--on day one--to declare that the United States was in an energy emergency and, therefore, we needed to bypass environmental laws. I want to dig into the sham nature of the emergency declaration and then explore why President Trump actually has done this, and, finally, conclude with a request to my colleagues that the article I branch should not just roll over and play dead when a President declares an emergency that does not actually exist. So let's first talk about the claim that President Trump has raised that the United States is in an energy emergency. This is a chart that shows U.S. energy production from 1950 until essentially today. The chart goes through about 2023 and does not include the 2024 numbers. But I am proud to stand here and tell you, especially as one who has supported many of the policies that have led to this growth in American energy, that America is producing more energy today than at any point in the history of this Nation. America is the leader in the world in energy production, and for the last few years, we have been an energy surplus nation, producing more than we consume. You will see that the chart includes different kinds of energy--oil, gas, coal, renewable--but the direction of the chart shows steady increase in production. Let's go into the kinds of energy we are talking about here. In 2024, America produced more natural gas than at any time in the history of this country. In 2024, America produced more petroleum than at any time in the history of this country. And in 2024, America deployed more renewable energy than at any time in the history of this country. In fact, in 2024, more than 90 percent of the energy added to the Nation's energy grid was from renewable sources--wind, solar, and battery storage. The United States, recently, in the past few years became--there may be a technical term for this, but I call it an energy surplus nation. We produce more than we consume. That moment happened in 2019, when our production started to outpace consumption. In every year since 2019, that surplus has grown, and the surplus in 2024 was at record levels. And it is a good thing to produce significantly more than we consume. Why is it a good thing? Because we are able to sell energy to others, reducing our trade deficit. I participated with Senators in lifting the ban on export of crude petroleum a few years ago, and that plus exports of liquid natural gas have helped us with our trade deficit. But more directly related to this moment in time, the export of American energy has also helped us help other nations that are reliant on energy from petrol dictators. The nations in Europe that had to rely on Vladimir Putin, nations in other parts of the world that have had to rely on Iran or Venezuela, now, increasingly, are able to access U.S. energy. I was in Finland over the weekend, visiting Virginia Guard troops exercising with the Finnish Army. Finland is importing liquid natural gas from the United States and using it for their own energy needs and also for the energy needs of other European nations. So where is the emergency? More oil than ever, more natural gas than ever, more renewables than ever, and a record surplus of production over consumption. Where is the emergency? The emergency is not in the energy sector. The emergency is Donald Trump self-creating an emergency, because Donald Trump in other actions taken in the first week of his administration has gone full tilt to challenge energy projects that are creating jobs and lowering prices all across this country. Donald Trump and his administration are attacking wind projects. They are attacking solar projects. They are attacking clean energy projects that aren't oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. And by doing so, they are reducing supply and likely raising prices on American consumers. There are a number of projects in Virginia, as an example, that have benefited from tax breaks that were included either in the Inflation Reduction Act, for clean energy projects, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, for rollout of electric vehicle charging, for example. President Trump's administration has attacked those projects, has put them on hold, and the Virginians who were intending to invest billions of dollars hiring people to build these projects are now uncertain about what they can do. Why would a President declare an energy emergency and then attack homegrown clean energy projects in my State and elsewhere? And that is exactly what President Trump is doing. Why would he do that? Well, we don't have to speculate about the answer. We know the answer. In the summer of 2024, President Trump held a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with the CEOs of major oil and gas companies, and they reported upon the substance of that meeting. And here is a headline from the Guardian, and other publications carried the same news: ``Trump promised to scrap climate laws if U.S. oil bosses donated $1 billion'' to his campaign. One of the oil executives at the meeting quoted Donald Trump saying: ``You'll get it on the first day.'' Oil and gas will get preferential treatment on the first day, with end runs around environmental laws passed by Congress that are still part of the statutes we take an oath to implement in our jobs. And, in fact, the oil and gas guys did get it on the first day. What did the Trump fake energy emergency deliver to those he had promised to support? Here is what was delivered in the emergency order. The President said: There is an emergency, and so we need to bypass laws passed by Congress. We need to bypass the Clean Air Act. We need to bypass the Clean Water Act. We need to bypass the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act. Because of this fake emergency that he has created out of thin air, we need to take all of these laws that Congress has passed--many of which have been in statute, like the Clean Water Act, for more than 50 years--and we need to give energy producers and transmitters the ability to bypass these laws in order to produce and transmit energy. It is interesting, though. When you read the Executive order, it talks about energy production, but you have to go to the last section of the order to read what ``energy'' means. And President Trump is calling for a national emergency and bypassing all of these laws, if you want to produce using oil or gas or coal or nuclear or hydro, but not for wind, not for solar, not for clean battery storage. If your homegrown American low-cost energy is wind, solar, and battery storage, you don't get to bypass environmental laws. You have to comply with the letter of the law as Congress intends. We are only giving a break to the guys who supported Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry. Donald Trump is so willing to give away the farm to Big Oil and Gas that he even, in the first provision in the emergency order, said: We also need to bypass property rights. He encouraged Federal Agencies to make aggressive use of eminent domain to produce fossil fuel energy. Those watching understand what this means. Eminent domain is the government taking the land from private property owners, and there is a set of rules in the Federal Code about when you can use eminent domain for energy projects, but Donald Trump has said: You know what, if you want to do oil, coal, and gas, you don't have to follow the rules. You can even take people's private property by bypassing the rules for oil, gas, and coal--but, of course, not for wind and solar, not for wind, solar, and battery, the clean energy that has been 95 percent of the power added to the grid just last year. So we know what the game is. ``You'll get it on the first day,'' Big Oil, and they did. And Donald Trump is now giving them an E-ZPass lane to speed by clean energy projects that are lower cost and cleaner because he told them he would do it if they supported his campaign. This is no emergency. It was declared for a corrupt purpose, and it is an unacceptable effort to undermine laws passed by the article I branch. And so I am on the floor with my colleague Senator Heinrich-- and I am going to yield to him in a second--to just ask Congress: Be Congress. Be the article I branch. If a President can just stand up and make up an emergency and then gut laws that Congress passed, what is to stop President Trump from making up another emergency and gutting other laws? What is to stop any President, Republican or Democrat, from fabricating a complete emergency and using it to gut laws that Congress has passed? You know, if President Trump doesn't like the Clean Water Act--I happen to like it. I don't think it is perfect. But the Clean Water Act has helped us to restore the James River in the city of Richmond, where I live, which won an international river prize a couple years ago as the most improved river in the United States. A river that was a sewer, that was closed off to fishing for 50 years, now has fishing, swimming, rafting, kayaking, bald eagles that had been extinct along the river because of chemicals now breeding in one of the most dense population of bald eagles in the United States. I like the Clean Water Act. I think it served a valuable purpose for 50-plus years, but maybe President Trump, who was elected, has decided that the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act or property rights protections have outlived their usefulness. And if he has decided that these laws have outlived their usefulness, well, he has got two Republican Houses. He can introduce a bill to repeal the Clean Air Act or repeal the Clean Water Act. That would be the right way to do this, not invent a bogus fake emergency and unilaterally gut these laws. But the President has got a problem. If he introduced the bill to repeal the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, not even Republicans--some Republicans would--but not even Republicans would support it. In two Republican Houses, he would have zero luck in repealing these laws that have protected the public health and the environment. So his attitude is, Wow, I could benefit my Big Oil cronies by repealing these laws, but that is a nonstarter in the article I branch. So why don't I kick the article I branch to the side, create a fake emergency, end-run them, and that is how I benefit my cronies. Congress should stand up against this and vote for S.J. Res. 10 because it is the right policy, and we shouldn't gut these provisions, except by doing it in the course of ordinary legislative business, should that be the will of the appropriate majority of both bodies. That would be the way to do this. So I am asking my colleagues to stand up and support S.J. Res. 10. This would be horrible policy. But more than a horrible policy on these laws, it would also set a horrible precedent, a precedent that a President of either party can invent a sham emergency and then grab away from Congress powers that Congress has under article I. Let's not be sheep in this place. Let's not have this be the ``Silence of the Lambs,'' just doing whatever Donald Trump says he wants to do, with the article I branch not saying or mumbling a word, not willing to issue a peep, not showing a backbone, not showing a voice. We have got a backbone; we have got a voice; but more importantly, we took an oath to a Constitution that gives Congress certain powers. We should not let the President trample on those powers. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to conclude the debate. I believe the vote will follow these remarks. I want to thank my colleagues. Seventeen Democrats appeared on the floor to speak on behalf of S.J. Res. 10. I needn't repeat the comments I made at the beginning. I will be very brief. No. 1, there is no energy emergency. We have established the United States is producing more energy--more oil, more gas, more renewable energy--than at any time in the history of this country and that we are now a dramatic net-energy-surplus nation, as we are producing more and more energy than we consume every year. That surplus is great because we can export to develop both reducing the trade deficit and helping other nations wean themselves off their reliance on petrodictators. Second, President Trump's energy emergency declaration is a sham. He ignores the facts of America's energy dominance in order to benefit Big Oil because he told them he would do that. Last summer, he said: If you support me for President and invest in me, I will give you rollbacks in environmental laws on day one of my administration. And that is precisely what he did. We can tell that that is what he is doing by reading the exact terms of the energy emergency, in which he sidelines critical environmental laws so long as you are producing oil and gas but not if you are producing wind and solar. If the President really wanted to accelerate energy, he would not leave out wind and solar. Instead, he is doing the bidding of Big Oil by trying to kneecap wind and solar in his energy emergency declaration. But it is more than the words on a page in the declaration; it is also in his actions. I have many projects in Virginia that have announced with great fanfare--including announced by our Republican Governor--that have relied upon tax credits provided in the Inflation Reduction Act or other incentives in the bipartisan infrastructure law. These are projects all over Virginia--rural areas, urban areas-- creating big jobs to create clean energy that will bring prices down. President Trump has undertaken a series of actions to put in jeopardy all of these projects in Virginia, to jeopardize the jobs and to jeopardize the energy that would be produced that would lower costs, and he has done the same thing in every State in this country. So we need to reject this energy emergency so that we can have a true energy innovation economy and bring prices down for everyday consumers. I have listened to the comments of my Republican colleagues as they have argued against my S.J. Res. 10, and they have basically made two arguments. The first is the argument that they don't believe renewable energy is reliable. So, for that reason, they justify the President's leaving out renewable energy sources in his energy emergency order. To the contrary, 94 percent of the power that was added to the American electricity grid in 2024 was wind, solar, and battery. Colleagues may stand on the floor and mouth the words that renewable energy is not reliable, but let's look at what the market is doing. The market is investing in these energies because they are reliable, they are American, they are clean, and they are cheap. And I would venture to say that those investing in these sources are more expert about what is reliable and what is not than Members of this body, with all respect. The second argument that is being made by my colleagues is that they support ``all of the above'' energy, and they use that to argue against S.J. Res. 10. My S.J. Res. 10 is about ``all of the above'' energy, and it is against the notion of leaving out wind, solar, and battery technologies that are driving our green energy economy. The question is, If you are not opposing, really, because of reliability concerns and you are not really advocating for all of the above, what is the real source of the opposition? The real source of the opposition is this: People do not want to stand up against Donald Trump. They don't want to stand up against a President who declares a fake emergency. They don't want to stand up against a President who is unplugging jobs in their States. They don't want to stand up against a President whose actions will lead to increased energy costs for consumers. They don't want to stand up to a President who is targeting and reversing investments that they even voted for when they voted for the bipartisan infrastructure law. At some point, the question to my colleagues is, When will you stand up? How much do prices have to go up on everyday Americans before you will stand up? How many jobs do you have to lose in your State before you are going to stand up? How many end runs of congressional statutes will you allow a President to take and be voiceless before you stand up? That is what this is about. I urge my colleagues to stand up for an American innovation energy economy. Don't let President Trump use a fake energy emergency to kneecap it. With that, Mr. President, I yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges to Christopher Creech for today, February 26, 2025.

