Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I will let the Senator explain the reasons for the motion he is making, and afterward, I will comment on the reasons for my objection.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, thank you. I appreciate the Senator's remarks. I look forward to getting to know him as a new colleague. But let me explain to the Senator why I am objecting. I abhor attacks on police officers--all police officers--and no matter the motive. But that is not the position of Republicans in the Senate. On the day that President Trump was sworn into office, he pardoned scores of violent felons who beat police officers, and my Republican colleagues--almost to a Member--cheered him on and supported him. Donald Trump pardoned David Dempsey who, on January 6, beat Capitol and DC Police officers with his hands, feet, flagpole, crutches, broken pieces of furniture--anything else that he could find that could be used as a weapon. He teamed up with another rioter who pulled back one police officer's gas mask while Dempsey sprayed pepper spray in his eyes. He hit another police officer over the head with a metal crutch, with so much force that it cracked the protective shield of the officer's gas mask, causing him to collapse as his ears started ringing. Donald Trump also pardoned D.J. Rodriguez. On January 6, Rodriguez pushed through the crowds, found a police officer and put a Taser to his head. When the police officer screamed out in pain and recoiled from the shock, Rodriguez attacked him again, Tasering him this time in the neck. The officer was done. He collapsed unconscious. Another officer pulled his lifeless body to safety. That attack ended that officer's career. Thomas Webster was pardoned by Donald Trump too. Webster attacked police officers with a flagpole. He tackled one officer to the ground, dragged him by the helmet, ripped off his gas mask to allow tear gas to seep inside, and held the officer down so other rioters could brutally kick him. I oppose all violence against all police officers. So I don't understand why there seems to be an exemption for the violence that was perpetrated against the officers who protect us. Your bill proposes a new mandatory minimum for assaults against police officers that you are not applying to the officers who beat the people who protect us. They were let out of jail free--D.J. Rodriguez, David Dempsey, Thomas Webster. Republicans cheered as they were let out of jail before their sentence was completed. So if we are serious about protecting the police officers, we need to protect all police officers. If police officers are protecting Democrats--because that is who those rioters were here to kill or here to hurt--then those assaults should matter. If Donald Trump says the assault is OK, that shouldn't matter. Yes, I have stood by the side of the families of slain or injured police officers. But think about the families of those officers who were brutally beaten here at the Capitol. Think about the officer who was dragged unconscious from the site. His attacker was let out of jail--no mandatory minimum. Politics shouldn't have anything to do with our collective decision to stand up against attacks on police officers. So I offer this objection because I just don't feel like this bill is on the level until we have agreement in this Chamber that President Trump doesn't get to decide which attacks on police officers we care about and which ones we don't. We shouldn't pass this bill until Republicans make it clear that they oppose all attacks on police, no exceptions--no exceptions, no exemptions. Republicans need to loudly oppose President Trump's pardons because if you don't, you are sending a message that if you are carrying out attacks on police officers in the name of President Trump's political agenda or you are carrying out attacks on police officers who are defending Democrats, those attacks might end up being pardoned or excused. And our Nation just fades away. What makes our Nation great fades away if violence is OK if it is in service of a particular political agenda or if the attacks are in service of the President. So I do take attacks against our police officers seriously, but I don't think we should move forward legislation that implicitly has exemptions in it. So let's get on the same page. Let's come to a collective decision as a body that we care about all violence against police officers. Let's hear every Member of this body condemn President Trump's pardons. Let's come to the conclusion that politics should never play a role in enforcing our laws against police violence. I look forward to working with the Senator on that endeavor, and if we can come to that conclusion jointly as a body, then I look forward to working with him on this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, you are right. The Senator from Ohio was not here on January 6, and your political affiliation mattered that day. It mattered that day. Those rioters were here to harm not allies of President Trump but opponents of President Trump. They had the gallows outside with Mike Pence's name on it. They were searching the halls of the Capitol for people who opposed Donald Trump's agenda. So I agree with you that it would be wonderful and lovely to remove this debate from politics, but on that day--on that day--there were bad people here, seeking to do violence based upon the political affiliations of people in this building; and the reason that they were pardoned was that President Trump supported the violence so long as it was in his name. So, yes, it does matter what happened not just on that day but when Trump issued the pardons because it provides this message of endorsement to violence so long as it is violence that Donald Trump supports. That puts officers in jeopardy all over the country if the potential perpetrators of violence against police officers have an idea in their heads that, if they are doing it in support of Donald Trump, they have a pretty good chance to get away with it. I don't think anyone who assaults a police officer should get out of jail early. So let me put the question to you. Maybe we can find common ground right now. I recited to you the violence that was perpetrated on police officers here by three specific rioters. Do you support Donald Trump's decision to let those three individuals out of jail early? I think it would be important for you as a Republican Member to say that you oppose Donald Trump's decision to let those perpetrators out of jail early, and we could have common cause today in that we both oppose all early releases of individuals who attack police officers. So do you agree with me that it was wrong to release those three individuals early from prison?

Mr. MURPHY. I understand he has that power. Regardless of whether he has that power, do you agree with his decision?

Mr. MURPHY. Let's have common cause right now.

Mr. MURPHY. Let's decide it was not OK for Donald Trump to let the people who brutally beat police officers out of jail early. Let's find common cause right now. That would be in service of preventing violence against police officers in the future because we could make it clear-- you and I could make it clear right now--that it doesn't matter whether you are committing violence in the name of Donald Trump or not. It is wrong if you commit violence against police officers. Why can't you just agree with that?

Mr. MURPHY. Just say yes.

Mr. MURPHY. I apologize.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I understand the Senator is new. I will remind him you are not allowed to impugn the motives of Members of the Senate. Listen, I think it is unfortunate that you cannot and other Republicans cannot say that the individuals who beat the living hell out of the police officers who protect us should not have gotten out of jail free. I don't think that is a separate issue from the broader concern about protecting police officers from violence because I think what you have done in endorsing violence, as long as it is perpetrated in the name of a political agenda, is to make every police officer in this country less safe and to make all of us less safe as well. So I think, if we want to come together around an agenda to protect members of law enforcement, then, yes, it is very important--it is very important--for the future protection of the law enforcement officers, the police officers who protect us, to hear loudly from Republicans that there is no exception--no exception--to the premise that you will serve a long prison sentence if you commit an assault on a police officer. So I look forward to continuing this dialogue with my colleague. I admit that we do not know each other. Maybe we can find common ground here, but this is not a small issue. The normalization of political violence in this country could be the defining issue of the next decade, and I think that my Republican colleagues will rue the day that they looked the other way when Donald Trump said that it was OK to beat police officers over the head with flag poles, to Taser them to the point that they were unconscious just because you were serving President Trump's political agenda. That is not a side issue. That is not a fringe issue. That issue of endorsement of political violence may be central to the question of whether this democracy survives. I know we have a pending vote and our colleagues are eager to get home, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with my colleague.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, usually, public corruption happens in secret. The politicians that do it know it is wrong to accept money in exchange for favorable government treatment, and so they hide it until they are found out. A textbook example would be Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, who in the 1990s was quietly taking bribes from businessmen who wanted to get licenses for riverboat casinos. In the late 1990s, Edwards was convicted of the crimes of extortion, racketeering, and money laundering. The way in which he was doing it was like out of a movie. In one instance, a businessman handed the Governor a suitcase full of $100 bills, totaling $400,000--all in order to get a 6-to-0 commission ruling in favor of his casino. Eventually, as with most all corrupt officials who are taking money privately, Edwards was discovered, he was disgraced, and he went to jail. As we speak, our President Donald Trump is going to the Middle East on a public corruption tour. He is no less corrupt than Edwin Edwards of Louisiana. In fact, he is way more corrupt. Edwin Edwards took $400,000. Well, in the Middle East, Donald Trump will cement deals totaling in the billions in exchange for favorable treatment by the U.S. Federal Government for these Gulf countries. The key difference is that Donald Trump isn't hiding it like other corrupt officials are. He is not ashamed. He is not doing it in secret. His corruption is wildly public, and his hope is that by doing it publicly, he can con the American people into thinking that it is not corruption because he is not hiding it. But what he is doing, in reality, is no different than any other corrupt public official who does it in private other than the fact that Trump's corruption, his foreign policy corruption, is just so much bigger in scope and the impact it has on the American people than anything a corrupt mayor or a corrupt Governor may have done. Trump's first major foreign trip--and he just landed--is to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE--not because these are our most important allies in the world, not because these are the most important countries in the world, not because he is going there to talk about making the Middle East more safe and more secure--no. His first trip is to these three countries because these are the three countries that have agreed to pay Donald Trump money. Donald Trump is going to collect tribute, and it is all just out in the open. Frankly, it was pretty easy to see this coming. Recent former Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have always very seriously and studiously avoided even the appearance of a conflict of interest. President Bush placed his assets into a qualified blind trust where investment decisions were made without his knowledge or input. Both Biden and Obama divested all of their assets except for cash and mutual funds. They didn't enter into any new business ventures while in the White House. In contrast, Trump has refused to abide by these standard ethics rules. His family runs his business, but nobody honestly believes that the kids are really in charge. President Trump is still calling the shots. His interests are not in a blind trust. He has made no pledge that he won't do new deals, even with foreign entities, while he is in office. In fact, he is doing deals seemingly every single week. He is open for business, and every foreign government knows it. In fact, it appears that right now, the Gulf States are trying to outdo each other to up the price of buying an American President. And because Trump is greedy and he is insecure, he wants to fit in with the billionaire class, he is traveling the region with his hat out for further solicitations. So let's ask: What is the going rate right now for a Gulf country to buy access to Donald Trump, to get favorable treatment from the Federal Government? For Qatar, we recently found out it is a $400 million luxury plane. This plane has been opulently configured for royal use. It is not a gift to the U.S. Government; it is a personal gift to the President. The terms of the arrangement apparently include a stipulation that after Trump leaves office, it will be transferred to Trump, to his Presidential library, which means Trump gets the so-called floating palace for himself. This is outrageous. We have never seen anything like this before in American history--a foreign government gifting a $400 million luxury plane to the President of the United States. This is spelled out as blatantly unconstitutional by our Founding Fathers. They wrote into the Constitution a specific clause called the emoluments clause, which prohibits Federal officeholders from accepting gifts from any King, Prince, or foreign state without the consent of Congress. Like, how much clearer could it be? It is unconstitutional. It is illegal. The Founding Fathers knew it was evil to have Members of Congress or the President of the United States accepting expensive gifts from a foreign nation that, in exchange, wants favors from the U.S. Government. Donald Trump's acceptance of the luxury plane from a foreign monarch is basically the corruption that our Founding Fathers were seeking to prevent. But that is not all he is getting from Qatar. The Trump Organization recently signed a $5.5 billion golf course and real estate deal with DarGlobal and Qatari Diar, a firm established by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund--$5.5 billion while Trump is in office. It would have been unthinkable for any previous President to enter into a $5.5 billion business deal with anybody--never mind a foreign government--while they are in office, and it still should be unthinkable. Now, Qatar is a U.S. ally. It is a very important ally. But they are a complicated country. They have their own interests, some of which don't overlap with ours. A foreign government like Qatar should not have a $5 billion chit hanging over the head of a sitting U.S. President, and they should not be gifting him a $400 million plane. That should kind of go without saying. For Saudi Arabia, the price is also in the billions. Soon after leaving the White House in Trump's first term, his son-in-law Jared Kushner created a private equity firm and got a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. The board of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund questioned whether this was smart, to invest that much money in a totally unproven fund, but the Saudi Crown Prince himself overruled the board, undoubtedly seeing the political advantage of investing directly with the Trump family. But this was only the beginning. The Trump family has put things into overdrive during the second term. Within his first 3 weeks of office, Trump convened a meeting at the White House with the head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund--not to discuss matters of state, but to negotiate a deal between the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour. Do you want to know why? To try to bring PGA tournaments back to Trump golf courses. Trump convened a meeting in the White House with the Saudis in order to enrich himself. In addition to the $5 billion Qatar real estate deal, the Trump organization is also partnering with a Saudi firm on a $1 billion Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai. The property's website--this is, like, unbelievable. The property's website--this is a Trump- financed property, along with a Saudi investment fund--offers free 10- year ``golden visas'' to the United States, hinting at the opportunity for investors in Trump's property to buy residency in the United States and a pathway to citizenship. For the UAE, the price is somewhere north of $2 billion. Last week, Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial cofounder Zach Witkoff spoke at a conference in Dubai on crypto called TOKEN2049. As an aside here, it is just so fantastic and bone-chilling how transparent these guys are in their use of public positions to enrich themselves. I am going to tell the story of Trump's stablecoin and the corruption with the Emirates. Let's just pause for a second and consider the fact that the Trump family could have partnered with anybody in the world on their new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. But of all the people in the world to partner with on this new crypto venture, they chose the son of Trump's Middle East envoy--Trump's Middle East envoy, the guy who is making all decisions on U.S. policy in the Middle East-- just to make it crystal clear to the Gulf countries that when they deal with World Liberty Financial, Trump's crypto venture, that they are dealing directly with the people responsible for making the U.S. policy in the Middle East. It is just stunning. Literally, the sons of the President and the sons of the Middle East envoy are running a crypto venture and then going directly into the Middle East in order to find their first investment. And guess what? Miracle--they found it. MGX, an investment firm backed by the Emirati Government, at this conference announced that they had looked at all the crypto companies in the world that they could partner with to invest $2 billion in the crypto exchange finance, and they selected--wait for it, drum roll--the company run by the sons of the President of the United States and the U.S. Middle East envoy--$2 billion. World Liberty's role in this transaction is not that complicated. It is kind of similar to a bank. MGX, this Emirati firm, deposits $2 billion with the firm and, in return, receives the stablecoin to be used on these crypto exchanges. The firm holds onto these dollars, invests them, and keeps the profits for themselves. So the Trump- Witkoff company just gets, basically, a gift of capital. And if they just use that $2 billion to invest in Treasury bonds, it would profit around $85 million a year from these investments alone. And the money goes directly to Trump--just directly to Trump. It is literally not complicated--Emirates, World Liberty Financial, Donald Trump. This isn't 1990s Louisiana. Nobody is hiding it. On World Liberty's website, they say an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump owns 60 percent of the equity in the company. Because of this deal, Trump and Witkoff can further capitalize because Trump's stablecoin just became the fifth most valuable stablecoin in the world because of the Emirati investment. If the plane and the real estate deals and the private equity fund investment and the stablecoin weren't enough for you, Trump has found one last way for Gulf money to flow seamlessly into his pocket. It is called the Trump meme coin. What is the business model here? Trump gets a huge payment whenever he releases a batch of these meme coins, which, by the way, have no underlying value other than just the demands people have for Trump's coin. And each time a Trump coin is bought or sold, a small fee is routed directly to the company owned by Trump. According to one analysis, nearly $325 million in fees have been accrued since the coin was launched in January. In just 3 months, 4 months, 4\1/2\ half months--$325 million worth of fees. Trump hides the buyers of the coin. In this way, the meme coin is kind of a little like the Louisiana corruption. But we know that the majority of the buyers aren't Americans who want to help Trump make this Nation great again. The majority of the buyers of Trump coin are superrich foreigners--princes, oligarchs, authoritarians--who are buying the coin in order to get in good with Trump or to get something in exchange. One great thing about buying the coin is that you get access to Trump in the White House. Again, they are not hiding this. Two weeks ago, Trump announced he would host a private dinner at the White House with seats reserved exclusively for the top 220 Trump coin holders. In 2 days since the announcement, Trump's company made $900,000 in fees because everybody--mostly foreigners, many of them probably in the Gulf--were buying up the coin as quickly as they could in order to get one of these seats. If a mayor of a small town was selling meetings at city hall for $1,000, he would be run out of town on a rail. But that is exactly what Donald Trump is doing in the Middle East and all over the world as foreign buyers line up to buy the meme coin, guaranteed private access to Donald Trump at the White House. You cannot make this up. The obvious question for the average American is, OK, what does this mean for me? Like, somebody living in New Britain, CT, might think it is kind of gross that Trump is lining his pockets as President, but they want to know, how does this actually affect me? Well, the most simple way to think about this is, if the guy you elected to protect us and make our lives better is spending most of his time alternating between playing golf and cutting deals for himself, he is not protecting you. He is not spending any time trying to lower costs or defeat our enemies. Corruption can be a full-time job for Donald Trump, and that is a pretty lousy deal for the American people. More importantly, when our foreign policy is for sale, we are less safe. Let me give you an example relative to the trip that Donald Trump is on right now. These countries aren't padding Donald Trump's pockets because they like him. They are paying him in order to get things from the Federal Government--from the U.S. Government--without having to make any actual policy concessions that would benefit the U.S. people. Before anybody could begin to process the brazen corruption of the UAE-Trump-Witkoff crypto deal, reports very quickly emerged that the Trump administration was considering changing regulations to make it easier for the country of UAE to purchase highly advanced semiconductors from U.S. manufacturers. This was a huge priority of the Emirates. But the restrictions are on the UAE for a reason. The UAE has a very troubling and very close security relationship with China. And so the reason why we didn't allow U.S. companies to sell semiconductors directly to the UAE is because we believe it would very easily become a conduit to China getting their hands on these advanced semiconductors and being able to leapfrog the United States in the business of advanced AI. But all of a sudden, once the cash payment to Trump through the crypto venture was announced, Trump signaled he was willing to throw our security concerns out the window and transfer this sensitive technology to the UAE, even though it is likely China will get their hands on this technology, allowing China to put themselves in a position to leapfrog us in the race for advanced AI. That would be a disaster for the American people. But that is what is happening. We might hand AI leadership to China because that is the price of Trump getting paid. As long as he gets paid, he doesn't seem to care about the impact on regular Americans. The White House is open for business and the Trump family is proudly advertising to the world where to send the check. They aren't trying to hide it--a $400 million luxury plane gifted to the President of the United States right as he is going over to negotiate potentially sensitive security arrangements with the Gulf countries. Every American, every Republican, every supposed national security advocate in the Senate should be outraged by this. We could look the other way, or we could show together, Republicans and Democrats, to stand up for this country and do something about it. I have joined with Senators Schatz and Coons and Booker to introduce a resolution condemning the acceptance of the plane. It is a blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause. We could stand together as a Senate to vote for that resolution. I introduced legislation to make it illegal for Presidents or Members of Congress and their family members to profit off crypto coins while they hold Federal office. We could join together in that effort. I will personally seek to block any arms sale that is announced as part of this trip with a country that is personally investing in Donald Trump and his family. I will force a full Senate debate and a vote on these sales. Foreign leaders need to know that there will be a price for participating in the corruption of the American Presidency. This level of corruption is so gross that even Trump's most hardened MAGA sycophants are turning against him. I didn't think I would see the day, but people like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer who fawn over Trump, can't believe he is so crass as to think it is OK to accept planes as a gift in exchange for U.S. national security concessions. This isn't ``America First.'' This is not what he promised the American people. This is Trump first. He is willing to put our Nation's security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold-plated luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments--all while at the same time he tells Americans they should be OK buying fewer school supplies for their kids or fewer birthday presents for their grandchildren because he is driving prices up for nonbillionaires in this country--all while at the same time he is kicking 13 million people off of their healthcare. Trump lines his pockets, he corrupts our foreign policy to enrich himself, while driving up prices and stealing healthcare from average Americans. It is a national security disaster, and it is a moral abomination. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I want to come to the floor today to talk about a success story but, potentially, a success story interrupted. Back in 2022, we all were shocked to watch news playing out during an afternoon that we were here, working in the Senate, of another mass shooting--this one of just unthinkable size and scope--in Uvalde, TX. I was actually sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair when I saw word of the shooting scroll across my smartphone screen. Gratefully, in the wake of that shooting, a group of us--Republicans and Democrats--were able to come together and set aside the differences that we had and still have on the issue of gun violence in this country. We decided not to argue about an assault weapons ban, for instance. Instead, we decided to work on finding the least common denominator, as we called it, and tried to find a set of commonsense changes to our gun laws and commonsense investments in our communities that would, hopefully, together, try to put a downward pressure on what, up until then, had been annual spiking rates of homicides and mass shootings. It is just true that, in this country, you are 10 times more likely to be shot in your school, in your neighborhood, at a movie theater than you are in any other high-income, developed nation. That is a choice. That is not bad luck. That is not happenstance. That is because, in America, we decide to have a ton of weapons in the hands of very dangerous people. We also don't spend enough time trying to unwind some of the reasons young people, in particular, get into lives of really risky and potentially violent behavior. So we came together in 2022, and we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It was a big bipartisan vote. It wasn't close. The final tally was 65 to 33, with nearly two-thirds of the Senate voting in favor of this commonsense gun safety measure. It wasn't anything close to what I see as being necessary in order to tackle this epidemic in this country, but it was significant. It was five changes in gun laws: supporting State red flag laws; stopping domestic abusers from getting their hands on guns; putting in a short but meaningful waiting period when young people are hastily buying an assault weapon; making it easier for law enforcement to go after drug trafficking rings. It was five meaningful changes, but it was also a big investment, a big investment in the kind of services that can help interrupt violence. A lot of my Republican friends said: You know, we don't believe it is the guns. We think it is mental illness. Well, I don't agree, but this is how you put together a compromise. So we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which included a landmark $14 billion investment, most of it in mental health, most of it directed toward kids' school-based mental health, but there were also significant investments in school safety--just hardening schools to make it harder for a shooter to get inside and community anti-gun violence initiatives, which is the work that local community groups are doing in North Carolina and Connecticut and all across the country to just try to wrap services around people who might be at risk of gun violence or to stop that cycle of violence once the first shooting happens. So we passed this legislation, and we crossed our fingers. We said: Let's hope that we are right and that these changes in gun laws and these investments we are making in our communities will make a difference. Well, what happened after we passed that law was absolutely stunning: the biggest 2-year decline in gun violence in the history of recorded statistics in the United States of America. That is extraordinary. That is extraordinary. I am not going to sit here and claim that the entire reason was the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but it was a big part of the reason because we did make it harder for bad people to get their hands on guns. We did deliver the kinds of services that are necessary. You are seeing this downward trajectory, but let me just put the numbers on it. In 2023, there were 659 mass shootings in America. In 2024, there were 500. That is a 24-percent, 1-year decline in mass shootings. That means that there were 160 mass shootings that didn't happen and 160 communities that were not terrorized in 2024. And this bill had a lot to do with it. Overall gun deaths went down from 2023 to 2024 from 19,000 to 16,700. That was a 12-percent reduction. We have never in this country's history seen 1-year declines in gun homicides in the neighborhood of 12 percent. Certain cities saw astronomical declines. In Hartford, we saw a 39-percent drop in homicides from 2023 to 2024. This year--this year, 2025--Hartford is on track to have the lowest recorded instances of gun violence--those are homicides and nonfatal shootings--since 2006. New Haven saw a 39-percent drop in homicides. As I think I said, overall, in Connecticut, we had 167 homicides in 2023. In 2024, we had 63. It is wild. This happened in Baltimore, and this happened in Chicago. In most of the major cities in this country and in rural areas as well, we saw this dramatic, dramatic decline. So it is just something to celebrate because it is not easy to get that kind of consensus. It is not easy to get that kind of consensus, and we should celebrate the fact that there are literally thousands of people--largely young men--who are alive today because of the bill that we passed. But this progress is in threat of being interrupted, and the reason is that the Trump administration has reversed course. I want to talk specifically about how they are undoing the progress of this bill, but their attempt to try to reverse the broader progress that we have made on reducing gun violence is pretty comprehensive. Let me just give you a handful of the ways in which the Trump administration is trying to make our communities less safe. First, they closed the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. This was something the Biden administration set up to try to better implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This wasn't a terribly political office. It was just trying to coordinate all the work being done across Agencies to reduce violence in our communities. Trump would have taken this office in a different direction, but he didn't. He just shuttered it. There is no Office of Gun Violence Prevention anymore in the Federal Government. On March 20, the administration announced that they are going to start a process of restoring firearms rights to individuals who have had them taken away because they had serious criminal records. This is likely illegal. There is an appropriations bill rider that says the ATF can't do this, but the message was sent: We actually think that dangerous people should be able to get their gun rights back. That same day, Trump's Department of Justice filed a motion in Federal court, trying to overturn a decision to say that silencers are not protected by the Second Amendment, trying to say that no State legislature could ban or regulate the use of silencers, and silencers are broadly used by killers, by criminals who are trying to hide the fact that they are engaged in criminal, lethal conduct. On April 7, the DOJ announced that it was repealing a policy from the Biden administration that said simply this: If you are a gun dealer and you are engaged in illegal conduct, we are going to pull your license, and we are not going to give you two or three or four shots. We are going to have a zero tolerance policy for gun dealers who are selling guns on to the black market. That is a policy most Americans would see as common sense, but the DOJ announced that it was going to let off the hook gun dealers who are violating the laws. Now, throughout the last 100 days, the Trump administration has been sending all sorts of signals that they are deprioritizing the work of the ATF. Most recently, on April 9, they announced that the Army Secretary would now be the acting head of ATF. This was basically telling ATF agents: We don't care about your work. We are not going to have a full-time ATF head. We are putting somebody with a big, other important job in charge of the ATF. You are not going to have any real supervision or direction. It was just a signal of the deprioritization of the enforcement of our gun laws that caused, the next day, the second highest ranking official at the ATF, who had served admirably for 35 years, to resign in protest. Then, maybe most unconscionably and most cruelly, just a few days ago, the ATF took down the memorial wall dedicated to victims of gun violence. I mean, there were names up there, tributes to moms and dads, brothers and sisters who had been killed in episodes of gun violence. That was really important to hundreds of families out there who knew that their loved ones' names were part of that wall. Now the wall comes down. For what? Just to send another signal that the administration doesn't care about attacking gun violence. But I really wanted to come to the floor today to talk about the two most important assaults that the Trump administration has made on our work to try to keep our communities safe. Those are the twin announcements that the administration made that they were going to end two of the key streams of funding for community groups in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. First, the administration announced it was ending $1 billion in grants under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to invest in school mental health and then that they were ending $800 million of DOJ grants to try to drive down violence through supporting community efforts to do that work. This makes no sense. I understand we have a difference. The President and I have a difference on what our gun laws should be. But there is consensus--I thought there was consensus--that we should support investment in mental health. I thought there was a consensus that we all believed that there were good community groups that were doing totally apolitical work, not related at all to gun laws, to try to interrupt cycles of violence. The reason that these numbers have been going down is not just the changes in gun laws. The reason that our communities are safer all across the country is that we are finally putting real money into school-based mental health, into children's mental health, and into the groups in our communities that are keeping kids alive. In Oakland, they have seen a stunning 32-percent drop in homicides, and it is a result of groups like Youth Alive!. This is a nonprofit that is working to prevent and disrupt the cycle of gun violence. So you go into a community, you go into a place where a shooting has happened, and you do work with the victim of that incident to make sure that it doesn't become a cycle of violence. These are often called hospital-based violence intervention programs. When there is a shooting, you have a social worker or a community anti- gun violence worker that goes to the hospital. That is often when the communities are the most angry, the friends of that victim may be planning for revenge, and you do the work to stop that cycle of violence. It was working in Oakland. Youth Alive! was preventing gun violence. Last year, of the 113 clients they served, only 1 of them was injured a second time. Yet, in the middle of a 3-year $2 million grant that Youth Alive! was getting, it was suspended, terminated. They are going to have to lay off their staff. That program is being shut down in Oakland. And I will just tell you, I would bet you homicides are going to start going back up in Oakland. Baltimore has seen a similar massive decline in gun violence, a 43- percent reduction since 2010--what a success story in Baltimore, one of the most violent communities in terms of rates of gun violence in the country, a 43-percent decline. Center for Hope is a group in Baltimore that provides prevention and healing services for children who have been the witnesses or victims of gun violence. They were getting, again, a $2 million grant to work with the victims of gun violence to try to heal those communities and, again, stop that cycle of retributive violence that often happens in places like