Mr. KAINE

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

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to describe an amazing journey that I took this weekend that was a powerful journey connected to my Virginia National Guard and also to issues that are very, very prominent right now in the world. We finished voting on the Senate floor a little bit before 5 a.m. on Friday, on the reconciliation bill, and, a few hours later, I went to Dulles Airport and flew to Finland, landed in Helsinki at about 1:30 on Saturday, went back to the airport at 1:30 on Monday--spent 48 hours on the ground with one of our newest NATO allies to work together with them on a number of issues. The reason for the visit over the weekend was to see my Virginia National Guard. The Virginia Guard, as in most States, are active participants in the State Partnership Program that was established back in the 1990s, where a State's Guard unit connects with the military of an allied country and engages in joint training exercises. Once Finland decided to join NATO, Virginia--which already has a partner in the State Partnership Program--reached out and said to Finland: We would like to work together with you as well. My Governor, Governor Youngkin, helped preside over the signing of this partnership program in 2024, and the Virginia Guard--about 50 members of the Guard--were engaged in the first training exercises in Finland. As Governor of Virginia, I used to be the commander in chief of the Virginia Guard. I have been very close to them, and I wanted to go see my Virginians training in snowy birch forests in southern Finland this weekend, and I was able to do that. My Guard unit is training with the Karelia Brigade, which is one of the three brigades of the Finnish Army. It has got a long history of very heroic service. And on Sunday, it was a delight to drive 2\1/2\ hours outside of Helsinki and visit with my 50 Virginians and to hear the Finnish Army brag about them: Your Guard are well-trained. They are great marksman, even shooting Finnish rifles, which are different than the rifles they use every day and doing it in temperatures that are far colder than Virginians normally have to experience on training exercises. In addition to my time with the Virginia Guard. I spent time in Finland with our own Embassy team; with representatives from EUCOM, the European Command of the U.S. Army; with the President of Finland, President Stubb, who is a pretty amazing guy, who attended Furman University on a golf scholarship and manages to drop the word ``y'all'' into a lot of sentences in a pretty thick Finnish accent. I spent time with the Foreign Minister and the Permanent Defense Secretary, and also visited the Helsinki Shipyard, which is about to start working in tandem with the United States and Canada to build icebreakers, which is something we desperately need. So it was a great trip--too short but really powerful--and I returned last night having interacted with my Virginians and knowing a lot more. There was a sobering element to it, too, and that is really why I wanted to come and speak. To be in Finland, a nation that had to fight two wars against Russia in the late 1930s, early 1940s, to maintain its independence, and to be there with those leaders on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was sobering and thought provoking. Finland knows Russia and Russian leadership better than just about anybody because of these hundreds of miles of border between the two nations. And that memory of fighting two wars against Russia to maintain Finnish independence is still a very present-day and palpable memory for the Finns, even though those wars happened in the late 1930s and early 1940s. And you can be sure that our friends, our allies, those we are training together with, had some pretty strong thoughts about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the commemoration of the third anniversary. I was very disappointed and I think many were yesterday that the U.N. considered competing resolutions on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One was a Ukrainian resolution that talked about Russia as the invader, Russia as the instigator of the war. That resolution passed the General Assembly, but in a shocking move, the United States voted against it because of the language placing the blame for the war on Russia. There had been previous resolutions after the invasion and on the second anniversary and the first anniversary saying that this war was started by Russia. The United States led those resolutions. But now the United States, through our President, through our Secretary of Defense, through the U.N.--we don't have a permanent U.N. Ambassador now-- through the U.N. representative at the U.N. was unwilling to sign on to and vote for a resolution that talked about Russia as being responsible for the war. So we opposed the Ukrainian resolution. Who voted with us to oppose this resolution? Russia opposed, North Korea opposed, Nicaragua opposed, and another 15 nations opposed. About 60 nations abstained, including China. China wouldn't vote no. China abstained, and 90-plus nations voted yes. The resolution passed, but it passed with the United States unwilling to sign on to the proposition that Russia started this war and should not have done so. There was also a U.S. resolution that was tendered to the U.N. General Assembly. That U.S. resolution did not mention anyone being responsible for the war but called for a cease-fire and peace, obviously. The U.S. resolution was subject to an amendment that was offered by the UK and other nations inserting the language that Russia was responsible for the war and should not have done so. That amendment passed, and because it passed, the United States ended up not even being willing to vote yes on its own resolution and instead abstained. These Finnish colleagues who are friends and allies were pretty candid about their disappointment in the United States for not being willing to state a truth--that this war was instigated by Russia--and they deeply want to be partners with the United States on defense; hence their accession to NATO; hence their agreement to the State Partnership Program with Virginia. But they are puzzled with an American leadership--from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the U.N.--that is unwilling to state that Russia started this war. I came home last night. It was a long flight made too long because of a cancelation. I got back a little bit later than I originally planned. But I had a lot of time to think. What I thought about was basically this: We need to learn some lessons. We need to remember the lessons of 1938. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, went to Munich, thinking he could find an end to war and deliver what he called ``peace'' in our time. He negotiated with the German Government and came back to England and said: There is now peace in our time--which anyone in politics would love to be able to say. But we all know that Munich Agreement was a disaster. It was negotiated between England and Germany, but many of the other nations that were later invaded by Germany weren't there, and it wasn't a peace agreement, and they suffered. But did England at least protect itself from suffering by signing a deal and proclaiming peace in our time? No. England was attacked as well after the Germans had attacked Belgium and France and Poland and other nations. So an illusory ``peace in our time'' deal was just that--it was illusory. You can't appease a bully. They will bully you and others unless you stand up to them. We could remember 1975. In 1975, the Helsinki Accords, right in the community where I was visiting, were signed--the Soviet Union was a signatory, along with the United States and Canada and European nations--to guarantee certain principles, including the guarantee of the inviolability of national sovereignty and that no nation should be able to invade the sovereignty of others. We need to remember that. We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords this summer. We need to remember those principles and who has violated them and who has not. Let's remember 1995. In 1995, as an aftermath of the Helsinki Accords, we helped form the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co- Operation in Europe. It is the one organization that includes all European nations, including Russia. NATO doesn't include them all; the OSCE does. The OSCE was committed to the principles of the Helsinki Accords protecting national sovereignty, and we need to remember who has violated those principles and who hasn't. We should remember 2020, 5 years ago this week in 2020--the Doha accord. President Trump negotiated a ``peace'' accord with the Taliban--a peace accord with the Taliban. Afghanistan was not allowed to be at the table. The Government of Afghanistan that had been our partner, in whom we had invested hundreds of billions of dollars, was not allowed to be at the table. So, yes, there was a ``peace'' deal. There was peace in our time, but the peace proved to be illusory and catastrophic months later when the United States removed troops pursuant to the Doha accord. The absence of inclusion of the Afghan Government led to a demoralization and a collapse. The inspector general that analyzed the end of our military participation in Afghanistan had plenty of blame to assign--blame to the Biden administration but also blame to a President, President Trump, who negotiated a deal without including the party that was most affected. I thought of the Doha accord when I saw the news of negotiations in Riyadh between the United States and Russia to end the war in Ukraine and noticed Ukraine was not at the table. A peace deal about a nation's sovereignty where you are not allowing that nation to be at the table is doomed to failure. We need to remember those lessons in connection with any discussion about the future of Ukraine. Mr. President, you don't even need to completely remember history; just remember what your mom or dad told you. I know I had this call, and I think most people will remember this. You are getting bullied at school, and you go home and complain to your parents. What do your parents tell you about bullies? If you give in to them, they will keep bullying you and others. If you stand up to them, they are more likely--not guaranteed but more likely to stop bullying. The United States should have been willing yesterday in the U.N. to stand up to a bully. The United States should have been willing to say that this was an illegal war unjustly initiated by Russia. If you are unwilling to state a truth, you begin in a very weak position. So my thought in coming home from visiting my own troops, who are sacrificing and risking to train for an action that they know they may one day be called on to support--else they wouldn't be conducting training in a snowy birch forest in southern Finland in February of 2025--they are there because they are willing to sacrifice. It takes sacrifice to protect democracy. Our Nation is coming up on the 250th anniversary of our democracy-- and not only our democracy but our leadership role in democracies around the globe. The world needs us to continue to stand strong. Our friends like Finland are hoping and praying that we continue to stand strong. It is my belief that in the heart of the American people is a desire to continue to stand strong. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to follow my colleague from Connecticut to talk about the impending business before the Senate, the 2025 budget resolution. My colleague talked about this discussion and the Republican proposal as a scam. I am going to use a slightly different term, but I bet we all know a ``Trojan horse''--a Trojan horse. We all know the story about the Battle of Troy when the invaders created this beautiful gift of a horse that they then gave to those in the besieged city, but it turned out it wasn't a gift. It was an agent of destruction, and that is what this budget deal is. If the Republican majorities here and at the House cared about the budget, we would have an appropriations deal. There was an appropriations deal on the table to be taken at the end of the last calendar year, but after the election result, the Republican majority just decided, we don't want to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate. We will kick it into next year, and we will come up with a budget deal that we write. We would have had an appropriations deal before the end of last year. We would have an appropriations deal by March 14. Instead, what Democrats are hearing is that the Republicans don't want to do the traditional appropriations budget. They want to do a continuing resolution, which would be very harmful. If my Republican colleagues cared about the budget, they would complain about Elon Musk and Donald Trump unilaterally violating past appropriations deals that we all voted for and that the President signed. If they cared about the budget, that would matter to them because a deal is a deal, especially a deal that we voted on. Instead, my Republican colleagues are quietly acquiescing to Head Start Programs closing, to community health clinics closing or reducing services, to veterans hospitals and clinics grappling with serious staff shortages. Why would my colleagues quietly acquiesce to those kinds of violations of appropriations bills you voted for if you cared about the budget? This discussion is a Trojan horse. The advertised purposes of the bill that is pending before the Senate now are twofold: border security and defense. Let me take defense first as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Do you need to use reconciliation to do defense spending? We not only do hundreds of billions of dollars a year in defense spending in a bipartisan way, but twice in the last calendar year, we did supplemental appropriations to defense, once in April as part of a supplemental security deal and once at the end of calendar year 2024 as part of a continuing resolution. We spent 850 billion, and we added to it twice with a bipartisan vote. You don't need reconciliation for that. You don't need reconciliation to find spending on border security. I have been here since 2013. We did a border security bill that was bipartisan that spent money in this Chamber. The House Republican majority killed it. In 2018, we did a bipartisan border deal in this body that spent tens of billions of dollars on border security. President Trump urged everyone to vote against it. My colleague from Connecticut played a key role in a tough bipartisan border security deal just last year. President Trump said vote against it. All of those bills had significant budgetary resources to invest in border security. Donald Trump and House Republicans opposed them. So if there is a track record of being able to do defense spending in a bipartisan way, border security spending in a bipartisan way, then why are we claiming--why are my Republican colleagues claiming that this reconciliation bill is about those two items? It is not what it is about. My colleagues have done a good job of explaining it. This is about an effort to dramatically cut spending programs that support everyday Virginians and everyday Americans and then to take those dollars and use them to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations, taking from people who rely upon community health clinics, rely upon Medicaid, rely upon student loans, taking those dollars and then using them to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. My colleague from Connecticut talked in particular about the fixation that Republicans have had in slashing Medicaid. We saw it in 2017. The Republican priority during Donald Trump's first year was to kill the Affordable Care Act, but it went much further than just killing the Affordable Care Act. Republicans made attack on the core of the Medicaid Program a key element, and that is why they ended up losing on the floor of the Senate in one of the most dramatic votes I have ever participated in. Medicaid is about our neighbors and parents in nursing homes. Medicaid pays for more than half of the births in this country. The hospitals are reimbursed by Medicaid. Fifty percent of the Medicaid budget goes to children--I am sorry. Fifty percent of Medicaid recipients are children. Only 20 percent of the budget of Medicaid goes to kids, but 50 percent of the recipients. When you go after Medicaid, you are going after folks with disabilities. You are going after our parents and grandparents in nursing homes. You are going against kids. You are going against low- income mothers delivering children in American hospitals. The tax cuts for the wealthy are not necessarily part of the proposal that is before us in the Senate right now, but the House GOP has given away the game. The big beautiful bill that is being urged on both House and Senate Republicans by the Vice President and the President contains the tax cuts for the wealthy that my colleague Senator Murphy has described. We need to have $4\1/2\ trillion in tax cuts, and just as was the case in 2017, they will go to folks at the top. In fact, almost half of the benefits of these tax cuts would go to the top 5 percent of taxpayers. That is the end result of the process of reconciliation that we are starting on today. So I would just say: Let's be candid about what is going on here. We can't trick people. We can't convince people, oh, this is about border security and national defense. We have got a demonstrable bipartisan track record to be able to advance in those areas. The people that are out there whom the GOP are trying to trick in this effort, they are the ones in communities that are complaining about Head Start Programs being closed. They are the ones that see health clinics reduced or clinics laid off. They are the ones that are getting punched because they are veterans. The indiscriminate layoffs that are being pushed by the DOGE brothers and President Trump hit veterans. Thirty percent of the Federal workforce are veterans. It is only about 3 percent of the civilian workforce, but if you do mass and indiscriminate layoffs of Federal employees, whom do you hurt disproportionately? You are hurting people who have served this country and are entitled to respect and gratitude. They don't deserve to be treated, in Donald Trump's words, as losers in the way that they are being treated with these indiscriminate layoffs. These are the people who are being affected thus far by these policies of the President. So that is what we are fighting about, and that is whom we are fighting for. We are going to offer amendments during vote-arama to clarify what is going on to try to protect Medicaid and children's nutrition and other safety net programs, and we will battle to try to convince some Republicans to join us in those amendments. But let's just be clear about what this is: It is a Trojan horse- effort to amass savings off the backs of everyday people to pour into tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don't need help. We need to resist it in every way we can. I look forward to joining my colleagues in doing so. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, today, I am joining with Senator Mark Warner to again introduce legislation to designate the General George C. Marshall House, also known as the Dodona Manor, in Leesburg, VA, as an affiliated area under the National Park Service. This same bill passed unanimously in the Senate at the end of the 118th Congress. The legislation will be the final step in the yearslong effort to recognize the Dodona Manor as a unit of the National Park System. It will also promote the public appreciation of the significant historic contributions made by U.S. military leader and statesman George C. Marshall. George C. Marshall was an American hero, playing a significant role in the Allied victory in World War II and serving as an architect of one of the most significant foreign policy initiatives in our country's history. He led a lifetime of public service, serving as Chief of Staff to the Army during America's entry into World War II, as Secretary of State, where he orchestrated the historic Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe following the war and provided counsel to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and as Secretary of Defense after the onset of the Korean war. He acquired Dodona Manor while serving as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in 1941 and lived there until his death in 1959. Today, the George C. Marshall House is dedicated to preserving and advancing General Marshall's life's work and legacy by hosting international exchanges, historical exhibits, and community events, and supporting educational programming based on General Marshall's desire to inspire future leaders. The legislation would bring greater resources, including technical assistance, accessibility improvements, and new programming, to this historical site and enable the Marshall House to improve and expand its work. I am hopeful that this designation will provide new resources to preserve, honor, and celebrate General Marshall's legacy at this historic site, and I am pleased that companion legislation is also being introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by my colleague Representative Suhas Subramanyam.