Baltimore. Donald Trump cut their grant. So in the middle of the grant, they are losing $1.2 million, and they are going to have to lay off 7 employees. Center for Hope runs 6 of the city's 10 Safe Streets sites. These operate in the pockets of Baltimore where you see the most shootings. Because of these Center for Hope sites--these Safe Streets sites-- between 2023 and 2024, four of the sites run by the Center for Hope saw zero homicides. Now they are having to lay off people. Guess what is going to happen. Those shootings are going to go up again. We had to work really hard to find this consensus on a very difficult issue. It is illegal, what the President has done. He is not allowed, under the Constitution, to decide unilaterally to cancel spending that has been authorized and appropriated by Congress. So maybe the first and most important thing to say about what the President has done to cancel mental health grants and anti-violence grants is that it is illegal. He can't do it, and it is likely that a court will turn these grants back on. But it is also such bad policy. It is cruel and inhumane, but it is also illogical. We literally are seeing the fruits of the labor of these groups, and not just in saving a life or two. You are talking about a 30- and 40-percent reduction in violence in these cities. And what will happen is unmistakable. You stop funding these groups that are doing the mental health work in the schools, that are doing the anti-gun violence work, and these rates will start to go back up again. That is illogical, but it is cruel as well because what the President is doing, for instance, in cutting off the school mental health grants is that he is cutting off existing grants. It is not that he is announcing: I am not giving any new grants. There are schools all across this country that have set up new mental health clinics because of the grants they got. They were 5-year grants, and 1 or 2 or 3 years into those grants, Donald Trump is shutting those programs down. So there are literally going to be thousands of children--traumatized children, children with serious mental illness, with cycles and histories of abuse in their households--who have created this relationship with an adult--this adult who is helping them address their potential tendency to act out in violent ways due to their mental illness, their trauma. And one day, these kids are going to show up at school, and that adult is going to be gone. That trusted adult that had created that bond, that relationship that is helping that child, that is keeping that school safe--that relationship, that bond is destroyed because in cutting these grants off with no warning, there is no way, in the middle of a school year, for a school mental health clinic to find the money under the mattress. It is illogical. It is going to drive up gun violence rates. And it is cruel to our poorest and most at-risk communities and to the kids--and to the kids--the traumatized kids, the kids with serious mental illness, the kids that we should think first about when we wake up in the morning. I guess the final thing to say is this: We are putting ourselves out of business. We are putting ourselves out of business. What is the point of passing a law by a 65-to-33 vote if the President of the United States can just ignore it? As I said, that is illegal, and the courts will likely tell him: You can't shut off the funding that we appropriated and authorized. This should matter to Republicans and Democrats. Every single one of my Republican colleagues worked really hard to get this job, worked really hard to become a U.S. Senator. Those of us who worked on these bipartisan pieces of legislation worked really hard to pass them. What is the point of running for the U.S. Senate, what is the point of working to forge this compromise if the President can just ignore it? By the way, if Donald Trump gets away with it, mark my words, a Democratic President will do the same thing. If this becomes standard practice, if our laws just become advisory, then there is no reason for any of us to show up any longer. Why do you work so hard, why do you care so much about getting to this place if you don't care when the President just ignores the laws that we pass? It is very hard to find consensus here, especially on an issue as important and as politically sensitive as gun violence. So when we do find that consensus, on behalf of the kids and the families out there who are begging us to work together to save lives, we should protect that consensus. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, my colleagues, you are going to hear a lot of stories about the first 100 days of President Trump's second Presidency, and, indeed, there are a lot of stories. There is a story of incompetence. We are dealing with multiple measles outbreaks all across the country. There is a story about abdicating our responsibility to lead around the world. Vladimir Putin is laughing at us as Trump goes about the business of handing Ukraine to a brutal Kremlin dictator. There is a story of transferring wealth from the poor and the middle class, through massive cuts to Medicaid, to the very, very wealthy, who are asking for another massive tax cut. But I would argue that the most important story to tell is a story of corruption--a story of mind-blowing, massive, scalable corruption. That story is important because we are watching the theft of taxpayer money by the decision of the Republican Party to look the other way as Donald Trump essentially monetizes, at scale, the White House and the powers given to him by the Constitution and the American people in order to enrich himself and his friends. And if we don't tell this story and if we don't mount a national, bipartisan, apolitical resistance to this thievery, to this corruption, and it becomes normalized as just a part of doing business in America, a normal facet of residence in the White House, then shame on us because our democracy will not survive this level of corruption, grift, and graft. So I am going to try to tell the story really quickly. I have got two charts, and this is hard to read. These words are really small because, you know, over the course of 100 days, there are 40, 50, 60 different individual acts of precedent-breaking corruption. And that is intentional, because what President Trump is trying to do is engage in so much public corruption that you just become normalized to it, that you stop paying attention to the corruption because is it-- can it be--corruption if it is just playing out in public? He is trying to make you think that this stuff happens all the time behind the scenes, and, now, all that is different is that you are seeing it publicly. But that is not true. This is not, actually, how government works, and I refuse to accept that, just because the corruption is happening in public, in front of the cameras for everybody to see, we should accept it. OK, I am going to try to do this: I am going to try to do this as quickly as possible. I am just going to highlight for you maybe the 40 most egregious examples of corruption in the first 100 days, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. So, on January 6--this is before Trump is even sworn in--Amazon, which has a ton of business before the incoming Trump White House, pays $40 million to the Trump family to license a documentary, a series, about Melania Trump--just a cash payment from a company that has huge interests before the incoming White House to the Trump family. On January 17, a few days before Trump is sworn in, maybe the most corrupt act in the history of the White House: This is the creation of the Trump meme coin. This is just a backdoor way for anybody with business before the Trump administration to send him millions of dollars in total secret. Trump doesn't disclose who buys the coin. He launders his income from the coin through an unregulated Chinese exchange. He promotes the coin on his social media feeds. In the first minute of trading, one buyer--and what we know is, this was likely a Chinese individual--purchases 6 million coins, sending the price through the roof and immediately making a ton of money for Trump, who makes money off of every transaction. Trump knows who this person is, no doubt, but American citizens do not. All right, on January 20, he is now sworn in, and he fulfills a campaign promise to the oil and gas industry. There is a report from the campaign that said they came down to Mar-a-Lago, I think, and said: We will give you a billion dollars in campaign contributions. This is not me alleging this. This is an open report. The oil and gas industry says: We will give you a billion dollars in campaign contributions if you do what we want when you are sworn in. And the day he is sworn in, Trump issues an Executive order gutting environmental rules so that the oil and gas industry can start making bigger amounts of money. On January 25, Trump eliminates the inspectors general, the ethics officials in government, and whistleblower offices. It is a late-night purge; so you know it is fishy. On January 25, 17 inspectors general get fired, clearing the way for the President to engage in even more corruption--because that is what the inspectors general do: They sit in these Agencies, and they look for corruption. Now, the inspectors general are gone. They are just gone. But that is not good enough because, on the same day, Trump fires the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Why would you do that? Well, that Office is an investigative and prosecutorial Office that works to end government and political corruption and protects government employees who become whistleblowers. That office is gone now, along with all of the whistleblowers. Two days later, Trump illegally fires NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. This effectively shuts down--illegally--the NLRB for a period of time. Why is that important? Because the guys who are standing behind Donald Trump on Inauguration Day, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, are being investigated at the moment by the NLRB for massive workplace violations. Now the NLRB is shut down--a big gift to the people who financed Donald Trump's inauguration and stood behind him to give him political endorsement and cover on his Inauguration Day. On January 31, a trend begins. Enforcement actions are paused against Trump loyalists. This is Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee. He was being investigated for illegal or potentially illegal loans made to his 2022 campaign. But right after Representative Ogles introduces a bill to amend the Constitution to allow Trump to serve for a third term, what happens? Trump makes the investigation go away. As you will see, Trump's justice system will often look the other way if you cheat or steal but you are a friend of Donald Trump's. At the same time, another of Trump's friends, his IRS nominee, Billy Long, gets his donors--almost all of them have direct interest before the IRS--to pay off his six-figure campaign debt. It is a fabulously corrupt thing to do, but it is just all normal now. So when Trump is showing you the way, then the folks who work for him follow suit. All right. We will jump to February now, February 4. We are into, what, week 2 of the Trump White House. Trump hauls the PGA and the Saudi Government into the White House to broker an agreement between the two rival golf leagues so that Trump can make more money hosting golf tournaments. He is in business with one of these entities, the Saudi-owned LIV league. In a normal world, the President of the United States wouldn't be in business with any foreign government, but the President is. And not only is that OK, but it is also apparently OK for him to bring the golf league that he is in business with into the White House and pressure the other golf league, the rival golf league, to cut a deal. And guess what happens? The PGA, which had long said they were not going to host events at Trump's courses, after being hauled into the White House, looking the President of the United States in the eye--somebody they clearly have to do business with--they announce that they are going to start allowing their tournaments to be held at Trump courses--big benefit to Donald Trump's personal bottom line. On February 6, 2 days later, Trump ends the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Do you know what this is? You should. It requires people who are being paid by foreign governments to register. It is no longer going to be enforced. So now members of the Trump administration can get backdoor payments from foreign governments, and nobody is going to enforce the law. This isn't theoretical. There were people who got arrested for doing this exact same thing--getting paid by foreign governments while working for the Trump administration in term one. He wants to make sure it is not a problem in term two, so he pauses enforcement of the actual act. Four days later, Trump eliminates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is just a magnificent present to all of his billionaire enablers because this is the Agency that stops big businesses--banks, other financial firms--from ripping off consumers, and now it is just shut down. The same day, DOJ drops charges against Eric Adams in a mind- blowingly public and brazen quid pro quo. Adams says he will pledge loyalty to Trump. He is going to support Trump's political priorities in New York City. Trump drops the corruption charges against Adams. Just like the Ogles case, the door is now wide open to engage in corruption or criminality as long as you support Donald Trump. The thing that makes this one so egregious is that Adams and the White House go on TV to announce the corrupt deal, and they don't hide it. They just say that Adams is now supporting Donald Trump, and we are now going to drop the charges against him. And everybody gets the message: There is a lot of stuff I can get away with as a corrupt official as long as I am in bed politically with Donald Trump. On the same day, February 10, DOJ pauses enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is the law that stops American companies from bribing foreign governments in order to get business. On February 10, Trump suspends enforcement of an antibribery statute, paving the way for his friends in corporate America to start bribing foreign governments again. Two days later, the State Department forecasts that they are going to dramatically upscale the amount of money that they are going to send to Tesla. This is the first time that Elon Musk shows up in this story. By February 12, Elon Musk is pretty well embedded in the White House, and, guess what, the State Department is now going to spend $400 million for armored Teslas--its largest expected contract in the upcoming year. On February 12, the same day, Musk infiltrates the Department of Labor and OSHA, giving him exclusive, secret access to labor law violation data against him and his competitors. It is unethical and corrupt, but this stuff is happening every single day. A few days later, on February 15 and 16, Musk now starts really testing the limits of what his boss will let him get away with. He fires a specific set of regulators at the FDA that are reviewing one of his medical products, Neuralink. The message is clear: You got to do right by my applications or you risk getting the ax too. Three days later, on February 19, Trump's new U.S. attorney for Washington, DC, Ed Martin, starts to use his government power to harass Trump's critics. He launches something called Operation Whirlwind, and he is pretty unapologetic about the fact that this is going to be an enforcement operation against anybody who just seeks to get in the way of DOGE. He doesn't say it is going after people who are acting illegally; he says anybody who tries to stop or protest or harass DOGE's work is now going to be the subject of Operation Whirlwind. He starts trolling critics of DOGE online. The U.S. attorney for DC is now just trolling DOGE critics online, obviously threatening criminal enforcement. See what is happening here? We are 30 days into the administration, and everybody in Trump's world, including the supposedly independent U.S. attorneys, are getting the message that it is now part of your job if you work for Trump to use your government powers to either enrich yourself or Trump or to help Trump politically. On February 21, 2 days later, the FCC drops a major investigation into a company called Robinhood. Why does this matter? You guessed it-- this firm donated $2 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Thirty days later, the SEC drops an investigation into that firm. Put a pin in that because you are going to hear stories like it over and over again. Throughout February, we watched the rich guys that are surrounding Trump come up with new ways to monetize their positions. Kash Patel is a perfect example. He is the nominee to head the FBI-- maybe the most important independent Bureau of the Federal Government-- and while he is going through that process, he is selling merchandise online, ranging from T-shirts to playing cards, with the proceeds supposedly going to whistleblowers' education and defamation cases. On February 26, news breaks that the FAA is considering giving a $2.4 billion contract to Elon Musk's Starlink. But it is not like a regular contract that is up for bid; it is a contract that was already awarded to one of Musk's competitors, Verizon, and word leaks that the White House is thinking of just ripping the contract away from Verizon because Verizon is not a political supporter of Donald Trump in the way that Elon Musk is, and just giving it to Elon Musk. Now, that doesn't happen as reported. The contract has not been canceled yet. But there are regular reports of the administration still relentlessly attacking Verizon in a clear attempt to try to undermine their contract. On February 27, the next day, Trump drops a lawsuit against Capital One. Why does this matter? Capitol One donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. It is now just kind of automatic--you donate a big amount of money to Trump's inauguration, and you can ask him for something. We are not done. That same day, the FCC drops a lawsuit against Coinbase. You have the story now. Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. They are now told that it is OK to keep cheating consumers. We are not done. On February 28, a day later, the DOJ announces that it would drop a complaint against SpaceX, Elon Musk's SpaceX, for labor discrimination. Elon is like: Wait a second. All of these other big donors to your inauguration are getting out of jail free. I want my get-out-of-jail- free card as well. He gets it from DOJ. We are now into March. On March 1, a report breaks--this is maybe second to Coinbase, the most stunning act of corruption--on March 1, word breaks that Trump is selling meetings at Mar-a-Lago. On at least one occasion, Trump has charged guests $1 million to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. According to the same report, business leaders can secure a one-on- one meeting with the President of the United States for a $5 million payment to Donald Trump. If you were mayor of a medium-sized town and it was reported that you were selling meetings for like $200, you would be arrested. You would be run out of town. But not Donald Trump. He is selling meetings for $5 million, according to this report, and because the corruption in this White House is daily and normal, he gets away with it. On March 2, Trump launches the crypto reserve fund. This is going to involve government-taxpayer dollars purchasing and holding a variety of digital assets in a strategic reserve fund--a move that definitely inflates and protects Trump's investment portfolio, by now, you understand, very heavily dependent on crypto assets. Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem because normally when somebody takes a high position like President or Governor or mayor, they divest from their own personal assets or they put it all in a blind fund. Trump does none of that. He is controlling his own assets and his family is controlling their own assets while he makes policy that benefits himself and his family financially. On March 3, a really curious thing: DOJ intervenes in an obscure but open-and-shut 2020 Colorado elections case. This is the case of Tina Peters, who tampered with voting machines on Trump's behalf in Mesa County, CO. She was convicted by a jury of her peers, open and shut, but because Peters is a MAGA loyalist, now DOJ, on March 3, says it is going to step in and review the case because there are concerns about how it was prosecuted. This is just President Trump again clearly shielding those that violated the law to help him from consequences. Same thing, different day--no, not even a different day. This is actually still March 3. Yuga Labs, a blockchain company, donated $100,000 to Trump's inauguration fund. They now get in line. They get what everybody else is getting. The SEC closes an ongoing investigation into the company. On March 4, DOGE lays off thousands of IRS employees. This is bad for a lot of reasons, but it certainly helps Trump's Mar-a-Lago friends because the IRS now cannot enforce the law against the big giant tax cheats in the ways that it could have when it had those personnel on the books. Mar-a-Lago is celebrating. On March 4, the same day, word breaks that the Commerce Department is considering changes to a very specific rural broadband program and who is eligible. Why? Because Elon Musk wants to dominate that program. Under the program's original rules, Starlink was kind of capped at $4.1 billion. This curious change now will allow Elon Musk's company Starlink to receive between $10 billion and $20 billion from the rural broadband program. This is like a broken record, but 6 days later, the CFPB, which is basically shut down but exists in name only, drops a lawsuit against Bank of America and J.P. Morgan. Bank of America donated $500,000 to the inauguration, and J.P. Morgan donated $1 million to the inauguration. On March 11, a day later, Trump and Musk hold this now very well- known advertisement for Tesla on the White House lawn. This is just taxpayer dollars used to support the personnel at the White House and the White House being used to sell cars for Elon Musk. And the message, again, is pretty simple here: If you are loyal to me and you pay any kind of price for your loyalty to me, I will use government resources to help get you out of trouble, even including free advertising. On March 19--we are 8 days later--the GEO Group donated $500,000 to Trump's inauguration fund. This is a private prison company. The NLRB drops its investigation into this company. I mean, it is really getting disgusting at this point. I mean, I don't know that there is anybody left that made a major donation to the inauguration fund that has not gotten their favor from Donald Trump. On March 24, the Treasury Department guts something called the Corporate Transparency Act. This is the regulation that requires businesses to reveal their true owners to the government. These new rules now make it easier for billionaires to hide money, to avoid taxes, to engage in corruption--less accountability for corporations. On March 25, a day later, the SEC reduces from $125 million to $50 million an existing fine. So this has already been litigated. This company, Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment company, has been fined. Trump comes in and reduces the fine from $125 million to $50 million. You know the story by now. These guys made a big investment in the inauguration. Most of these companies that got a ``get out of jail free'' or had their investigations terminated were giving $500,000 or $1 million. Ripple made sure they got it right. They made a $5 million donation to Trump's inaugural fund, and they got their fine reduced by $75 million. On March 28, Trump pardons the founder of Nikola autos, one of his campaign megadonors. Again, this is a pardon for one of his major campaign contributors. When asked about the pardon, Trump said: They say the thing they did was wrong, but he was one of the first people who supported me for President. He just tells you what he did. He said: Yes, they said what he did was wrong. He did something that was probably pretty wrong, but he supported me for President. So I am giving him a pardon. I am not saying there hasn't been a lot of really bad stuff that has happened in the pardon program under Democratic and Republican Presidents, but let's just name it what Donald Trump named it. April 8--we are into April. Trump issues an Executive order to expand coal mining, part of his downpayment on the promise he made to those oil executives. Shares of the company owned by Joseph Craft, the billionaire coal magnate who helped lead those Trump fundraising efforts during the Presidential campaign, immediately shoot up. On April 9, this really curious timeline of events plays out, which Trump posts on his social media:

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I was sitting with the CEO of one of America's biggest and most influential companies last month, and I asked him a simple question: What could President Trump do that would be a bridge too far for you? What attack on democracy or the rule of law could Trump make that would cause you to speak up? His answer was pretty simple, and it was pretty confident. He said: If Trump were to ignore a Supreme Court ruling, that would cross the line. He was reflecting a familiar theme: that until President Trump thumbs his nose definitively at a Court ruling, then his attacks on democracy are troubling but not lethal. It is normal politics up until that dramatic confrontation between the executive branch and the judicial branch, for which the Constitution, as we know, really has no prescribed remedy. For many Americans, they may breathe a sigh of relief that America's most influential private sector leaders would rise up to defend democracy; that if this confrontation that we worry about would come to pass, combined with a massive public mobilization, we could be saved. But I didn't breathe a sigh of relief. It was the opposite. I am deeply worried that we have really spent little time studying the paths that democracies take when they collapse. Most of the time, there is not a singular moment when the Executive dramatically seizes power. There is not normally a brazen attempt to burn down the Parliament building. No, instead, democracies die when gradually, often quietly and methodically, over time, the structures that hold the Executive accountable for corruption, for thievery, for wrongdoing are dismantled--dismantled so that citizens can no longer hold the Executive accountable; dismantled so that the political opposition never has enough room to maneuver meaningfully. There are still elections. The Executive doesn't try to stuff the ballot box. Occasionally, at lower levels, the opposition still wins. But what happens is that those structures of accountability are either so degraded or so completely co-opted by the regime that the truth is just buried, and the political opposition loses the basic tools that it needs to win. In every democracy that stops being a democracy, then, there is a familiar story. There are four institutions that the regime attacks and that it attacks relentlessly until those structures of accountability are so disintegrated that, even though elections continue to happen, the same party or the same person wins power election after election. Those four institutions are the press, the legal profession, universities, and the business community. If you degrade or co-opt these four institutions, you never need to have a high-stakes fight with the top court in your country. You don't need to burn the Reichstag down. You can still have elections, but only one party will win. So that is why this CEO's assurance, frankly, sent a chill down my spine--because our democracy isn't at risk of dying; it is dying. As we speak, we are watching it die. It is not too late to save it. Let me say that again. It is not too late to save our democracy. But we can't continue to close our eyes and think that our democracy can survive a coordinated assault on those four key institutions of accountability. Democrats and Republicans need to see what is happening before our eyes, rise up, and defend the independence of journalists, of lawyers, of universities, and of the private sector. So I want to spend a minute or two to walk you through what President Trump is doing and how it, frankly, chillingly, mirrors the tactics that other leaders have used to transition real democracy into pretend, fake democracy. It always starts with journalists, from Hungary to Belarus, to Venezuela--countries that have elections but elections where one party just keeps on winning. These are places where journalists are subject to a nonstop harassment campaign from the regime, such that people just stop doing journalism or journalists stop telling the full truth. Last month, for instance, Turkish President Erdogan locked up 11 journalists simply because they were covering protests against Erdogan's jailing of the top opposition leaders. Now, Trump has not started jailing journalists, but the pace of harassment in the first 60 days of his second term is alarming. He has denied access to government buildings, including the White House, to journalists who don't use preapproved language from the White House. He is preferencing credentials to partisan journalists who simply parrot his party line. His FCC has begun to deliberately harass media companies that are owned by political opponents of the President. But Trump's campaign to destroy independent journalism has a darker and more menacing side because Trump isn't just trying to intimidate journalists so that they will be afraid to tell the truth; he is also trying to destroy the concept of truth itself. Again, this is a key facet of leaders who are elected who are trying to transition democracies away and into something very different. How do you destroy truth? Well, that is why the Secretary of Defense looks into the camera and tells the American public that the text messages that everybody read, filled with classified information and war plans, did not include classified information and war plans. The White House wants you to believe that one plus one does not equal two any longer; that you should doubt even the clear things that you see with your eyes; that nothing is real; that nothing is true; that if you are a supporter of the regime and I tell you once plus one equals three, then one plus one equals three. Those weren't war plans. Those weren't classified items. That is also why the official position of the White House on key issues like tariffs changes every hour, because if the ground truth just changes constantly, then there is no truth at all. Journalists are made to look foolish by reporting a true thing at 9 a.m. that becomes untrue at 10 a.m. Journalism loses its credibility when the facts being distributed by the White House change all the time. Trump says the tariffs are permanent. Journalists report that the President says the tariffs are permanent. An hour later, Trump says: I never said they are permanent. They are not permanent. I am cutting deals. They write that he is cutting deals. An hour later, they are suspended--no more tariffs. When the truth changes constantly, it is hard to believe that there is anything true any longer. Second, universities are always--always--a target of would-be autocrats. Again, in Turkiye, the government has terminated thousands of professors just because they criticized the government. In Hungary, one of the nation's most prestigious universities was forced to move out of the country because President Orban attacked it so ceaselessly for fomenting protests against his government. Universities, over the long history of democracy, have been the place where protests--especially youth protests--begin. They are a thorn in the side of leadership. The famous Tiananmen Square protests in China were, of course, started by university students. So it is no surprise that if you want to crush democracy, you need to crush the independence of universities. That is why Trump's decision to target universities that permit criticism of President Trump is so bone-chilling. He pretends like he is standing up to anti-Semitism on campuses, but what he is really trying to do is make clear that protests against his policies on campuses will result in Federal funding being cut off. Columbia University was forced to agree to a stunning list of free speech concessions in order to gain assurances from President Trump that their Federal funding would continue. They had to agree to allow campus police to arrest protesters. They had to essentially agree to receivership, Federal receivership, over an academic department that houses professors who are critical of Trump and his policies. Effectively, the President of the United States got to pick the person who will oversee the Columbia Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies. That is extraordinary. That is not what happens in a healthy democracy--the leader of the country micromanaging academic departments at major universities to ensure that academic work aligns with the regime. Now, having successfully forced Columbia to bend the knee and quell dissent on their campus, Trump is targeting other universities. Some of them will sign similar agreements giving President Trump power over those campuses. But, frankly, all Trump has to do is make an example of a handful of universities, and others will simply comply and obey in advance. Why? As an academic president, when you have Federal dollars that employ people at your university, would you permit a major protest against a Trump policy if you know that is going to jeopardize Federal funds? Maybe you allow it because you don't want to brazenly stand in the way of free speech, but you just make sure that it is not too big a protest or it is not too critical. You police speech to be on the right side of the regime. That is what happens in all of these fake democracies, and that is what is happening here. But controlling speech on campuses is not enough. Controlling and intimidating journalists is not enough. You have to go after the lawyers too. Now, maybe there is not a lot of love for lawyers in this country, but lawyers are the ones who bring the lawsuits to stop the thievery and the illegality. Lawyers are compelled by their oath to stand up for the Constitution. Putin arrested Navalny's lawyers right on the eve of Navalny's trial. In Venezuela, Maduro routinely harasses and detains lawyers--human rights lawyers--because he knows those are the ones who will hold him accountable. In Tunisia, the regime stormed the offices of the bar administration to intimidate the legal profession into silence. Here in America, Trump is engaged in a shameless campaign of extortion against any major law firm that has taken a position against Trump or Trump's interests. What he is doing is extraordinary, and it is mind-blowing to me that it is just being ignored by my Republican colleagues. He is going firm by firm--and not to every firm, just to the firms that have represented Democrats or brought cases against him--and he is telling them that if they don't fall in line and stop doing work to oppose him, their clients will lose access to Federal work. That is extortion. This body, Republicans and Democrats, should stand up against it. But it is working. Several law firms have signed deals with Trump that obligate them to support--guess what--causes aligned with Donald Trump. Paul Weiss was targeted by an Executive order and struck a deal. But so did Skadden. They struck a deal with Trump before they had even been targeted. Already, collectively, these firms have pledged--think about this--about a quarter of a billion dollars of pro bono work to file cases in coordination with the President of the United States' political interests. Just like what happened with the universities, there is a lot of extra compliance that is happening. I know for a fact that firms that have already signed these agreements with Trump have gone above and beyond the terms of the agreements to quiet their criticism of the government. No doubt, every single major law firm will think twice before bringing an action against an illegal or corrupt action of the President in fear of Trump retaliating against their business. That is the point. The point is to try to crush dissent. The point is to try to stand in the way of anybody who is going to hold Trump accountable by using the power--the official power granted to him by the people of the United States--to try to signal retaliation against anyone who dares oppose him. But collective action can be a powerful tool. Together, the collective might of our universities and our law firms is significant. So they could choose to band together and decide to sign no agreements with Trump, to refuse to let the President of the United States dictate the terms of their speech, their business, their defense of the rule of law. I don't want to make the victim the perpetrator. This is all Trump's fault, what he is doing to extort political loyalty from universities and law firms. But instead of there being collective action on behalf of these industries, the opposite is happening. In the legal profession, when Paul Weiss was being targeted, the other big firms didn't rise to their defense; they started making calls to Paul Weiss clients and lawyers, using Trump's assault as a means to poach business or partners. That is shameful, acting like ravenous vultures, putting your profits first instead of your country's interests or the interests of the legal profession, which pledges before a court to stand up for the rule of law. Instead, these big firms are aiding and abetting the destruction of the rule of law by doing Trump's work for him, making targeted firms even more vulnerable by working behind the scenes to strip them bare for parts. There are good, patriotic lawyers at many of these high-priced firms who know that this is wrong and they should speak up. Some of them already have. Now, finally, Trump is coming for the rest of the private sector. Listen, I have no idea what the Trump tariff policy is. The constantly shifting positions of the last week are an embarrassment. It is complete incompetent malpractice. It has jeopardized jobs and retirement savings and college funds all across this country. But the tariffs are complicated and convoluted and hard to understand, likely because they aren't actually economic or trade policy; they are a political tool--this one designed to force every major company to come before Trump to plead for tariff relief in exchange for giving Trump the company's political loyalty--no different than what is happening in the legal profession or in America's universities. A tariff can be written very easily to favor one industry over another or one company over another, and the