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, today, I am joining with Senator Mark Warner to again introduce legislation to designate the General George C. Marshall House, also known as the Dodona Manor, in Leesburg, VA, as an affiliated area under the National Park Service. This same bill passed unanimously in the Senate at the end of the 118th Congress. The legislation will be the final step in the yearslong effort to recognize the Dodona Manor as a unit of the National Park System. It will also promote the public appreciation of the significant historic contributions made by U.S. military leader and statesman George C. Marshall. George C. Marshall was an American hero, playing a significant role in the Allied victory in World War II and serving as an architect of one of the most significant foreign policy initiatives in our country's history. He led a lifetime of public service, serving as Chief of Staff to the Army during America's entry into World War II, as Secretary of State, where he orchestrated the historic Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe following the war and provided counsel to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and as Secretary of Defense after the onset of the Korean war. He acquired Dodona Manor while serving as the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army in 1941 and lived there until his death in 1959. Today, the George C. Marshall House is dedicated to preserving and advancing General Marshall's life's work and legacy by hosting international exchanges, historical exhibits, and community events, and supporting educational programming based on General Marshall's desire to inspire future leaders. The legislation would bring greater resources, including technical assistance, accessibility improvements, and new programming, to this historical site and enable the Marshall House to improve and expand its work. I am hopeful that this designation will provide new resources to preserve, honor, and celebrate General Marshall's legacy at this historic site, and I am pleased that companion legislation is also being introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by my colleague Representative Suhas Subramanyam.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am so happy that I follow my colleague from Massachusetts. I will build upon some of the points that she has made, but we have served as colleagues together on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee during earlier terms of Congress, and you won't find a better champion for the health of the American public than Senator Warren. I stand to continue the dialogue about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his unfitness for the position to which he has been nominated, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I will give you the punch line but then go into it in some detail. I don't believe Mr. Kennedy can separate fact from fiction. I don't believe Mr. Kennedy can separate conspiracy from content. Now, you wouldn't want someone suffering from that challenge in any position of leadership at any level of government--local, State, or Federal. But this particular position, the Secretary of Health and Human Services-- one of the most important positions in the Nation as with respect to people's physical and mental health, is exactly the wrong kind of a position for someone who can't tell fact from fiction or content from conspiracy, because the American public needs to be able to rely on HHS and other critical Agencies for information that is not just about the state of their savings account or housing costs. This is about life and death. This is about life and death. I want to talk about two elements of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.--my colleagues have been going into many of them--that lead me to the conclusion that here is a guy who can't separate fact from fiction or conspiracy from content. The first was ably described by Senator Warren, and that is Mr. Kennedy's skepticism about vaccines. I know many of my colleagues trod this ground during speeches today, so I am not going to go into the breadth of his vaccine skepticism. I am going to talk about one vaccine in particular that is made in Virginia, Gardasil. I represent the Commonwealth of Virginia. There is a facility in Elkton, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley, near Harrisonburg, that makes Gardasil, the vaccine that has been effective--significantly effective--in preventing and reducing the incidence of cervical cancer. Think about it for a minute. Vaccines do a lot of different things, but a vaccine that can prevent cancer is truly, truly revolutionary. Cervical cancer and other associated cancers pose very significant challenges to men and women. In the early 2000s, the FDA approved a cervical cancer vaccine. There are a number of vaccine manufacturers, but one of the largest is Merck that manufactures Gardasil in Virginia. I visited the plant a couple of years back as a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. I went to the plant, and I talked to the workers and saw the pride that they have in being able to develop a product that has had such a significant impact around the world. When I was Governor of Virginia, with two Republican houses, we acted to have a mandate around the Gardasil vaccination, around the cervical cancer vaccination. There are other cancer vaccine manufacturers as well. By making it mandatory, we enabled people to access it for free. We allowed any parent or student who didn't want to receive the vaccine to opt out with no excuse. But we have made it widely available in Virginia--we are one of three States to have done this--and it has had a tremendously positive benefit on folks' health. So this is a relatively new vaccine. I mean, it started and got approval and began to be deployed significantly about 15 years ago; and even in 15 years, the results have been remarkable. And I want to just share with my colleagues and with the public some of the results between 15 and 20 years of the HPV cervical cancer vaccine. I will give you results from many countries and from many research institutions and hospitals to show you that this is not a question of significant medical controversy. A publication that is one of the signature healthcare publications in England is called The Lancet, and there was an article in The Lancet in February of 2020, titled ``The Impact of HPV Vaccination and Cervical Screening on Cervical Cancer Elimination.'' This particular article summarized the study that looked at data from 78 countries. The researchers who examined this data were from England, China, France, Canada, and Switzerland. Their research in analyzing the data of hundreds of thousands of patients in 78 countries concluded: High HPV vaccination coverage of girls can lead to cervical cancer elimination in most low-income and lower middle-income countries by the end of the century. Fancy that--eliminating cancer with a vaccine. This was from the data from 78 countries. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, cdc.gov, has a section: the ``Impact of the HPV Vaccine'': Among teen girls, infections with HPV types that cause most HPV cancers and genital warts have dropped 88 percent [because of the vaccine]. The American Society of Clinical Oncology, in 2024, published an article titled ``Effects of HPV vaccination on the development of HPV- related cancers.'' This is the American society for physicians who work in the clinical oncology area. Here is the conclusion they reach: Males vaccinated for HPV were at decreased odds for HPV- related cancers. . . . Females vaccinated for HPV had lower odds for cervical cancers and HPV-related cancers overall. Let's go to Scotland. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in Scotland last year published a study titled ``Invasive Cervical Cancer Incidence following bivalent HPV vaccination,'' studying the healthcare results of people following vaccination. This was just published last year. Let me read you the quote: No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women immunized at 12 or 13 years of age irrespective of the number of doses. Women vaccinated at 14 to 22 years of age and given 3 doses of bivalent vaccine showed a significant reduction in incidence compared with . . . unvaccinated women. Again, those first few words: ``No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women'' who were vaccinated and studied in Scotland in this study that came out in 2024. Another article in the Lancet looked not at 78 countries, but it looked at the effects of HPV vaccination programs in England. This article was published in 2021: The HPV vaccination program [in the UK] has almost successfully eliminated cervical cancer in women born since September 1, 1995. The elimination of cervical cancer, no cases of invasive cancer. There was a study done in Australia in 2013 by BMC Medicine. The article was entitled ``Impact of a population-based HPV vaccination program on cervical abnormalities.'' This was still relatively early in the mass vaccination because Gardasil and any other HPV vaccinations weren't used until the mid-2000s--2007, 2008. Here is the conclusion reached about the Australians' experience: Australia was one of the first countries to introduce a publicly-funded national HPV vaccination program that commenced in April 2007. . . . [It] significantly reduced cervical abnormalities . . . within five years of implementation, with the greatest vaccine effectiveness observed [in] the youngest women. The New England Journal of Medicine, which, in many ways, is the gold standard in the United States, published a study in 2020 about the effects of vaccination in Sweden: Among Swedish girls and women 10 to 30 years old, quadrivalent HPV vaccination was associated with a substantially reduced risk of invasive cervical cancer at the population level. All right, those are the studies by the researchers in the journals, but I also wondered--you know, I am not a great scientist. I don't generally read medical journals. But what about our healthcare institutions that are just in the business of providing health advice to everyday Americans who are seeking information about their health? I went to the website of the Mayo Clinic. Here is what mayoclinic.org says: HPV vaccine: Who needs it, how it works. They say on their website: ``Getting vaccinated against HPV helps prevent cancer in men and women''--period. No qualification, no waffling, no wobbling. That is the advice that the Mayo Clinic gives to its patients and to all who go to mayoclinic.org to seek health information. The Cleveland Clinic, another internationally known healthcare provider, my.clevelandclinic.org in 2025, the website says as follows: The HPV vaccine is an injection that prevents infections of two types of human papillomavirus. The vaccine lowers your risk of getting cervical cancer. MD Anderson Hospital, another internationally known hospital based in Houston, TX--mdanderson.org. Here is what they say to their patients or others going to the website to seek advice: All males and females-- All males and females-- ages 9-26 should get the HPV vaccine. It is a safe and effective method of protection against HPV infection. So what I have just done is read you a variety of conclusions from a variety of researchers and healthcare providers, from a variety of countries, all pointing to the effectiveness of HPV vaccinations to prevent HPV infections that lead to cancers and other serious medical conditions. But what does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., say? He has said that the vaccination is one of the most dangerous vaccines ever created. He has said that it is dangerous and defective. On one of his website articles on his blog, he said: It is inescapable that Gardasil kills girls. The weight of medical evidence is that this is an effective tool to prevent cervical cancer. Robert F. Kennedy--with no medical training, with no scientific research background--claims otherwise. He cannot separate fact from fantasy, content from conspiracy. Now, is that just because his brain doesn't wrap itself around facts, or is there something more serious? I needn't repeat at length what my colleague Senator Warren said, but she laid out the facts that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has a massive financial stake in lawsuits against the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine. In fact, he disclosed it on his ethics form, that if there are recoveries against HPV manufacturers in lawsuits, he is entitled to 10 percent--10 percent--of the recovery in massive class-action lawsuits. When we pressed him in the hearing, first he said he wasn't going to give up that 10-percent stake. But he eventually felt some pressure, and so he transferred it to his adult son. His family stands to gain significantly if these lawsuits hit. As the Secretary of HHS, he would have the ability to have a huge influence on the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Vaccine manufacturers get an immunity from civil suit until a case has gone through the vaccine compensation court. That was put in place many years ago because the number of vaccine manufacturers were in precipitous free fall. They were going out of business or stopping making vaccines because they were getting hit with big lawsuits. So there is a special court that focuses on any arguments against vaccines in these courts. He would have significant ability to even remove immunity protection from the manufacturers of vaccines. And if you remove immunity protection, the value of lawsuits goes up, and the value of his family's 10 percent stake goes up. This should cause everyone serious concern about putting someone in who stands, without any medical training, against the weight of medical evidence saying that vaccination against cervical cancer is a remarkable thing that should be done and that has been successful since the mid-2000s. I am going to conclude in a minute because my able colleague from Colorado is here, but I want to raise one more issue. I want to raise one more issue. This inability to tell the difference between fact and fiction and content and conspiracy would be dangerous enough if it was just about health information, if it was just about vaccines. That, in and of itself, should disqualify Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from being the HHS Secretary. But this individual's inability to tell the difference between fact and fiction and between conspiracy and content is not limited just to health. In July of 2024, when he was running for President of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy tweeted this: My take on 9/11: It's hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't. But conspiracy theories flourish when the government routinely lies to the public. As President, I won't take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates. But I can promise is that I will open the files and usher in a new era of transparency. ``I won't take sides on 9/11''--I represent the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Pentagon was attacked on 9/11. The World Trade Center in New York was attacked on 9/11. A plane went down in a farm field in Pennsylvania on 9/11. A lot of Virginia families lost loved ones that day. I know people who were in the Pentagon on 9/11 who had to race through a burning building to go to the childcare center to make sure they could get their child out and that their child was safe. I don't take it very well when someone says they won't take sides about 9/11, when someone admits: ``It's hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't.'' I asked Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Is this a common problem for you? I mean, that is kind of a candid thing to admit: ``It's hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't.'' No, it is not. It is not hard for Virginians to understand what happened on 9/11. They lost loved ones. They went to funerals. Their family members never came home. And then, in the aftermath of 9/11, we were in 20 years of war, where tens of thousands of Virginians were deployed to battle against al-Qaida, the perpetrators of 9/11, and many lost their lives then. ``I won't take sides on 9/11''--well, like, what side is there? What side is he talking about? I mean, it is a bad thing. Does he think it is a good thing? It was an attack by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Does he think it was an inside job or something else? And why would he even do this? This tweet is dated July 5, 2024. It was 23 years after 9/11--23 years after 9/11. For some reason, on July 5, he just says: Well, why don't I just share with people that I won't take sides on 9/11; that I still can't tell, 23 years later, what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't. If you cannot tell what happened on 9/11, if you decide to just freelance an opinion 23 years later and tell the American public--and he was running for President at the time--I will not take sides on 9/ 11, you should not have been nominated for this position in the first place. I am finding it very hard to believe that my colleagues in this body, whom I sat with on the Armed Services Committee, whom I sat with on the Foreign Relations Committee, who have invested their time and energy in making investments to battle terrorism around the world, to battle al- Qaida and other terrorist groups, the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attack--many of my colleagues served in the military and were deployed in the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11. They are now going to be OK with a guy who says he won't take sides on 9/11; who says he can't tell the difference between what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't? This is a very, very dangerous vote that we will cast tomorrow. Of any position in the Federal Government that needs somebody who can tell the difference between fact and fiction, conspiracy and content, HHS Secretary is that position, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., so badly flunks the test of what is needed--careful, reasoned, information that people can count on--that I urge my colleagues, even if you voted in a committee, even if you voted on a procedural resolution to move this to the floor, stop now. You can still stop now. Don't hurt this country. Don't hurt the health of this country by putting someone in office who can't even understand what happened on 9/11. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to continue the discussion about Russell Vought, the President's nominee to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Before I do, I thought I would just share with my colleagues and all who are in the Chamber a vigil that I just attended. There was a vigil at a riverfront park in Alexandria near the site where the flight went down a week ago, killing 67 people on the American Airlines flight and the Army helicopter that had deployed out of Fort Belvoir. It was a simple, moving candlelight vigil that was organized by my friend Don Beyer in the House of Representatives. It was attended by a few hundred people, mostly residents of Alexandria and Arlington, nearby communities. There was a heavy representation of law enforcement there because the Alexandria Police and Fire Departments were very integral to the rescue and recovery operations that were ongoing. It was somber. It was somber. You struggle for words at a time like that. I couldn't think of any of my own that really were that enlightening, so I fell back on Psalm 90: Teach us how short our lives are, so that we may become wise. Thinking about the children, the ice skaters and their friends and families who were killed, but, frankly, all of us have short lives, even the oldest of those who died that day. The mother who was celebrating her birthday, a wife who was on her way home whose husband was waiting for her in the airport, these coaches, folks who were in Wichita doing a pipefitter training program, and, frankly, all of the attendees--our lives are all short. So what is the wisdom if you follow the logic in Psalm 90, ``Teach us how short our lives are, so that we may become wise''? What is the wisdom we are to gain if we understand our lives are short? Well, the Psalm doesn't really say. The Psalm kind of leads us to conclude for ourselves what is the wisdom we are to gain out of such situations and out of the realization of the temporal nature of human life. But what I said to people there is, if there is one bit of wisdom you should gain when you realize how mortal we all are, it is probably wisdom about the value of community, that we link arms and we support each other. Certainly, if we are celebrating positives, we ought to do that, but particularly when we are mourning and we are thinking about lives lost and lives and futures cut short, our wisdom should compel us to find solace and comfort in each other's company. This vigil lasted about half an hour. We had candles. After Representative Beyer spoke and I spoke and the mayor of Alexandria, Alyia Gaskins, spoke, the chaplain of the Alexander Police Department gave a prayer, and the vigil was over. But we stayed. We stayed to visit each other and comfort one another. I was struck because I was coming here to speak tonight. I met a guy from DHS who was involved in the recovery effort in frigid waters out on the Potomac. I met a key official from Fort Belvoir, where the three soldiers had deployed from in the training flight who were killed that night. I met other people who are part of the Federal family, you know, who work in air traffic control, who work in the FAA. Alexandria is pretty close to the Pentagon. I met people who work at the Pentagon or whose family members do. I met some folks who weren't Federal employees, but they talked to me about--one woman talked about her son, who is a Federal employee currently stationed in Tennessee. I took that to mean a member of the armed services. This was the random community that gathered to commemorate the 67 lost lives and comfort one another. While we were there to focus on the tragic accident, most wanted to talk to me about their own fears for their careers and for their families and for others who are feeling confused and afraid right now because of actions that are being taken against Federal employees. That brings me to Russell Vought. My colleagues have spoken on the floor about a particular statement of Mr. Vought's that I examined him about fairly aggressively during the Budget Committee hearing. In the course of a speech, he said: I want Federal employees to be traumatized. I want to put them in trauma. I want them to not want to come to work because they know that they are increasingly viewed as the villain. Now, who talks like that? I mean, who talks like that? Is there a single manager or leader or organizational chief that we admire who believes that their mission, their happiness, their glee, their purpose is to make their workforce feel traumatized? No. We would never celebrate a leader of that kind. Yet that is precisely what Russell Vought said. I asked him: Do you really mean that? Do you really want air traffic controllers to come to work traumatized? Well, no, no, I didn't mean that. Do you want people who inspect our food to come to work traumatized? No, I didn't mean that. Well, how about people at OMB? You ran it before, and you are running it again. A lot of folks might call OMB staffers--do you want them to come in to work traumatized? No, I don't like that. But that is what he said. When he was not in front of the Senate Budget panel and he was speaking candidly--and there is a beautiful Biblical phrase that, I think, is from the Gospel of Luke that says: From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks. When he was speaking directly from the heart, what he said is, I want Federal employees to be traumatized. What I want to do in my time on the floor tonight is talk a little bit about these Federal employees and what having a traumatized workforce means. Then, for a few minutes, I want to focus upon not the Federal workforce but on others who were affected by the Russell Vought strategy on the Federal budget. This is what I have heard from Virginians just in the week since the funding pause order went into place, which I will agree was something that was masterminded by Russell Vought. Federal employees: Yesterday, I decided, after hearing stories from Federal employees, to launch on the website a resource where Federal employees could share their stories if they chose to, with anonymity guaranteed, because so many are afraid. Some will remember that I took to the floor yesterday, and I read an open letter to Federal employees. There are 140,000, give or take, in Virginia. I read an open letter, offering them a bit of a pep talk, encouraging them to keep doing what you are doing--serving your fellow Americans. Just do that. You signed up for the job to do that. Don't pay attention to all of these things and all of this trauma. I know that is such hard advice to give to somebody. Just keep serving your fellow Americans every day, and if you have a problem, call our office, and we will try to be helpful if we can. There is no guarantee that we will be able to avert this, but just do what you have a passion to do, and we will try to help you if we can. But also, in delivering that letter to Federal employees, we launched a website in my office, and we encouraged people to share their stories. Within 3 hours, we had about 400 stories of Federal employees who had reached out and shared, and those stories keep coming in. Some are asking us to give them a call and probe further details. Some are giving us their names and the Agencies where they work, and some are too afraid to give us those. What I thought I would do tonight is I would just take 18 of these stories from the Federal employees--that had just come in, in less than 24 hours--of the hundreds that have been submitted, and I just want to read some to you to tell you about who these people are who Mr. Vought believes need to be traumatized, who these people are that Mr. Vought wants to personally make feel as if they are the villains. The first is a Federal employee who works at USAID: After two extremely painful miscarriages, I am now 34-weeks pregnant with my first child. Since my husband works as a lawyer for the EPA, what should have been a joyful time in our life now feels like a dystopian hellscape, and we are very afraid for our future and our financial security. We are just hoping to have health insurance at this point for when I give birth, but . . . that feels uncertain. I swore an oath, and [I] believe in the work that USAID does. I believe that it makes America stronger, safer, and more prosperous [just] as Secretary Rubio is calling for, and I will support the Agency until they boot me from the system. God help us all. She is 34-weeks pregnant after two extremely painful miscarriages and is just hoping that she will not lose her job and her health insurance. The second story is of a Federal employee working for the National Science Foundation, headquartered in Virginia: NSF funding supported my undergraduate summer research experiences, my Ph.D. project, and my previous job. The opportunity to give back and support the next generation of U.S.-based scientists was a dream fulfilled, and I am terrified that I will be fired as soon as Friday, with no protections or severance. The fair compensation and flexible schedule let's my spouse work as a teacher, and she is so great at her job. But that will not pay [our] mortgage. We simply never accounted for a scenario like this. A third story from a Federal employee working at USAID: I have worked for USAID for 12 years, including in Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Washington . . . Our work is and has always been critical to advancing democracy, American interests, and the prosperity, safety, and strength of Americans. We will continue this work. The attack on USAID lacks intelligence and foresight. China and Russia are filling the vacuum, outspending the U.S. and deepening partnerships with our allies, who feel abandoned. This is creating permanent damage and undoing decades of progress in a few days. This does the opposite of making America stronger, safer, and more prosperous. These are the direct words of Virginians who have shared their stories with me. A fourth story is of a Federal employee working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture: I'm a young person working in the federal government. I graduated from college 4 years ago, and since then, I have committed my time to serving the public and helping the environment. I've served two AmeriCorps terms and worked two seasonal federal jobs before finally landing a permanent federal job last November. These last few weeks have been a hell for us federal workers. I come to work with a pit in my stomach. I am a probationary employee, so will probably be the first to go during a RIF. They have left us in the dark while constantly terrorizing us with threatening, passive- aggressive messages, and half legal deals to resign. I fear for my job, but I fear more for my country. A Federal employee who works for the Department of Transportation: I am frightened about my position. I'm a single-income household, and [I] am convinced no one has my back. Congress has been pretty much silent, and the news has gained very little traction nationwide. We need people to tell the story about what government workers do. Thank you for providing the platform to connect. We are [only] in this to serve the American public. A Federal employee working for the Department of Defense: It's hard to even know where to start. As soon as this administration took office, it felt like federal workers were under siege. They began with their flurry of executive orders and memos. They put Elon Musk (whom no one elected, who is not a Federal employee but yet has huge contracts for other areas with the government) in charge of ``handling'' the potential mass layoffs of federal workers. His fingerprints were all over these actions, from insecure servers being jammed into OPM to poorly crafted mass emails meant to stir chaos and bypass all chains of command, to then bragging about it on social media and insulting and belittling every one of the millions of federal workers as ``unproductive,'' also laughing at people in his giant social media platform who mock us and call us stupid. No one knows what their job security looks like. No one trusts anything these people are saying to us, especially with these ``deferred resignation'' mass emails. The entirety of OPM, once a solid standard for human resources in the United States, is now a total joke. Agencies are left scrambling because they've been given zero guidance and have no serious leadership coming from the administration. . . . All of this is frightening, anxiety-inducing, depressing, and wrong. It's so difficult to fight the misinformation because, if you ``out'' yourself as a fed, you'll be piled upon. . . . We're middle-class workers with burdens and families and debt just like everyone else. We need our jobs, and we will fight for them. I take my oath to the Constitution seriously. . . . Please, anyone with power, exercise [that power] and serve justice. A Federal employee at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, headquartered in Alexandria: I have served the American [public] for the last 10 years at different positions at the USPTO. The USPTO's mission is [actually] outlined in the Constitution: ``to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.'' To that end, the USPTO uses telework to attract and retain highly qualified people. These people work hard [every day in and out] to serve the American people. As a result, the United States has been the beacon of innovation for much of the world. In fact, so many inventors come to the U.S. to secure intellectual property. Let me be clear: The people at the USPTO are incredibly talented, hard-working people. They are not the ``opposing team'' or ``low productivity.'' The constant harassment from the current administration underscores the diligent efforts of over 14,000 people that keep this economy moving forward. Another story from a Federal employee working for the General Services Administration: [Thanks] for the opportunity to share my story. The ongoing threats of job losses due to a reduction in force have been deeply demoralizing. As you know, federal employees already earn, on average, 25 percent less than our private sector counterparts . . . The disregard for union contracts is deeply concerning and undermines the commitments made to the workforce. Many of my talented and hard-working colleagues have been living in fear for weeks, facing uncertainty they [don't] deserve. This unlawful [treatment] not only undermines their dedication but also creates an environment of instability and anxiety that no employee should have to endure. Here is a story from a Virginia Federal employee working for the Department of Homeland Security, and this is a pretty common one: My husband and I are both federal employees, and we are both on probation. Meaning they are relatively new employees. We also have student loan debts and under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. If we lose our jobs because we are on probation, we will lose the ability to have our payments to Public Service Loan Forgiveness counted. We will not be able to pay for childcare, and we will lose our apartment. Furthermore, the [DC area] will be flooded with [fired] federal workers, and we won't be able to find jobs easily. Our future is [increasingly] bleak. Please [please] stop them. Another employee working for the Department of Homeland Security: I have worked for DHS for 15 years . . . I truly believe a strong, healthy workforce of civilian servants is vital for a strong, healthy America. Our government has a duty to protect its citizens. This, to me, includes making sure people's basic needs are met, be it healthcare, food, housing, education. . . . The private sector [isn't] taking on this obligation. The federal government [isn't] profit-driven, which is partly why our jobs are . . . secure. . . . My worth as an employee is not tied up in how much product I sell. . . . My worth depends on doing my best to improve the lives of the American people. A Federal employee who didn't feel comfortable even sharing the Agency that he or she works for: [It is] impossible to get our . . . work done under these conditions. It has been a constant assault on us federal workers, who are all serving our country faithfully and to the best of our abilities. I've served under different administrations--Republican and Democrat--and [have] been proud to do so. As a family, we are canceling our vacations for the year, any unnecessary subscription or expense, and tightening [our] belt because I don't know if I will have a job by the end of the year. While I could be comfortably making double my salary in the private sector, I chose the federal service out of a sense of duty to my country and to use my skills to better the lives of my fellow Americans. Now it feels as if the federal government is not holding [its] end of the bargain. The last 2 weeks have been a nightmare. A Federal employee who works for the Defense Health Agency: Senator Kaine, I am a DHA healthcare civilian worker. I worked for 12 years for the Army at Keller Army Community Hospital at the U.S. [Military Academy] in New York, and for the last 4-plus years at the medical clinic on the Dahlgren Base in Virginia-- Which is a little bit east of Fredericksburg. I am so upset. Our local commander, my supervising commander, and the lieutenant general heading DHA have all emailed us since the famous HR/OPM ``Fork in the Road'' email came out. They all said the same thing. They don't have any information or clarification for us but will reach out to us when they do. I check daily and, to date, no information. Stop and think about that for a minute. This DHA employee received a ``Fork in the Road'' letter, drafted by Elon Musk. This is somebody who has worked for the DHA for many, many years. The DHA employee reaches out to their own direct supervisor. ``We don't have any information for you. We can't clarify what this letter means.'' They reach out to the base commander. ``We don't have any information. We can't clarify what the letter means.'' He even reaches out to the very head--the lieutenant general, the head of the Defense Health Agency, asking: What does this mean? ``We don't have any information for you. We can't clarify what this letter means.'' Just imagine that. The entire chain of command in this Agency, responsible for providing healthcare to our troops, is unable to tell the medical professionals who are providing service to our Active-Duty military every day what this ``Fork in the Road'' letter even means. It is shocking. I check daily and, to date, no information. Another Federal employee who did not feel comfortable sharing the Agency where he or she works: Since inauguration, times have been hell for us because every day is loaded with uncertainty regarding the future state of our contract work and our Federal counterparts we work with daily. To this day, every work day is filled with dread and anxiety. Our firm has begun cutting staff already because there is simply no funding. This is also becoming the norm across other areas within our company. This, clearly, must be from an individual who works with a Federal contractor. I suspect probably with USAID. It is unfortunate because many are new or young people just trying to earn a living-- And starting off public service careers and now-- Getting stuck dealing with the mess everything is in now. Here is another letter from a Federal contractor working for USAID: I work as a USAID contractor. In the past week, I have experienced near everyone in my company getting placed on furlough. Beyond the fact that we are all working to make international development more impactful, and the fact that the US Company we have invested so much time in may never come back from this, we are all without salary and uncertain for the future. We are applying for jobs but acknowledge that with so many also furloughed or terminated, there is extremely [challenging] competition. Do we move away from [our home in] DC? [Do we] leave the industry which we made our careers, [so] that we could see making the world a better place and the US a better place? Here is a Federal employee working for a small independent Agency. Again, the employee didn't feel comfortable identifying it. It has always been my dream to be a federal employee. Ever since civics class in grade school, I saw what the government and feds could do for people and realized I wanted to pour my heart and soul into doing just that. But the wind has been taken out of my sails. I am a probationary employee, meaning my name is on the short list to fire. I was hired under Schedule A--persons with disabilities, so my name is on [that] list [too]. I feel like I am being threatened by the very institutions that were created to safeguard the principles of truth, compassion, and respect . . . I have lived my life placing others' needs . . . in front of mine. Trying to practice what I preach, but I am being forced to remove protected classes from our website, take down reports on DEIA-- It is interesting. The Trump Executive order tried to kill DEI-- diversity, equity, inclusion--but in many of the documents that are being sent to Agencies, they are adding an ``A'' at the end. I never had seen that before, DEIA. What is the ``A''? ``Accessibility.'' Even though the Executive order signed by the President did not specifically attack accessibility programs for those with disabilities, the implementation documents that are going out from the administration are adding accessibility as a negative that needs to be rooted out of the Federal workplace. Could anybody be crueler than that? Being forced to take down these reports on things, including accessibility, the writer says: I feel as though there is blood on my hands [doing this]. It breaks my heart. Finally, one last story, and then I will say a word about Federal funding to programs around Virginia, moving on from just sharing the stories of Federal employees. This is another Federal employee who doesn't feel comfortable-- actually, not one less story. I have three more. This is from a Federal employee who doesn't feel comfortable revealing the Agency where he or she works. Today, I woke up to an email saying we had a restraining order, tied to Trump's [Executive orders], that would limit how we'd disperse our grants. Since the EOs were [so] vaguely defined to begin with, this could be a witch hunt for all kinds of programs and grants we give out. A Federal employee from an Agency: I'm a senior human resource professional in the Department of the Interior. I'm on daily calls with Departmental HR leaders who receive direction from OPM. Today leadership mentioned that their coordination was with DOGE ``employees'' rather than with actual OPM employees. These DOGE employees have full access to our USA Staffing hiring system, which includes personally identifiable information for ALL applicants-- Not all employees, for all applicants-- To any position in the [Federal Government]. It is unclear what kind of clearance these individuals have, if any, and what authority they even have to access this system. Finally, we are beginning to work on identifying employees for transfer to Schedule F with short response times of less than 90 days. STOPPING SCHEDULE F MUST BE YOUR TOP