confusing nature of the tariff regime is a means for Trump to require every major company in the country to come on bended knee to him to get the relief they need. And that loyalty pledge could be anything--the purchase of some Trump crypto coin, public support for Trump's economic policies, donations to his political campaign. But having watched what Trump has done one by one to universities and law firms, why would we assume the tariffs aren't just simply a tool to do the same thing to big companies? What I am trying to say here is that you don't need a battle royal between the President and the Supreme Court for democracy to die. If journalists are constantly looking over their shoulders and unable to report on the truth; if protest is suppressed, even moderately, at universities; if lawyers start giving cover instead of uncovering corruption and illegality in the regime; if companies start being mouthpieces for the regime as a price of doing business--if all that happens, then we are not a real democracy anymore; we are a fake democracy. Elections still happen, like in Turkiye, like in Hungary, like in Venezuela, but the rules are going to be tilted, and dissent will be suppressed so much that the same side--Trump's side--wins over and over and over. This should matter not just to Democrats, not just to members of the minority party; this should matter to Republicans as well. We swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and it is time for us to see the game that is being played. The good news is that the rules have not been fully rigged yet. There is still time--not loads of it, but there is still time for this body to set a tone that causes the kind of massive public outrage necessary to stop this campaign of destruction in its tracks. But that requires those of us who believe that the threat to democracy is urgent to act like it. That means saying to our Republican colleagues that we are not going to act like business as usual, that we are not going to proceed to legislation unless we have agreement, Republicans and Democrats, to stop this assault on free speech and dissent. It requires the minority party to say that right now. Only if we come together are we going to have a chance to save ourselves from the fate that has befallen so many other countries that have slowly, too quietly, seen their countries transition from real democracy to fake democracy. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the budget that we are debating really comes down to one simple idea: the massive transfer of wealth and resources from the poor and the middle class to the ultrawealthy. What is being proposed in the Senate right now is stunning in its scope. We are talking about a piece of legislation that has such deep cuts to Medicaid--this is the program that insures 24 percent of American families. One-quarter of Americans get their health insurance from Medicaid. You don't know it as Medicaid because it is called something different in each State. In Connecticut, it is called HUSKY. In Wisconsin, it is called BadgerCare. But in every State, about a quarter of the population gets their insurance through a Medicaid- funded program. Most of those folks are working full time, but for one reason or another, that is where they get their insurance. You are talking about kicking millions of people off of that program--and for what? For what? To rack up the biggest bill ever on the credit card of the middle class--an explosion in debt--but also to fund a tax cut for the fabulously wealthy. This is the 2017 tax cut, which is essentially going to be mirrored, we believe, by this tax cut. The top 1 percent of earners got tax cuts 852 times bigger than working families in America. We don't know the final shape of this tax cut, but it won't look fundamentally different from that. This is a really bad time to be a working mom or dad in America. This week, we are passing, apparently, a massive cut in healthcare benefits for working families in order to pad the pockets of the wealthy. We are also dealing with the Trump tariff plan, which has been a ``Keystone Cops''-like rollout that will ultimately raise prices for every single American. Tariffs can work as part of a coordinated, thoughtful approach to trying to rebuild American industry, but they only work when you partner those tariffs together with industrial policy, incentives to help promote the industry that you are trying to punish when the products come from abroad. I am not reflexively opposed to the use of tariffs, but this use of tariffs is bananas because it is not paired with any domestic industrial policy, meaning that you are just going to get the downside--the massive increase in costs for consumers--without the upside, which is job creation in the United States of America. So before I get to the insult to middle-class families that will come through the budget, let's just talk about what is going to happen with these tariffs. We know how it is going to work because we saw how tariffs worked in Trump's first term. Let me just take one specific example. In Trump's first term, he proposed a 20-percent escalating tariff on washing machines. The idea was, you know, we want washing machines to be made in the United States instead of outside of the United States, but because he didn't pair that together with any more comprehensive help for the washing machine industry in the United States, it was only the downside. It was only the downside not just because of the lack of a comprehensive policy but also because there were no checks on the corporations that saw the tariffs as a means to gouge consumers. You have to also partner tariffs together with some accountability for corporations--for the greedy corporations that get wide-eyed when they see the tariffs and realize, well, this is an opportunity to not just pass the tariff along but to jack up the price a little bit more and say it was all because of the tariffs. Here is what happened on washing machines. So you have a 20-percent escalating tariff. We have the data. We saw what happened. The economic data tells us that the washing machine companies passed along the 20- percent tariff and then padded the price increase sometimes by 15 percent, sometimes by 50 percent. But it is worse than that. The price increase was not just for imported washing machines; they also increased the price of the domestic washing machines that weren't subject to the tariff. Why not? Why not? The Trump administration won't hold us accountable for that. Nobody really looks to see whether the washing machine was made in America or not. We will just raise the price on everything. What do you buy when you buy a washing machine as well? A dryer. So guess what happens. Even though dryers weren't subject to the tariff, the price got jacked up on the dryers as well. Dryers went up by 50 percent sometimes in cost--15 percent, 20 percent. All of a sudden, prices went up for everything. Now, Trump collected a bunch of money in tariffs--$80 billion--but that was literally just middle-class people paying the additional amount to the company and the company passing it along to the government. So it was just a tax. It was just a tax. OK. Maybe you could live with that if it revitalized the domestic washing machine industry, if there were tens of thousands of people going back to jobs in that industry, but that didn't happen. I think there were one or two domestic washing machine factories that opened up, and Trump, of course, made a big deal. Do you know how many jobs it was in total? Less than 2,000 jobs. Less than 2,000 jobs were created for a tariff that jacked up costs for every American and resulted in $80 billion of middle-class taxes being collected by the government. That works out to about $800,000 per job. So that is what is coming at scale, not just on washing machines but on virtually every consumer product: a big price increase, little to no domestic job creation, all the pain on the middle class. Tariffs can work, but this is not the way that they work. So this week, Senate Republicans, instead of trying to help consumers deal with the impact of these tariffs--I mean, we are talking about huge price increases coming for American families, and this week, we could be sitting here, voting for bills that cancel the tariffs or try to help middle-class families in another way. We are doing exactly the opposite. Instead of helping families deal with the impact of the tariffs, instead of holding the greedy corporations in check as they get ready to gouge consumers, we are debating a bill that would cut almost $1 trillion out of Medicaid--the program that provides insurance for a quarter of Americans. That will result in raising healthcare costs for tens of millions of Americans. We are also talking about giving a massive tax break to the billionaire CEOs of the companies that are going to be doing the price gouging and to the companies themselves. That is outrageous. That is outrageous. If you were a regular, ordinary American, what you are being told is that you are going to have to pay huge new price increases on everything you buy. You are going to have your healthcare disappear, and corporate profits and take-home pay for CEOs are going to skyrocket. Who is asking for that? What American is asking for prices to go up, my healthcare to be cut, and billionaires to get a big tax break? Let's start talking about these tax cuts, OK? They are at the center of this bill. Everything in the Trump administration is about a simple story: How do I help my Mar-a-Lago billionaire friends? So this is the old tax cut because we don't know all of the details of the new one. If you look at sort of the poorest Americans versus the richest Americans, the tax cut is 852 times bigger. But here is a back-of-the-napkin analysis of what this new tax cut is likely to look like, if it is, basically, formed like the old one. Instead of taking the poorest Americans versus the richest Americans-- instead--let's just look at, sort of, the bottom 60 percent of income earners in this country. That is roughly about everybody who makes $90,000 or less. So that is a lot of your neighbors. Right? I mean, $90,000 is an income that is familiar to a lot of Americans. So under this new tax cut, if it looks like the old one--and that is the signal that we get--households in the top 1 percent are going to get an average tax cut that is 120 times bigger than the tax cut given to people who are making $90,000 or less. So that is 152 times bigger than the very poor. But let's take somebody who is making $60,000. The richest 1 percent are going to get a tax cut that is 120 times bigger. How is that fair? OK, now, you would say: Well, that is because they make a lot more money; so, of course, they are going to get a bigger tax cut. But let's do the math a different way. As a share of after-tax income, the tax cuts for the top are still more than triple the total value of the tax cut received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent. So even when you adjust for the fact that they are making more money, they are still getting a tax cut whose value is three times bigger than folks who are making a middle income in this country. And why? Does anybody believe in trickle-down economics anymore? It has been completed discredited. Again, we have the 2017 tax cuts as evidence. Donald Trump touted out a big promise. He said: These tax cuts for corporations and billionaires and millionaires, they will trickle down to everybody else, and I will tell you the number. The average worker will get a $4,000 salary increase. That was the promise. The money will trickle down. The corporations will be so generous--so generous--that they will take their giant tax cut, bigger than they even asked for--Senator Whitehouse just showed you the chart where corporations have gone from providing 30 percent of American tax revenue down to 10 percent of American tax revenue--what a great deal for corporations. OK. That is a nice chart. That makes sense if the corporations are taking their lower tax liability and turning it around into wages. Instead, they are not. They are keeping it for themselves, for their executives, for their top shareholders. The analysis shows that that promised $4,000 salary increase as a result of the tax cuts, it wasn't $4,000. It wasn't $2,000. It wasn't $1,000. It wasn't $100. It was zero because all of that money-- virtually all of this money--ended up getting gobbled up by the corporations, mainly for stock buybacks. It didn't go to increased compensation for their employees. So it is not to raise wages. I guess it is just to make rich people richer. From 2017, when that tax cut passed--that first Trump tax cut passed--until 2023, Elon Musk's wealth grew by 1,222 percent. I don't even know what that looks like. Jeff Bezos' grew by 96 percent, Zuckerberg's by 50 percent, and Rupert Murdoch's by 50. I use those names because those were the billionaires who were at Trump's inauguration, cheerleading him into office because they know that another big tax cut for their company and for them personally is coming. I will admit to you, median income overall grew from 2017 to 2023. So everybody in the country was making more in 2023 than they were making in 2017. But median income was not growing by 50 percent, 96 percent, or 1,222 percent. So this is a massive tax cut, the vast majority of it going to the very, very wealthy. But what makes it even harder to understand is what Senator Whitehouse laid out for you. Most of this is just going on your credit card. Most of this is just being borrowed. And that has a consequence-- the national debt potentially doubling as a result of this massive tax cut for the very, very wealthy. It is just so heartbreaking, the hypocrisy. I mean, I could string together a 24-hour-long video of my Republican colleagues talking ad nauseam about the danger of debt, the rising deficit. We can't spend money on kids. We can't spend money on climate. We can't spend money on schools. We can't help people go to college. No, no, no, we can't do any of that. We can't do any of that because of the deficit. Yet when it comes to a billionaire tax cut, a corporate tax cut, we are going to potentially double the debt. Nobody is caring about the debt. In fact, they are rigging the rules of the Senate. They are breaking the rules of the Senate just so they can get away with a massive increase in debt and deficit. But somewhere along the line, they said: Well, do you know what? We can't borrow the whole thing. We have got to make it look like we are cutting some spending. So let's cut some spending to make it at least look like it is not all borrowed. But let's make sure that the spending we are cutting only hurts poor people and the middle class because God forbid we can cut spending that helps the rich or the affluent. God forbid we take away some of the tax breaks that help them. So where are the cuts coming? Medicaid. Eighty percent of the cuts are Medicaid--$880 billion in the House bill, a similar amount, cutting Medicaid. Medicaid, as I said, is the program that insures 24 percent of Americans. At least two-thirds of those are working--working full time. They just don't have health insurance through their employer. So they have to get it through Medicaid. So when Republicans decided that they couldn't borrow the whole thing--like, we will double the national debt, but we are not going to triple the national debt--they targeted the cuts to hurt the middle class and poor people. So I just want to end by telling you what this means in realtime. I don't actually know what it means to give billionaires another $50,000 in tax breaks. I really don't know what that means. I don't know what that life is like. I don't know what it is like to have seven houses and four yachts. I don't know what a billionaire does with an extra $50,000. I can't actually explain that to you. I don't understand that kind of rapacious greed. What I do know is what happens to poor people, the people who live in my neighborhood in the south end of Hartford, when they lose their Medicaid. Linda lives in Sherman, CT, a small town in western Connecticut. Following the economic downturn in 2008, Linda had trouble finding work. And that was tough for her because she is a cancer survivor. She had high healthcare expenses, and she needed work. She was underemployed. She worked in plant nurseries and agriculture. Her husband, at the same time, lost his job as an auto mechanic. They lost their healthcare insurance. But then, when the Affordable Care Act passed, Medicaid was expanded. More people were made eligible for Medicaid, and in 2010, she was able to sign up for Medicaid. She said: I had so much anxiety [all the time] about how to pay for healthcare. We were going through all of our money, and we [just] thought, ``this isn't right, people shouldn't have to worry about [just] being basically healthy.'' But once she got healthcare, she was able to restart her life. Linda went back to school because now she had healthcare. She got a new degree. She found a job teaching agriculture at a local high school. But that program didn't provide healthcare. So she still needed that Medicaid. ``Medicaid,'' she says, just ``provides such a baseline for society. It [allowed me to maintain] my health so that I was able to continue working.'' The Medicaid cuts that they are talking about will destroy Medicaid expansion. In fact, some States will automatically cancel the Medicaid expansion program when these cuts are made, meaning that people like Linda all across the country are going to lose their healthcare. For what? For a massive tax cut for the wealthy. Emily Granelli is a worker at one of Connecticut's biggest behavioral health and substance abuse providers. So every day she is talking to people who rely on Medicaid so that they can get help for their mental health disorder or their substance abuse disorder. And let's be honest. We all have somebody in our life who has a serious mental illness or has struggled with substance abuse. So you know these people. She wrote me a letter talking about the fact that the conversations in their therapy groups in the last month have fundamentally changed. They are actually not doing therapy any longer for mental illness or substance abuse. They are now doing therapy for the anxiety all these people have knowing they are about to lose their health insurance. One case manager told me--she writes that she was working with a client to find housing. The client now just wants to stop looking because she feels like there is no point because she is going to lose her Medicaid. Republicans are going to strip her Medicaid from her. She won't be able to get her medication and services. She feels hopeless. A clinician told me about an hourlong session she had the day before. Seventy-five percent of it was focused on the client's fear of losing her benefits and what that would mean for her and all the other clients. She shared with me that if there was a way for her to leave the country right now, she would. At this provider, 35 percent of their clients would likely lose access to mental illness and substance abuse services if these cuts go through. What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Why are we choosing--why are my colleagues choosing--to destroy healthcare for millions of Americans in order to pass a tax cut that basically helps corporations and billionaires and millionaires? It is fundamentally immoral. I have to believe, like in 2017, when Republicans were trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act, which insured 20 million Americans, that there are a handful of Republicans who know that this isn't right, who maybe aren't ready to stop it today--tonight's vote isn't the final vote--but might be willing to stand up to this thievery before it is too late. The people of this country who are getting killed by higher prices that are coming because of the tariffs and are going to be hurt by these Medicaid cuts and are going to be furious when the rich become richer at their expense, they are counting on just a small handful of my Republican colleagues to realize right from wrong. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse, first of all, for all the work you have put into passing that legislation, which has given access to millions of people across the country who are struggling with addiction and recovery access to services. Again, I said what I said in my underlying remarks. There is not a single Member of the Senate who doesn't have a close family member or a friend who has struggled or is struggling with addiction. This is a nonpartisan, apolitical problem. Addiction doesn't care if you are left, right, Republican, or Democrat. We did come together around funding these programs. So it is hard to understand--it is heartbreaking--that I am telling you the story of one of Connecticut's biggest addiction treatment providers, and they are telling us that if these cuts go through fully, one-third of their clients will lose access to some or all of their services. And to your point in your initial speech, Senator Whitehouse, I mean, maybe I could understand if we were deciding to cut funding for addiction treatment because we had some other really important priority that helped regular people--like if we said: Do you know what? There is a housing crisis in this country. Right now, we are going to have to borrow money from addiction treatment in order to make sure that people get housed. Or, you know, our schools are underfunded and teachers need to be paid more. And, OK, it is really hard to cut funding from addiction treatment centers, but at least we will get better education for our kids. That is not what we are doing. We are cutting funds for people struggling with addiction who get served by programs that we agree are important in order to fund a tax cut for corporations and super, superrich people. That is why this is fundamentally immoral.

Mr. MURPHY. I would.

Mr. MURPHY. Right.

Mr. MURPHY. It is thievery masked by a bogus economic argument that says the money will eventually find its way down to everybody else. That is not true. That has never been true. In fact, the opposite is often true. The billionaire class is sometimes referred to as sort of citizens of everywhere, right. They are global citizens. They globe-trot from homes in the United States and Europe and the islands. But that is also where their money ends up going as well. It used to be that the richest guy in your community was investing only in your community, but today, when we pad the pockets of the uberwealthy, that money either does not get spent or it ultimately gets delivered to investments that flow into economies all over the world. These tax cuts don't end up back in America. To the extent the money gets spent anywhere, it gets spent in international index funds. So the theory of the case--which has always been cover for simply delivering more and more excessive resources to the very, very wealthy--has never worked, but it works even less now when, in a global international economy, the very, very wealthy have options to invest in the United States or, often, for higher returns, invest somewhere else.

Mr. MURPHY. I thank the Senator for the question. Listen, I read it as just a different kind of thievery. So what we are talking about here is this massive thievery from Medicaid recipients so that we can pass along this big tax break for folks that don't need it. But my sense is that the billionaire and investment and Wall Street class is really upset that there are still a few remaining government programs that they haven't gotten their hands on, that they haven't operationalized in a way to make themselves money. They have had their eyes on Social Security for decades. I remember George Bush proposing privatizing Social Security, which is essentially just taking that big lump of money and handing it to the investment managers so that they can skim some money off the top. They also looked at schools the same way, I think, Senator Whitehouse. They have been discrediting public education to the point where now they don't think the Department of Education needs to exist. And why? Why? Because they ultimately want to do the same thing for our public schools. They want to privatize our elementary schools, our middle schools, and our high schools so that they can have private equity funds owning the schools, providing some form of education but just seeing our kids as a source of profit. So you can tell me if I am wrong about this, but my sense is that the theft happens in all sorts of different ways: sometimes in just a transfer--Medicaid recipients losing, billionaires winning--but sometimes by taking government programs and turning them--instead of something that tries to work for the common good, as a program that just gets turned into a vehicle for profit for the very, very wealthy.

Mr. MURPHY. Sure.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1977 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, so we have learned that the Republicans think that it is essential to blow up the deficit and debt in order to allow people making $100 million a year to get a tax cut. But what about a half a billion dollars? Do you think it is fair to kick millions of people off their healthcare--that is what your Medicaid cuts are going to do--so that you can give a tax cut to somebody who makes $500 million? Just a little perspective: If you make a half a billion dollars, you have just enough to afford the essentials--a six-bedroom house, three vacation homes, five luxury cars, a yacht with a full staff, and--good news--you have just a little bit left over, $499 million a year. It is immoral to kick people off of their healthcare in order to give a handout to somebody who has that kind of wealth. This amendment gives the Republicans a chance to do the right thing: no blowing a giant hole in our budget, no more massive debt in order to help people who are making a half a billion dollars a year.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Right.