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. I vote no to the man who wants to traumatize the Federal workforce.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues from Kansas, and Senator Warner, I believe, will be here in a few minutes to support the resolution described by Senator Moran. This is personal to me in two ways. Obviously, as the Senator from Virginia, many of the victims on the American Airlines flight and two of the three soldiers who were killed in the military helicopter flight deployed from Fort Belvoir in Virginia were Virginians, and so our community has been very touched by this. I was at a vigil on the riverbank in Alexandria last night with members of the community, the first responder community, local officials, and others who feel this wound very deeply. And so that is the first personal connection that I have to this tragic event. But I also rise as a kid who grew up in Kansas. And my mother grew up in a town--actually, went to the same high school as Senator Marshall. It is not far from Wichita, the airport from which the flight departed. So as I read the stories of the 67 who died, the Virginians and the Kansans, they were stories that seemed very familiar to me. It is hard to find words to sum up the many feelings that I have and that others have, and I said last night at the vigil that I attended that when words fail and you can't find the words, usually there are words of ancient wisdom that do the trick, and I used a phrase from Psalms 90 that I love: Teach us how short our lives are so that we may become wise. There were a lot of youngsters on that flight, but we are all young in the sense of our lives are short. And the psalmist who wrote those words was trying to make a point: All of our lives are brief. All of our lives are temporal. All of our lives are mortal. And in that realization, there can be the beginning of wisdom. And one of the most powerful bits of wisdom that we gain from that knowledge is the realization that we have to bind together. In good times, yes, but especially in bad times, we have to join in community to help those who are suffering. I have been very, very pleased to see the reaction, just as my colleague in Kansas has seen, the volunteers in Northern Virginia, the Red Cross volunteers who have been out day after day, the first responders who did a difficult job in the middle of the night in frigid temperatures in an ice-strewn river to conduct, first, search and rescue and then, ultimately, recovery missions. I see people coming together, as we often do, in times of tragedy. And that is heartening, if you can take anything heartening from a situation so drastic. So I strongly support the resolution, and I support, with my colleagues, the notion that we have to learn from this. The National Transportation Safety Board is doing a study. Their study will make recommendations about how we can reduce the chance that this will ever happen again. Thank goodness air accidents of this kind are not common in the country. And yet this tragedy has to energize us to learn the lessons of it and make improvements so that we reduce the chance this will ever happen again. And I am very devoted, in the memory of those who lost their lives, to that mission. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise to talk a little bit about what I am hearing from constituents in the Commonwealth, in the last week, and then, in particular, to direct a message to Federal employees. There are about 140,000 people who live in Virginia who work for the Federal Government. It was a week ago yesterday--Monday morning--when I was attending a fairly standard annual celebration by the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce and the local United Way to open up seasonal tax preparation. It is called the VITA Program: Volunteers in Tax Assistance. Organizations all around the country train volunteers to help low- and moderate-income people do their taxes, and it was just the kickoff of this 21st annual event in the Fredericksburg area to help folks. And it was an opportunity to thank volunteers and to see those early-bird tax filers who were there the first day to try to get their taxes done. Someone came up to me and told me that they were a veteran and that they had tried to log onto the VA portal that day to get a medical appointment and were shut out of the portal. Someone else heard the person telling me that story. The Fredericksburg area, about 50 miles south of DC, is very heavily populated with veterans. Others started to share their experience. It just so happens that we have just constructed, at the cost of $370 million, a new veterans clinic in Fredericksburg that is scheduled to open on February 28. Someone heard this discussion and said: Oh, we hear the grand opening is going to be delayed because of a Federal hiring freeze imposed by this administration. That conversation at this otherwise good-news event started what has become a cascade of concerns that I have heard expressed by Virginians: Head Start programs not getting their monthly funding; universities that are midstream on Federal research projects being told that a funding freeze would prohibit them from drawing down dollars, thus jeopardizing the jobs of the researchers; numerous Federal employees who have been told that they are being reclassified from professional civil service to political appointee, where their future depends upon their loyalty to a person rather than their service of their fellow Americans. I was at church on Sunday. I go to a church that has a high percentage of Congolese refugees who are here under humanitarian visas or refugee status. Many of them are worried about the possibility of deportations because they happen to live in families where there might be mixed status: some citizens, some green card holders, some refugees, others who are not documented. A Sunday school teacher at my church came up and told me that, at the Saturday religious instruction program that he holds at a nearby Catholic school, because there are a number of Latino immigrant families in that program, the attendance is down because families and kids are worried about ICE raids and deportations. Yesterday, I had two interactions with Virginians, one with local government officials and NGO CEOs--folks running domestic violence shelters, homeless programs, free clinics, et cetera--in the Richmond area, where I live, and then a second meeting with the Virginia School Boards Association--elected school board members from all around the Commonwealth of Virginia--that was taking place in Alexandria, VA. And, in each instance, I heard again and again the story of fear, confusion: Are our funds being cut off? Can we say anything about it? We are set up in such a way that we have served underserved populations. Are we allowed to do that now? And, finally, Madam President, this morning, I came into work and I had an email from one of the largest federally qualified health centers in Virginia, located in the Hampton Roads--1.6 million people in the southeast portion of our State; Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, these communities--and they said: Look, we are the healthcare safety net of first resort for a lot of low- and moderate-income people, and we have done this for years, and we receive Federal funding. In fact, Federal funding for most of our FQHCs is about 20 to 25 percent of their budget. They tend to get paid the last day of the month. Yesterday was the 3rd of February. They indicated they had not received their January payment and, when they were reaching out to determine whether they would receive the January payment--or the February payment, for that matter--they wouldn't even be given the courtesy of an answer. There is grave, grave concern about the numerous efforts that this administration has taken with respect to Federal employees and with respect to the funding freeze. The funding freeze that was announced last week was partially retracted by the administration. It has been partially and temporarily enjoined in now multiple court cases. But as the email from this morning indicated, organizations that should be receiving funds, if the funding freeze is in fact enjoined, are still not receiving them. Obviously, we have got a lot of work to do to get to the bottom of this. The administration has not shared with any of us what their plans are. The analogy that I have used is it is like somebody has taken a jigsaw puzzle and dumped the pieces upside down on a table in front of me. All I am seeing is the cardboard backside. I don't have the box with the picture on it. Every time I talk to a constituent, a Federal employee, somebody who works at a domestic violence shelter, a mayor, I can turn over a piece of the puzzle based upon what they are telling me, and as I turn it over, I can start to assemble what is in fact happening. And we need to do more to assemble it. I just want to pledge to Virginians: I will be doing all I can to make sure you are protected. But what I want to do now is read a letter that I have written and that I am posting today on my website and disseminating publicly, specifically to Federal workers. It is a letter that tries to honor them and give them a pep talk and also direct them to resources that they can access in case they are concerned. And, once again, Madam President, 140,000 of these workers live in my Commonwealth. Dear Federal Workers: As you are all too aware, we are in a dark time. The Trump administration has made plain that it wants to kick you around--by blocking your ability to administer federal resources, censuring your free speech, locking you out of your workplaces, demonizing you in the press, and sending you ominous, and at times threatening, messages. These actions are shameful and harmful not only to you, but to Americans across the country that you serve. But especially in the darkest of times, we must stay focused on finding our guiding lights. I hope you will let the call to service that you answered when you first swore your oaths as federal employees serve as that light. My advice to you today is simple, even if it's not easy: Don't give up. Keep serving everyday folks. You are here because of your expertise. You are here because of your patriotism. You are here because you know the value in dedicating your life to serving your fellow Americans. America needs you--that has never been clearer than in the wake of [the administration's] Federal funding freeze last week. I heard from folks in every corner of Virginia about the invaluable support they receive from Federal workers like you. Across the country, Americans are counting on you to deliver crucial services--from inspecting our food to make sure it's safe, to protecting our national security. From administering Social Security benefits, to staffing air traffic control towers, to supporting our allies around the world and keeping the influence of China, Iran, and Russia at bay. I know it has been--and will continue to be--tough. Donald Trump and his cronies are determined to do anything they can to knock you off course. They've even dangled a phony buyout in your face. But make no mistake: that buyout is a trap. Donald Trump has no authority to offer you a resignation buyout. Don't trust a guy with a long history of stiffing contractors by taking him up on a sham deal that he won't follow through on. You aren't alone. I'm going to be here with you, every day, working alongside you in service. I want to share with you some specific ways in which I want to be a resource to you. On my website, kaine.senate.gov, I am collecting stories from federal workers about what you are experiencing. Under no circumstances will I publicly share any information you send me without your consent. You can also choose to submit your [information] anonymously if you prefer. I will also be updating my webpage with information that may be helpful to you, including summaries of your rights, recourse you can seek if you believe you are being illegally terminated, and answers to other frequently asked questions my office is receiving. Please know, that I'm going to do everything I can to stand up for you--just like you're standing up for [and serving] the American people. Thank you for [all that you do]. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise briefly to just draw my colleagues' attention to two items that, although seemingly unconnected, happened last week that I think are deeply connected. On Inauguration Day, January 20, President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border of the United States. I just want to read two sentences from that declaration, January 20, 2025: Hundreds of thousands of Americans have tragically died from drug overdoses because of the illicit narcotics that have flowed across the southern border. I think 100 people in this Chamber would acknowledge that to be true. The second sentence in the same order: As Commander in Chief, I have no more solemn duty than to protect the American people. I think 100 people in this Chamber would agree that is the most solemn duty of the Commander in Chief. Those two sentences are why I was so surprised at an action the President took the next day, January 21, 2025: the pardon of drug kingpin Ross Ulbricht. I want to read a summary of the crimes for which Mr. Ulbricht was imprisoned and raise the question of why the President, who had expressed concern about drug running and said that his top goal was to protect the American people, would choose to do this on the second day of his Presidency. Mr. Ulbricht launched Silk Road in 2011 and turned it into one of the most popular outposts of the so-called Dark Web, a hidden corner of the internet that people can access only through a special browser. Silk Road facilitated over 1.5 million transactions, generating more than $200 million in revenue from the sale of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs. Two hundred million dollars. Users transacted anonymously with Bitcoin, then a nascent cryptocurrency, and could post Amazon-style product ratings. In 2013, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Ulbricht at a San Francisco library and charged him with running Silk Road. In court, prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Ulbricht had also solicited the murders of people he considered threats to his business, though he was never tried on murder-for-hire charges and there was no indication that any killings took place. At least six deaths were attributed to drugs bought on Silk Road, prosecutors said in court. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York, where the case was tried, called Mr. Ulbricht ``the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise'' whose actions were ``terribly destructive to our social fabric.'' In 2015, he received a life sentence for drug distribution, money laundering and other charges, and was eventually moved to a federal prison in Arizona. That account is from one of the many news articles describing the prosecution of Mr. Ulbricht and the pardon that was issued by President Trump on January 21. I just want to raise the obvious question: If illicit narcotics trafficking is sufficient to declare a national emergency, then why, 1 day later, was it a justifiable, appropriate, laudable use of Presidential power to give a pardon to somebody who had set up an online, global, digital drug trafficking network that had generated $200 million in revenue, 1.5 million transactions of sales of illicit drugs, 6 overdose deaths of individuals, and other challenges? One of the problems with the surplus of Executive orders in the first few days is that sometimes the sheer number can cause you to lose sight of some of what is happening. And I would assert that the pardon of Mr. Ulbricht undercuts the legitimacy of the claim that what President Trump is worried about is drug trafficking because if drug trafficking is bad, it is not only bad at the southern border; it is bad when somebody sets up an online drug trafficking market generating $200 million in revenue from illicit drugs and leading to overdose deaths of individuals. This is an action that is water under the bridge. There is nothing that can be done about it now. But if the only thing that can be done is to put it on the public record so that people can be aware that less than 24 hours after this emergency declaration, this drug trafficker was pardoned, I feel like that is an important thing that needs to be made visible to the American public. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise together with my colleagues to speak in opposition to the President's action pardoning those who attacked this Capitol on January 6, 2021. I was here that day. I shared that day with these colleagues, and we all have memories of it--memories that we never would have imagined and hope never to repeat. But I am not going to talk about my experiences of the day. I am going to talk about a friend, a Virginian, Howie Liebengood, a Capitol Police officer who spent his career protecting this building and who died as a result of that day. And the fact that President Trump would pardon the people who attacked this Capitol, leading to Howie Liebengood's death, is a deep, deep stain on President Trump and, frankly, a stain on this body if we casually tolerate it. Howie Liebengood is a Virginian who grew up in this building. His father was the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate and, prior to assuming that role, worked in other roles in the Senate. And Howie and his two siblings grew up coming to the Capitol and treating it like it was sort of their playground and their yard--running through the halls, meeting Senators, hearing their dad tell stories about what it was like to serve this article I branch as a patriotic American public servant. When Howie came of age, he started a career that he enjoyed and worked together with his father for a number of years as a NASCAR driver, and he worked on the NASCAR circuit, kind of working his way up from minor league races to more significant races. But after a number of years of doing that--look, he was a child of the U.S. Senate. He was a child of this Capitol, and he decided that he would enter the training program to be a Capitol Police officer. And he told his siblings--by this time, his father had passed. He told his siblings: I think my dad would be very, very proud of me. Howie went through the academy and became a Capitol Police officer, and I came to know him, as I suspect many of my colleagues did, because he usually was staffing the Delaware door at the corner of Delaware and Constitution right here, the Delaware door into the Russell Building. And this is a door that--I know Senator Murray's office is right close to that door. It may be the closest office to that door, and mine is close as well. We would come in in the morning, and Howie Liebengood would be there to greet us, to ask us a question about the procedural vote from the night before or what was on today. As much as he was a friend of mine, he was even more of a friend of my staff. My staff loved interacting with Howie. And he eventually served as a Capitol Police officer for 15 years. He was here on January 6 when his beloved Capitol was attacked. And as devastating as that attack was for many of us, for Howie--who had made this place his whole life, who had really been raised in these halls--that attack was very devastating. In the aftermath of the attack, those working on the Capitol Police were put on extended hours, little sleep. Would there be more attacks? Where was this going? What would happen? It was a time of fear and anxiety and confusion. And a few days later--within 3 days after that attack of January 6-- Howie went to his home in Virginia. His wife Serena asked if he was doing OK. She could tell he was under enormous stress. And he said he just needed to sleep. And Howie went upstairs and, using his own service revolver, ended his life. Howie Liebengood would be alive today--Howie Liebengood would be alive today if President Trump hadn't urged people to gather to do something wild in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, and then urged those gathering to go up and raise hell at the Capitol. My friend would be alive if President Trump had not done what he did. I have waited in vain, not naively, but with a hope that there might be some--some--sign of remorse over what happened, for the pain suffered by Serena Liebengood and Howie's siblings and family members, for other law enforcement officers, all of whom lived in Virginia, who lost their lives as a result of that day. Dozens of others were injured. And I have waited for years to see if there might be some semblance of remorse shown by the President who inspired that attack, for the damage and pain and loss of life and injury that he has caused, and I have seen not a shred of it. But these pardons are the ultimate injustice, are the ultimate injury. The family is still suffering. For them, it is salt in an unhealed wound and an injury that will never heal. And so I join with my colleagues, in Howie's memory, in support of Serena, in support of Howie's family, to stand on this floor and deplore as strongly as I can--and words aren't sufficient to really explain how I feel about this, but I stand here to deplore as strongly as I can the pardons of these lawbreakers who gathered for a particular time, at a particular moment, in a particular place to conduct violence in the cause of a particular result: the overturning of the peaceful transfer of power. And as I sit down, Mr. President, I will just say this: I lived in a military dictatorship in 1980 and 1981 in Honduras when the military ran everything. I know what authoritarianism is. I didn't live there for years like my Honduran friends, but I experienced it. I was very naive. I was 22 years old when I lived there, and I saw what it is like to have a society run by somebody who believes they are all-powerful, who can change any rule, who can foment violence, who can make sure that those who commit violence escape with impunity. I know what this is like, and we are in danger of moving into the same kind of authoritarian behavior when we casually pardon and excuse those who perpetrate violence to overturn our democracy. That is a big concept, but it all comes down to the effect that it has on individual people like my friend Howie Liebengood. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am honored to be with my colleagues on the floor to talk about the actions that have become very manifest in Virginia today because of the President's Executive orders, particularly the recent order pausing Federal funding--grant funding, program funding. I want to thank my colleagues for being here on the floor to talk about this and share just in the last 24 hours what Virginians are saying and what Virginians are asking and what Virginians are worried about. Then I want to make one point about my Federal workforce and an offer the President made to them at the end of the day and then finally raise a question of what President Trump is afraid of. President Trump has two Republican Houses. If he wants to do something to shrink the size of government, if he wants to do something to reduce spending here or there, we have a March 14 budget deadline, and he has two Republican Houses, and there is a way to do this--unless you are afraid that your Republican majorities don't want to go as far as you do in cutting Medicaid and cutting Medicare and endangering Social Security and hurting kids and hurting veterans and hurting families. Let me talk about the orders of the day and then the Federal workforce and finish with this question: What is President Trump afraid of? I started to hear from Virginians about this Federal funding pause yesterday. I was at an event in Fredericksburg to kick off tax season. The local United Way and chamber of commerce were initiating something they have done for 21 years in a row--volunteer tax assistance for low- and middle-income folks. It is a classic community program. A lot of volunteers help everyday folks figure out how to file their taxes and make sure they can get benefits they are entitled to. As I was at this kickoff, people came up to me and said: Hey, I am a veteran. I am trying to get an appointment at a VA hospital or clinic, but the VA portal is closed to me. What is going on? What is going on? This was the leading edge of this chaos. Someone else came to me at this kind of good-news event about volunteer tax assistance and said: The Federal Government has paid to build a VA clinic in Fredericksburg--state-of-the-art, right on Interstate 95, visible to all, scheduled to open in February. We are still being told that the grand opening is going to happen, but now those working there are saying they are under a hiring freeze. We spent tens of millions of dollars to build this facility that looks great, but we are under a hiring freeze. Can we even hire people to serve the veterans in this region? This was how it started. From then to today, let me tell you other calls of anguish we have received in our office. Two childcare centers, one in the Williamsburg area and one in Appalachia, far, far away in southwest Virginia: We think our funding is being cut off. We think we may not have enough to pay staff. We also think parents who are receiving some childcare funding--that may get cut off. So neither they can afford childcare, nor can we afford to maintain the employment of these hard-working childcare workers in childcare centers. Universities reached out to me today: We are doing cutting-edge medical research. We have contracts that are ongoing right now, and we are about to send a bill to the Federal Government because we do the work and then we submit bills. We are not sure it is going to be paid. What do we do--lay off the researchers and not get the research done? What should we do, Senator? There is an organization in Virginia called the Virginia Health Care Foundation. What they do is they help low-income people and seniors apply for Medicaid, apply for Affordable Care Act subsidies. They have a contract with CMS to help them hire eight staffers--they call them navigators--who work around the State helping low-income people access programs to which they are entitled, for which they have paid taxes. They received a note suggesting that that grant to hire these navigators to help everyday people was going to expire and they couldn't get any Federal funding after 5 today. They heard this late yesterday. So they did what any good organization would do. They reached out this morning to the CMS to say ``Please give us the payment right now, before 5 o'clock today,'' and what they got back from CMS was ``Sorry, our website is down. We just decided that today will be the day that we will just spend time repairing our website, and it will be open again soon''--open again soon but after the 5 o'clock deadline. You don't have to be a genius to figure this out. Hurting people getting health insurance. Hurting people trying to get Medicaid benefits. Hurting childcare centers. Hurting veterans trying to get appointments. Hurting a VA clinic we spent tens of millions of dollars to build by threatening, through a hiring freeze, the ability of this place to open. That is just a little snapshot. There was an earlier order freezing foreign assistance funding. A whole lot of nonprofits, church-based nonprofits like World Vision and other organizations that do foreign assistance work around the world--humanitarian aid in Ukraine, for example--they were told they don't get funding anymore. The only foreign assistance we will give, according to the Trump Executive order, is military armaments transfers to two countries in world: Egypt and Israel. No humanitarian aid. No transfer of military assistance to other nations. This is all on the say-so of a President trying to overturn existing appropriations bills that have been passed by a bipartisan Congress. If I heard these stories in 1 day and my colleagues have heard these stories in 1 day, I know what I am going to hear tomorrow. I know what I am going to hear through the weekend. This is going to build like an avalanche, and it is not just Democratic Senators who are hearing these stories. We have to respect the law and congressional appropriations. I ask anyone hearing who is concerned about this: If you are in Virginia, call my office. If you are not in Virginia, call your Congress man or woman, call your Senator and tell them the President is not above the law, the President must follow the law, and it is Congress--Democrats and Republicans--that has to ensure that the President follows the law. Second, I want to talk about Federal employees. The Federal employees received an interesting email at the end of the day today. I happen to have some fellows assigned to me who are not Senate employees, but they are executive branch employees, as most of us have, working in my office. They received an email from the administration that said: If you tender your resignation by next Friday, we will guarantee you payment through the end of September whether or not you show up for work. So tender your resignation and then, boy, it is just going to be a gravy train. You are just going to get paid for 7 months without working. The President has no authority to make that offer. There is no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. This is a guy who made this promise to contractors again and again and again when he was a private business guy: Oh, come work for me at my casino. Come work for me in a hotel. We are going to do a handshake. We are going to do a contract. The contractor does the work and then finds out they get stiffed. So my message to Federal employees who received this is, yeah, the President has tried to terrorize you for about a week and then gives you a little sweetheart offer: If you resign in the next week, we are just going to pay you for doing nothing for the next 7 months. Don't be fooled. He has tricked hundreds of people with that offer. If you accept that offer and resign, he will stiff you just like he stiffed the contractors. He doesn't have any authority to do this. Do not be fooled by this guy. You were here before he was here, and you will be here after he was here. Show up for work. Be diligent. Serve Americans every day. Make their lives better. Answer their phone calls. Give them an answer. Track down their constituent's calls. Don't be fooled by a fake offer that, because he has terrorized you in the last week, it would be easy to just resign now and get a check for 7 months because I can tell you, that promise is worth nothing. And you will regret it just like these contractors regretted it who did work for this guy while he was a businessman. Finally and lastly, I will say this: What is this move by the President to try to shrink the Federal workforce? Because we all know this: If he can persuade a bunch of people to resign, he will stiff them, and then he won't fill the position. OK. That is one way to shrink the Federal workforce: If I can get away with not distributing money pursuant to a congressional appropriation, OK, that will shrink the Federal budget. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. The President has two Republican Houses. We are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14. What is today? Is it, like, the 25th, 26th, 27th? Is it the 28th? Is today January 28? Do you think I am right? March 14 isn't very far away. We are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14, and the President is sitting in the captain's seat. He has got two Republican Houses. So if he wants to slash Federal spending, if he wants to reduce the Federal workforce, if he wants to gut Medicaid, gut Medicare, gut Social Security, gut the SNAP program, gut low-income heating assistance, gut rental assistance, gut title I funding to our public schools, guess what? He has got two Republican Houses that he can persuade to do his bidding. He has been pretty good so far at persuading these two Houses to do his bidding. So why didn't he do that? That would be the lawful way to accomplish that. If President Trump could convince the two Houses to slash all of these programs in a budget, that would be lawful and get an appropriations deal that cuts all of these programs the way he and Russell Vought and Project 2025 want to do it. But that is not what he is doing. He is trying to do it on his own. Why? Why would President Trump, who has a clearly legal path ahead of him that he can exercise over the course of the next 6 weeks--it is not very long--to get a budget deal with two Republican Houses--why would President Trump, with two Republican Houses and 6 weeks to get a budget deal to do everything he wants--why would he not exercise that route but, instead, use an illegal route as an Executive to slash funding contrary to clear statute? It is because he doesn't think that elected Republican Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate will go along with his radical plans. He doesn't think he can convince my GOP colleagues to take the ax to all of these programs and hurt the American people in the way he wants to. Let's make President Trump do this the right way, not the wrong way. Let's put it on the shoulders of President Trump and the two Republican majorities. Do you want to slash this stuff? Fine. Have that debate on the floor of the Senate and on the floor of the House when we are doing the budget negotiation between now and March 14. Show the American public your homework. Show them who is going to get hurt. Show them that we are going to hurt everyday people at the expense of the big guys, who are getting a tax cut in the reconciliation bill later. Let's really have that debate right here in the full view of the American public with these spotlights on and the TV broadcasting it. That is what this President is afraid of, and that is why he is using this illegal strategy to accomplish what he is afraid he can't accomplish in the article I branch. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

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

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the pending matter of the Pete Hegseth nomination to be Secretary of Defense. Before I get into the bulk of my comments, I want to just state my own record in terms of votes for the Secretary of Defense as a member of the Armed Services Committee. This administration is the fourth Presidential administration I have been part of. I was elected with the second Obama administration, then served in the first Trump administration, then the Biden administration, and now a second Trump administration. As to my track record as an Armed Services Committee member and as a Member of this body, I voted for every Secretary of Defense nomination before the body. In focusing on the Trump nominees, President Trump nominated General Mattis to be Secretary of Defense. I voted for him in committee. I voted for him on the floor, and he received a 98-to-1 vote with 1 abstention when he was before us in 2017. Secretary Mattis served during a portion of President Trump's term and then stepped down, and President Trump nominated Mark Esper, who had been the Secretary of the Army, to succeed General Mattis. A Trump administration nominee paid me the honor of asking if I would introduce him before the Armed Services Committee, and I did. He is a Virginian. I had worked with Secretary Esper when he was the Army Secretary on military housing issues. He had been responsive and professional. So I said: Sure. You are President Trump's nominee, but I am going to introduce you before the committee. Secretary Esper was approved in the committee--I think unanimously-- and the vote on the floor for Secretary Esper was 90-8-2. I bring that up just to say it is not my desire or norm to stand on the floor and speak in opposition to a nominee for Secretary of Defense or to speak in opposition to a nominee by President Trump for Secretary of Defense. I spoke the other day--probably 2 days ago--here about why I am opposing Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. What I want to focus on today is his claim. I know my colleagues have been on the floor all day long explaining their own reasons for their opposition to Pete Hegseth, but I want to just really drill down on what Pete Hegseth is saying about the allegations that folks are making against him. This was pretty apparent in the committee hearing a week ago Tuesday, and it has been consistent since. It was most clear in a recitation that he had back and forth with Senator Kelly of Arizona. Senator Kelly asked him: I am just going to ask you really simple questions. Here is an event that someone says you participated in; true or false? Again and again and again, what Pete Hegseth said was ``anonymous smears.'' He didn't say ``false'' because if you say ``false'' to something that you have done, it could verge on perjury. He didn't say ``true'' because if you say ``true'' to these kinds of allegations, it could be disqualifying. So it was a very interesting litany where, again and again and again, Senator Kelly said: Here is an event; true or false? ``Anonymous smears.'' ``Anonymous smears'' was a very, very sophisticated way of not answering the question. Yet, even as I examined Pete Hegseth about marital infidelity and about a sexual assault allegation against him that led him to make a payout to the complainant, about allegations of spousal abuse, again and again, what he said was ``anonymous smears.'' So what I want to do during my time today, since I have already laid out sort of my bill of particulars about why I am not supporting his nomination, I want to focus on this: The claims that have been made against Pete Hegseth are not anonymous, and they are not smears. They are not anonymous, and they are not smears. Let me start with ``not anonymous.'' To begin with, many of the claims are claims that have been admitted by Pete Hegseth. So let's start with the man himself. He has admitted serial infidelity in both of his first two marriages. He told me at the committee hearing that he took an oath of fidelity to his wife, but he admitted to serial infidelity. That is not an irrelevant factor when we are analyzing whether someone who takes an oath to become Secretary of Defense is able to carry out that oath. Pete Hegseth admitted as recently as yesterday that he made a payout to somebody who charged him with a sexual assault. There was an incident in Monterey in September of 2017 that led to a criminal sexual assault complaint and a criminal investigation. It did not lead to criminal charges, but it did lead to a civil charge and a settlement and a payout and a nondisclosure agreement. He has admitted to all of that. He claims it was a consensual event, and the victim claims it was a sexual assault, but as to the fact of the interaction and the fact that it was both cheating on an existing wife and also on the mother of a newborn child, he has admitted to all of that. It is not an anonymous claim when Pete Hegseth has admitted to this. Second, it is not anonymous what Pete Hegseth's mother wrote to him. Pete Hegseth was in the middle of a very contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, in 2018, and he received a most extraordinary email from his mother. This is not anonymous, and I want to read the email. It is an extraordinary bit of tough love from a mom to a son. Son, I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out. You are an abuser of women--that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. I am not a saint, far from it, so don't throw that in my face, but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out. Sam is a good mother and a good person (under the circumstances that you created) and I know deep down you know that. For you to try to label her as ``unstable'' for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you? She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand. Neither did Meredith. Meredith was the first wife. I know you think this is one big competition and that we have taken her side . . . bunk. . . . We are on the side of good and that is not you. (Go ahead and call me self- righteous, I don't care.) Don't you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us. . . . That's what babies do. It's time for someone-- Someone-- (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women. We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character. I don't want to write emails like this and never thought I would. If it damages our relationship further, then so be it, but at least I have said my piece. And yes, we are praying for you (and you don't deserve to know how we are praying, so skip the snarky reply). I don't want an answer to this . . . I don't want to debate with you. You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But . . . on behalf of all the women (and I know it's many) you have abused in some way, I say . . . get some help and take an honest look at yourself . . . Mom. This is not an anonymous smear. I know a little bit about a mother's love. I know a little bit about a mother's tough love. This is not an anonymous smear, but it is an extraordinary, painful, candid rebuke. Why do I have this letter? This is not a letter that anyone in this body had. This is a letter that appeared in a newspaper about a month ago. The only people who would have had this email are family, the people closest in the world to Pete Hegseth. No one else would have seen this. No one else would have had it. No one else could have read it on the floor of the Senate unless someone very close to Pete Hegseth--a member of his immediate family--decided years after it was written that a man nominated to be Secretary of Defense whose character had led his own mother to write this letter--that this is a fact that should be put before the public in analyzing the character and qualifications of this individual--not anonymous. Pete Hegseth's former sister-in-law Danielle Hegseth, who had been married to his brother Nathaniel, submitted an affidavit that is in the Senate records, which is available to all of my colleagues, and all have read this affidavit or made a decision that they didn't want to read it, but it is available to all of us. The affidavit that Danielle has written about the treatment that was referred to by his mother in this letter is completely consistent with what the mother says. The mother wrote this. It is now public. Danielle has signed an affidavit about it. It is now public, and it is completely consistent with what the mother said. Danielle Hegseth is not anonymous. There is a whistleblower report that is available to all Senate Members. I read it 10 days ago. It is for Members only, but it is available to all hundred of us, and I hope all of my colleagues have read it. It would be a huge mistake to vote on this nomination not having read that whistleblower report. What does the whistleblower report involve? It is anything but anonymous. It is a report that was generated years ago when Pete Hegseth was the leader of an organization called Concerned Veterans for America. It wasn't created for this hearing. It wasn't created because of a Secretary of Defense nomination. It was created by disgruntled employees in an organization that Pete Hegseth was leading. It is a seven-page, single-spaced whistleblower report. Again, I have to say it is anything but anonymous. In fact, it mentions, by my count, 36 names of individuals connected with Concerned Veterans for America and multiple events of improper behavior by Pete Hegseth as the leader: being at work events impaired by alcohol, creating a toxic work culture that led to the sexual harassment of women employees, repeated instances of unprofessional behavior, and fiscal mismanagement of the organization. I know that Pete Hegseth calls that ``anonymous smears.'' But when you read this 6-page document--and, again, I just want to say to any public watching this: The Senators in this body have all had access to it. So if you see somebody like Pete Hegseth saying it is an ``anonymous smear''--no, the Members of this body have all had access to Danielle Hegseth's affidavit, to Pete Hegseth's admissions, to the mother's letters, and to a whistleblower report with 36 names in it attesting to a variety of unprofessional behaviors. That document was provided to Mr. Hegseth and his attorney, and they submitted a response. But by my read of the document, they could not get a single individual whose name is mentioned to challenge or retract any of the statements that are made in the document. This is anything but anonymous. Again, all Members have seen this. All Members have had access to it. These are not anonymous claims. They are on-the-record claims by people very close to this man, including in a most unusual way, his own mother. Now, I will acknowledge this: There are some who have come forward who are anonymous. I have to acknowledge that. They are anonymous because they are afraid. I have had extensive conversations with a close personal friend of the second wife who has told me things that are directly supportive of the public materials contained in the mother's letter and in the Danielle Hegseth affidavit. I don't know that he knows Danielle, but what he told me is completely consistent with Danielle Hegseth's allegations that Pete Hegseth was abusive to his second wife. But this individual is afraid to come forward and have his name mentioned because he believes that, if his name was mentioned, he would be subject to abuse and potentially violence. I have spoken to a close friend of Jane Doe, the complainant in the sexual assault allegation and the sexual assault civil complaint and settlement, with direct knowledge of this. She has told me a number of things that confirm the public reporting about the sexual assault allegation, but she is afraid, for her own physical safety, to come forward. And I have spoken to one of the individuals whose name is mentioned, among the 36 whose names are mentioned, in the whistleblower report, who participated in putting it together years ago, who was able to give some texture and context to this report that all Members have had access to. She expressed a willingness to speak to the FBI about it. She doesn't want to come forward publicly because she is afraid, but she expressed a willingness. Mr. President, get this: She expressed a willingness weeks ago to talk to the FBI about the whistleblower report, which they had. And as of 2 hours ago, the FBI has not been in contact with a single individual whose name is mentioned in this whistleblower report. Now, we already know that the FBI, in their initial investigation, did not reach out to either of the wives--wife one and wife two. They didn't reach out. I haven't seen the FBI report. I am not allowed to see it. It is only accessible by our committee chair and ranking. But I asked Senator Reed: Was there any reference to it? Was there any evidence that either of the first wives were interviewed? I mean, you had the letter from the mother. Why wouldn't you go talk to the wives about the behavior? The FBI didn't talk to the first or second wife. They had to go back and do an interview, after we brought that up that they hadn't even done it. They did a cursory interview about Mr. Hegseth's drinking but didn't ask him about the abuse allegations. But as of 2 hours ago, the FBI still has not reached out to a single person whose name is contained as someone with knowledge about the whistleblower report and the activities of Mr. Hegseth when he was the CEO or the lead executive of Concerned Veterans for America. I am saddened that a friend of wife two, that a friend of Jane Doe, that somebody who is a whistleblower is so physically afraid to come forward and say what they know because of fears of violence against them. That makes me sad. But I will stake my reputation on this: What they have told me is a direct match and an affirmation of the material contained in the public accounts from the mother, from Pete Hegseth's own admissions, from the sexual assault facts that we know, and from the Danielle Hegseth affidavit. I have taken some time to go over this to show that the material that this body is considering is not anonymous, and now I want to turn to the second. It is not a smear. The Pete Hegseth allegation seems to be that this is all created at the last minute to try to derail him from being Secretary of Defense, and, in that way, it is a smear. It wouldn't be further from the truth. The sexual assault claim happened years ago. It was not created to try to stop Pete. The whistleblower report was written more than a decade ago. It was not written to stop Pete Hegseth from being Secretary of Defense. Pete Hegseth has admitted to serial infidelity years ago. Those allegations were not brought up to stop Pete Hegseth from being Secretary of Defense. And, finally, this letter from Pete Hegseth's mother, it was sent years ago, and it wasn't sent to stop Pete Hegseth from being Secretary of Defense. It was sent, as his own mother has recently stated in media interviews, as a message of love. This painful, painful email was sent to her son as a message of love. None of this material was a smear. None of this material was created once Pete Hegseth was nominated to be Secretary of Defense to try to stop him. This material has been around for many, many years and was created contemporaneously with abuse that he was visiting upon others because people were trying to stop him. They were trying to stop him as a message of love. They were praying for him. They were encouraging him to look in the mirror and improve. Yet he says this is all a smear. That is not the case. They are not smears. They are clear and consistent and contemporaneous reports of the behavior, judgment, impulse control, and character of this nominee for the most important Cabinet position that any President will forward to the U.S. Senate. I am going to conclude and just say this: We can do better. As a nation, we can do better. As a U.S. Senate, we can do better. Supporters of President Trump can do better. Members of the military can do better. Veterans can do better. Blue Star families--I am one. My kid is a Marine reservist. We can do better. We need to do better. We need to do better by our Active Duty. We need to do better by our Guard and Reserve. We need to do better by DOD civilians. We need to do better by military families. We need to do better by defense contractors. We need to do better by all who care about the important mission of the American military. And we can do better. Mr. President, you and I both know this: There are so many good public officials who have aligned on the Republican side, who have supported President Trump, who have their own credentials. In this body--I could name a bunch, but I am worried I would forget one and then get in trouble with one of the ones I don't name. But in this body, there are Senators who have served honorably in the military and are well qualified for the position of Secretary of Defense. In the House, there are Members who are loyal to this President who have served honorably in the military and are qualified to be Secretary of Defense. We have Governors, we have mayors, we have leaders of companies who have supported this President and are loyal to his agenda and could get a 90-8-2 vote, like Mark Esper did, or a 98-to-1 vote, like General Mattis did, and would be loyal to this President and carry out this President's agenda. They are there. There are hundreds of them without the personal baggage of sexual assault claims that have been settled, of allegations of spousal abuse that have been testified to, of allegations of drunkenness on the job and fiscal mismanagement that are the subject of a very extensive report written by non-anonymous coworkers. So as we near the vote for this most important position, my plea to my colleagues, as one who has supported every Secretary of Defense who has ever come before my committee--Democrat or Republican--is don't rush this and make a mistake. No one in this room, should this break badly following the confirmation, could say: Well, I didn't know. I didn't know. Everyone knows. Everyone has access to this material. Everyone knows the risk we would be undertaking in confirming Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. There will be no place--no shelter, no refuge--of ``Wow, I was unaware of this.'' But, more importantly than that, we all know people right in this Chamber who are qualified by background, who are qualified by credential, but, most importantly, who are qualified by character to undertake this most solemn responsibility. Let's get this one right. Let's take the time and get this one right. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise as a member of the Armed Services Committee to discuss the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be our Nation's Secretary of Defense. Let me make two preliminary comments. First, my philosophy about voting on nominees is to give deference to the President who has been elected, who has a mandate that carries with it a mandate to assemble a leadership team in executive positions, and so I always begin, with any President, Democrat or Republican, with a beginning standpoint that they should be able to assemble a team unless there are significant challenges with a nominee. Second, I do want to say that as part of the work I have done in examining this nominee, I did review his military record, and I express my respect for the military record. Pete Hegseth's service in the military, in my review of those Pentagon records, suggested that he served in a very honorable way, and I want to acknowledge that. Yet I rise to oppose the nomination and urge my colleagues to oppose it or at least take the time to really understand the gravity of the behavioral challenges that have been demonstrated by Mr. Hegseth during his career. I have multiple problems with this nominee for this position, and this position, Secretary of Defense, is the position that I view and many Virginians view as the most important Cabinet post. Let me review the reasons for my opposition. First, Mr. Hegseth's record is one of erratic, unprofessional, and troubling behavior. Mr. Hegseth was married twice before he was married to his current wife, his third wife. In the first two marriages, there were allegations in both of serious and multiple infidelities. I asked him at the hearing, when he appeared before us, whether he took an oath of fidelity to his spouses, and of course he did, in the same way that a Secretary of Defense will take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, but the evidence that was before us, the public record that was before us, is very, very troubling. In Mr. Hegseth's first marriage, there were public reports that he was unfaithful to his wife at least five different times with multiple other people. He never rebutted that, and because he wouldn't meet with members of the committee on the Democratic side, we didn't get a chance to talk about that in a closed setting, which would have been most important. In his second marriage, he was married and, while married, fathered a child by a woman who would become his third wife in August of 2017. So he was still married to wife No. 2 and cheated on her with the woman who would bear his child and become wife No. 3. But in a very shocking way, to me, within 2 months after the birth of this child, he was at a Republican political event at a hotel in Monterey, CA, and he cheated on both his second wife and the mother of his newborn in an incident that led to a sexual assault criminal investigation. This behavior--look, people are people, and people make mistakes, but a first marriage breaking up over serial infidelity and then a second marriage also bedeviled by serial infidelity is something that has to call up questions about an individual's judgment. Mr. Hegseth has been the leader of two nonprofit organizations that are veterans service organizations. In one of the organizations, Concerned Veterans for America, during the time he was the CEO, an employee of the organization wrote a scathing report about Mr. Hegseth's creating a toxic work culture in this environment where impairment by alcohol was not only exhibited by him but tolerated in others and where there was a significant creation of a toxic work environment for women employees. The committee members have had access to a report that was not done because he was nominated for Secretary of Defense; this was a report that was done by employees and given to the leaders of this organization at the time--now nearly 10 years ago--with about 35 names of employees and individuals in the organization with knowledge of the facts and recitation of event after event after event where people were treated unfairly. Women were made to feel that they were second class in the organization, and alcohol abuse was common at workplace events. I referenced a sexual assault claim in Monterey, and I will call it an undisclosed sexual assault claim because Mr. Hegseth never told the Trump transition team about this event when he was being considered and vetted to be Secretary of Defense. Again, he is married to wife 2. He has now fathered a child by a woman, being unfaithful in that wedding, and within 2 months after fathering a child, he goes to an event in Monterey, CA, gets a woman at the event into his hotel room, and has sex with her. She claims she was drugged and raped and filed a criminal complaint about it with local law enforcement within days after the event. He admits the event. He says it was consensual--not a sexual assault, rape, but consensual--but he acknowledges that it occurred. What then happened is that the survivor went to local law enforcement and filed a sexual assault claim. The claim was investigated over a period of time. The prosecutor ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Hegseth, but there was a civil claim as well that later led to a settlement with the victim, a payment of cash to the victim, and the entrance into a nondisclosure agreement with the victim. None of this was disclosed to the Trump team as they were examining Mr. Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. He didn't disclose the event. He didn't disclose the criminal sexual assault claim. He didn't disclose the fact of an investigation. He didn't disclose the civil claim. He didn't disclose the settlement. He didn't disclose the cash payment. He didn't disclose the nondisclosure agreement. He hid all of it from the Trump transition team. When I asked him why, he didn't really have an answer, and I told him: I know the reason why. You were worried that if you told them about this, they would not nominate you to be Secretary of Defense. The relationship between a Secretary of Defense and a President is a very important relationship that demands complete candor. There is always some challenge. There is always something at the Pentagon that might be going wrong. Mr. Hegseth demonstrated at a very critical moment that he would not let the President-elect know about this fact because he wanted to advance himself and he worried that if he was candid, it would cause problems for him. I don't want a Secretary of Defense who is unwilling to be candid with the Commander in Chief, and he has already demonstrated grave reason to doubt whether he will be candid by his refusing to disclose the reality of this sexual assault allegation in Monterey. An affidavit was filed yesterday by one Danielle Hegseth, the former sister-in-law of the nominee, revealing publicly facts suggesting spousal abuse in Mr. Hegseth's second marriage. I don't know Danielle Hegseth. I haven't talked to her. I was not aware of that allegation. But it didn't surprise anyone on the committee who had reviewed the record. Why not? Because there are already facts in the record raising this very question. In fact, I asked Mr. Hegseth about it at the Armed Services Committee. During his second divorce, his own mother wrote him a letter saying essentially: You are a serial abuser of women, including your own two wives, and you need to look in the mirror, get some help, and figure this out. His mother even used the phrase ``neither X nor Y''--the names of the first two wives--``deserved the treatment they have received at your hand.'' All of the committee members had access to that before the hearing-- all of them. What an extraordinary letter--your mother writing you a letter saying you are a serial abuser of women who needs to look in the mirror and get help and saying that the two wives that you have abused do not deserve the treatment they have received at your hand. So the allegation from Danielle Hegseth yesterday in reporting her observations of Mr. Hegseth's behavior and in particular the abuse of her sister-in-law have to be given some credence by this committee, and we have to avoid a rush that we may regret. I found it very unusual that when I asked Mr. Hegseth at the hearing if a sexual assault would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, he would not agree with me; if spousal abuse would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, he would not agree with me; if being impaired by alcohol while on the job would be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense, he would not agree with me. These are not hard questions. They are clearly disqualifying behaviors, and the fact that he would not agree that they were disqualifying behaviors suggested to me, as I was watching that testimony, that they evinced a little bit of a guilty conscience. Why would I want to agree if I have concerns about my own behavior? What has been Mr. Hegseth's response to allegations of infidelity, demonstrating poor judgment, the creation of a toxic work culture, alcohol impairment while at work, this undisclosed sexual assault claim, and the allegations of spousal abuse? What has his response been? His response has been twofold: complete denial--complete denial-- with the exception of acknowledging that, yes, he did cheat on his wife and the mother of a newborn child in Monterey, CA, in September 2017. He has denied everything else even though the record is replete with specific instances at specific times with specific individuals attesting to these behaviors. His other defense is to claim that all of this--all of it--is an anonymous smear--an anonymous smear. Let me tell my colleagues: This is anything but anonymous. When your own mother writes you a letter saying you are a serial abuser of women, including your two wives, and they don't deserve the treatment they have received at your hand, that is not anonymous. The report of the whistleblower at the Concerned Veterans for America organization a decade ago is anything but anonymous. The report listed--I counted them--incidents involving 36 named individuals who had been either participating in, victimized by, witnessing, or aware of the incidents described in the document. This is not anonymous. Danielle Hegseth's public affidavit is not anonymous. The one thing that I will acknowledge that is in the anonymous space is this: the number of individuals who have come forth and shared with me and other members of the committee their own firsthand knowledge of similar events but said you can't use my name because I am so afraid. I am afraid of what Mr. Hegseth would do. I am afraid of what the President might do. I had someone say to me, when I said you needn't be afraid: That is easy for you to say. That is easy for you to say. If the building, the U.S. Capitol, where you work, could be attacked by people when it was well fortified and secure, what chance would I have if someone didn't like the fact that I publicly criticized this nominee? So, yes, there are some who are speaking to us who are asking for anonymity and that, if they have asked for it, they should be provided it. But there are many who have spoken either directly via affidavit or in records that are available to all committee members and all Senators who are anything but anonymous. I would urge my colleagues and not just the Armed Services Committee members to go and read the documents that are available to you. Before you cast your vote, set your feet in stone about a nominee, you should see these documents. I want to go back to one point that I made that I think is telling, and that is Mr. Hegseth's refusal to disclose these facts to the Trump transition team. It is one thing to not disclose them to the committee; it is one thing to refuse to meet with the committee--I will get to that in a second--but when the President-elect, who is going to be the Commander in Chief, is vetting you for the most important Cabinet position in the United States and you know you have been charged with a sexual assault that led to a criminal investigation, a civil settlement, a cash payment, and nondisclosure agreement, and you choose not to reveal it to the President, in my view, that, in and of itself, should be disqualifying. The level of disrespect that that shows for the President-elect, in my view, should be disqualifying. Let me conclude with a couple of other points. The main point is the pattern of behavior, which should make anyone wary to vote for Mr. Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. But there are a couple of other points I want to mention. Mr. Hegseth, I think, sort of, set a very unfortunate precedent. I have been on the Armed Services Committee. I have sat side by side with my colleague Senator King on that committee since we came to the Senate in January of 2013. I have now participated in confirmation hearings for about five Secretaries of Defense, both Democratic and Republican nominees. Mr. Hegseth is the only one who refused to meet with Democratic members of the committee, save for the chairman, Jack Reed. He met with the Republican committee members. But all of us were trying to set meetings with him, as has been our norm, so that we could talk to him about these issues and ask him questions privately in our office. Some of these matters are, frankly, probably better for private discussion than public discussion. But he stiff-armed every one of us except for Jack Reed. In some ways, maybe it is not a surprise. This is an individual who has written books and articles where he said Democrats are evil; Democrats are the adversary. But if you are nominated to be Secretary of Defense of the Pentagon, it is a nonpolitical military. It is a civilian military that should not be politicized. And if you begin the job by saying I needn't even sit down and pay the respective a meeting with Democratic Senators, what about Democrats who serve in the military or Independents or Libertarians, or people who don't share Mr. Hegseth's party affiliation? What does it say to the men and women who work for our military when he wouldn't even pay the respect paid by every predecessor when they would meet with Senators of both parties before the hearing? I was very disturbed the other day when we had a committee hearing to forward Mr. Hegseth's nomination, and the Republican majority asked for a waiver to forward it faster than rules allow. That waiver can be granted if the committee votes to do so. One of my colleagues, Senator Warner, said to the Republicans: Wait, you are asking us to waive normal rules. We don't want to waive normal rules to speed this along. He wouldn't even meet with us. I thought that was a pretty compelling argument. I understand if Mr. Hegseth has no respect for the Senators in this body who are Democrats, that is one thing, but I would expect my Senate colleagues to have some respect for us. I have served with members of this committee on the Republican side. Some have been there the entire 12 years I have been there. I didn't think they would tolerate a nominee stiff-arming me. If there was a Democratic nominee for Secretary of Defense who refused to meet with Republican members of the committee, I would raise heck about that publicly in the committee and threaten to block the nominee until he met with the Republican members of the committee. I know Senator King would do the same thing. Democrats would do the same thing. We would not tolerate a nominee stiff-arming one side of the dais and refusing to meet with us. We wouldn't tolerate it. I was shocked that my Republican colleagues, in a closed meeting 2 days ago, demonstrated that they are just fine with that. This is my favorite committee in the Senate. We work very cooperatively in a bipartisan way. And that my Republican colleagues are perfectly fine with us being disrespected because we happen to be Democrats, who our citizens elected us to serve in the U.S. Senate, is very, very shocking to me. One other point that I want to bring up. I have revealed much material that is in the record and that other Senators can view for themselves. But I have to say, in looking at the investigation record, which was compiled largely by the FBI, it was very, very weak. The FBI went out to do an investigation of Mr. Hegseth. The report was made available to the chair and the ranking member, not to the members of the committee. We haven't seen the report. But we have been able to ask questions of the chair and ranking about it. The allegations that I have walked through, which are largely public record, the FBI didn't even interview the wives. Even after a mother's letter had said that you are a serial abuser of women, including your two wives, the FBI did not even go out and interview the wives. Why not? I mean, was it an investigation or just like a box-checking exercise? A number of us, when we heard that, we sort of raised hell about it; like, if you are going to do an investigation, talk to the people who know the nominee the best, then the two wives are people you ought to talk to. We embarrassed the FBI. So after the fact, they went out and did a very cursory discussion with one of the wives. Again, I have not seen that material. I have not been allowed to see it. That should, itself, shock my colleagues and the public. But I have confirmed, in speaking about it with the ranking and chair, that the interview with the wife was very cursory and covered one set of topics but left many of the questions that I have raised here completely unanswered and unaddressed. A nominee to be Secretary of Defense is going to have enormous power over the physical safety of Americans and over peace, war, and diplomacy in the world. Aren't we, as Senators, exercising our advice and consent role, entitled to a background investigation that is meaningful, that is searching, and that is comprehensive? Are we supposed to just be given some half work product and say: OK, that is great. Let's just rush to confirm somebody? We shouldn't be confirming a person on an insufficient background check if they didn't have all of these acknowledged problems that are part of the public record. But when they are part of the public record, when the FBI finds out that, wow, you didn't tell the transition team about the sexual assault claim, the investigation should be thorough, not mediocre and cursory. So I am going to conclude and just say this may not be the last time I appear on the floor to speak on this nomination, but, for now, my request of my colleagues is a simple one: Why rush? Why rush? Why would we rush to put through a nomination for a position of this importance that is frayed with so much baggage and so much evidence of glaring character and judgment errors? Do we want to have egg on our face? Do we want to rush and have this blow up later? Do we want to rush and have other witnesses come out, as Danielle Hegseth did yesterday? Is that what the Senate's advice and consent process, mandated by the Constitution for a very important reason, has come to--a cursory investigation that doesn't get to the underlying facts, even when they are sitting right out there before us, and we are going to rush to confirm someone? For what reason? So, as I sit down, I will just conclude with that question: Why rush this? Let's take the time. And when we cast a vote on confirmation, cast it with the confidence that we have complete information about the man who has been nominated to be our Secretary of Defense. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jermaine Jackson, Julia Burnell, Steven Ramdilal, and Tracy Fasolino, who are fellows in my office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of their assignments to my office.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I join my colleagues on the same topic to talk about the forthcoming debate that we will have about tax policies in this Chamber. Since coming to Congress--really before, when I was a mayor and Governor--I advocated for smart, simple pro-growth and pro- family tax reform. Taxes should be fair. They should be consistent. They should be predictable. And they should generate the revenue that America needs to fund Social Security, Medicare, education, roads, national security, and the other critical investments that matter to our constituents. I repeat what some of my colleagues said. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, after the failed effort to take health insurance away from more than 20 million people and deprive all Americans of being protected from discrimination by insurance companies if they had preexisting conditions--and thank goodness that reconciliation effort failed when three Republicans joined Democrats to block that effort-- the Trump administration colleagues turned to the idea of tax reform. Democrats were very willing to work on deficit-neutral, pro-growth tax reform. But instead, Republicans chose: We don't want to have a committee process. We don't want to include Democrats. We want to write a bill, and we will write a bill that will pass partisan tax cuts that will dramatically expand the deficit. At this time--and I know my colleagues remember this--economists were saying that America's corporate tax rate of 35 percent was high compared to global averages. So there was some suggestion that what we should do is lower the corporate tax rate to put it more in tune with what other nations were charging. There is a little bit of an apples to oranges difficulty in doing that because other nations use a VAT tax that we don't use. Most economists said if we wanted to make our corporate tax rate equivalent to other nations, we should try to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to, like, 28 percent. And many of my businesses in Virginia were coming to me saying: We have to be more competitive. We have to have a corporate tax rate that matches up more with global norms. Cut the global tax rate to 28 percent. Instead, even though companies were only asking for that reduction, our Republican colleagues plummeted and slashed the corporate tax rate not to 28 percent, not to 25 percent but to 21 percent. And they didn't even pay for it--didn't even pay for it. As Senator Murphy said, just racked up higher deficits. There were a few individual tax cuts in this bill. If you look at the bill from 2017, it was mostly corporate tax cuts. There were a few, in that pie chart, individual tax cuts. But they were heavily tilted toward the wealthy, as my colleagues have described. Analysis at the time showed households in the top 1 percent would get an average tax cut of $60,000, while households in the bottom 60 percent averaged only $500 each. The bill also left out our Nation's poorest children. Nearly 20 million children were left out of the full value of the child tax credit because it was not made refundable. Democrats demonstrated in the American Rescue Plan that when you expand the Child Tax Credit and allow it to be refundable, you could lead to a revolutionary drop in child poverty when it was in effect. But Republicans took a different route. And on top of these inequities, that the bill was too heavily weighted toward corporations, too light toward individuals, and with individuals, too heavily weighted toward the wealthy rather than lower and middle-income people, the Republican bill in 2017 did another thing that was entirely unjustified. The bill made the corporate tax cuts permanent and the individual tax cuts temporary. So big, permanent corporate tax cuts; tiny, temporary, heavily skewed individual tax cuts. During the debate, I offered a simple amendment that virtually all my Democratic colleagues voted for. And we said: Hey, look, let's go ahead and reduce the corporate tax rate, but let's not reduce it to 21 percent. If we reduce it to 25 percent, which is a big reduction, we can make these individual tax cuts for everyday people permanent, so at least the individual tax cuts to everyday people would be permanent, like the corporate tax cuts. All of my Republican colleagues opposed it. The Senate was majority Republican so we were stuck with a bad bill. And that brings us to today. Republicans are debating how to ram another $4.6 trillion tax cut through the Senate. I will remind my colleagues that when the Senate Republicans did this in 2017, they were really proud because they thought it would help them in the 2018 midterms. I think it was heavily driven by an electoral strategy. What they found is after about 90 days of talking about it, the American public was so mad that these tax cuts went to the wealthy rather than everyday people that they dropped it as a campaign issue to talk about other things and still lost badly in those midterms. The proposed extensions are going to tilt toward the wealthy, as my colleagues indicated. But get this, the deficit effects that are likely to be felt in some of these distributional effects President Trump is proposing, why not mitigate those by jacking up tariffs? OK. So we are going to do tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, but we are also going to do tariffs. And whom will tariffs impact? President-elect Trump often says tariffs won't affect Americans; it will hurt China and Mexico. But once the election was over, he acknowledged that he can't guarantee American families won't be affected by costs of tariffs. I am going to guarantee this. If President Trump moves forward with broad-based universal tariffs, and they are not defeated in this body, American families will suffer. American families will pay the cost. We know it because we have seen it before. Study after study shows American consumers bore the brunt of Trump's first trade war, and this time it will be even more. Projections suggest that the tariffs will impact American families to the tune of either between $2,500 and $4,000 per American household in additional costs. So $2,500 compared to this tiny, little tax benefit that everyday Americans will experience. Talk about salt in a wound. We are going to do a tax bill for the wealthiest when they don't need it, not do much for everyday people who do need it but put on the shoulders of those same people tariffs that are going to increase the cost of goods. Imagine coming out of COVID and other things and having this kind of burden put on your shoulders. There is a better path. Let me give you an example. Democrats are going to work with Republicans to do tax reform that will be fair. Just last year, we saw bipartisan negotiations in the House and how those negotiations can lead to more balanced, more smart, better for the deficit, bipartisan priorities. Our colleague Senator Wyden was able to reach a deal with House Chair Jason Smith on a bipartisan tax package that would have lifted children out of poverty--the child tax credit--that would have incentivized investment into research and development, good for companies who then innovate, and that is good for jobs. And also the third piece of this tax bill that was bipartisan would have expanded our ability to build affordable housing. And it was fully paid for. This bill got 357 votes in the House. We can't get that for a Mother's Day resolution in the House of Representatives. But then it died here in the Senate because Republicans didn't want to take the bill up because they wanted to wait to do a bill that would benefit the wealthiest. I urge my colleagues: You made a mistake before in 2017 by going down a path that busted the deficit and made the American voters really mad. Don't go down that path again. Work with us to find a tax bill that will appropriately prioritize the needs of everyday American citizens and small businesses. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. I would yield for a question from my colleague from New Jersey.