Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for the question. When I hear that word ``corruption''--and I admit, I am starting to feel a little dazed after these many hours on the floor--my head goes, first, to the financial corruption of the President, but there are always other forms of corruption he has engaged in, in terms of corrupting the basic balance of the separation of powers and the checks and balances. But let me speak, first, to the financial corruption. One thing that we have seen is that he is using the Presidency to enrich himself and his companies and his family. The most blatant example of this is when he said: I have this product that I want people to buy. I am going to hold a competition, and the people who buy the most of this product, a crypto coin, would be invited to a very special dinner at my golf club, where I will be present, and you will have access to me. So he sold access to the Presidency to the people who bought the most of his crypto coins. In that case, it was a meme coin, and that means, basically, the coin is a collectible. It basically has no value. But then he engaged in another form of crypto corruption, and that involved saying: We are going to have a stablecoin. And a stablecoin means you give me a dollar, and I give you a crypto token that you can use in international transactions. Then there was a transaction involving--I believe; I hope I still have this right--the United Arab Emirates. They basically bought several billion dollars of these coins. What happens then is that the President can hold those dollars until the coins are redeemed and benefit from the interest earned on those several billion dollars. Meanwhile, there was a desire by the foreign government to get access to highly capable AI chips. The answer was, no, we are not doing that. But then after they bought all these coins and enriched the President of the United States, well, then the President said: Let's give them the coins; let's give them these advanced chips. So, certainly, the smoke, and I would say even the flame, of selling access and favors out of the Presidency is now to the tune of having made billions of dollars in the roughly 9 months that he has been in office. I would be happy to yield for another question if you were talking about a different type of corruption. I yield--I don't yield yet because I have to do this protocol right. I see my colleague from New Hampshire is on the floor, and I would welcome a question, if you have one.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely.

Mr. MERKLEY. I so much appreciate the good report and question from my colleague from New Hampshire and appreciate her leadership on the Foreign Relations Committee as the top Democrat, working hard to partner across the aisle for the common cause of international security. Every time I think about Ukraine, I think about how fiercely, including in the Orange Revolution, in which they did so much to say: No, we will not be taken over by Russia; we will not be put under the thumb of Russia by one of our Presidents. They have said: We see the system to our north where there is no freedom, where people are not in charge of their own destiny because they are ruled by a dictator, and we reject that and will fight with our lives--and so many have, in fact, perished on the battlefield--to defend our freedom. That inspires me every time I think about it. At the moments in which President Trump has been less supportive of Ukraine and more supportive of Russia, I have tried to send him magical vibes--no--understand the difference between standing with a nation fighting for freedom and snuggling up with a dictator. We are a light to the world when we fight for democracy and support democracy. So I am really pleased to hear about these three bills passing, and I hope that other factors can be worked up in the international community that will help slow down the Russian war machine. They are an incredibly large country, and they have built huge factories to produce cruise missiles, and so, nightly, Ukraine is hammered with hundreds now. So it just means more resolve by the United States, more resolve by Europe. I am surprised to hear that the Europeans collectively are spending more on defense than the United States. If that had been a trivia question, I would have failed. But there it is, and that certainly has been partly to recognize the threat from Russia. If Russia is willing to slice off a piece of Georgia, as they were in 2008, I believe; if they are willing to throw thousands of soldiers into a fight with Ukraine really with no consideration--I mean, it is just like fodder to the war machine. And then we are seeing that they are overflying some of the other European countries. And these are incredibly provocative. So I think all of that goes toward hopefully forging a unity of purpose between Europe and the United States. Something you may not know--one of the skeletons in my closet is I spent a rotation working at NATO in Brussels when we were trying to develop a treaty for intermediate-range missiles because of the nuclear threats, to stabilize the threats, in the middle of the 1980s. The United States and Europe worked so closely together. That is the type of partnership--it is the type of partnership that has taken some hits in the last few years. We want to restore that vision of that careful, detailed, determined coordination so that we advance the best strategies. And, of course, battlefield strategies are also changing dramatically as we go--being able to adjust to this changing world. So that is my hope, that building on the work the committee did today--and hopefully those bills will be here on the floor, and hopefully they will be on the President's desk--that we can continue to strive to a peaceful conclusion with security for Ukraine and not allow the war machine of Russia to overwhelm it.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, for the first time in several hours, I don't have a colleague who is asking me a question, and so I am going to return to the conversation that I was holding forth on regarding the Department of Justice. I have here this page called ``Justice Connection, Urgent Message from Recent DOJ Alumni Decrying Attacks on Justice Department.'' I believe I asked unanimous consent to have this put in the Record, but if I did not, I am asking it now.

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Here is how that reads: We are 292 former career employees who proudly served our country at the Department of Justice. From prosecutors, special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys and more, we all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who occupied the White House. Until we no longer could. Each of us left the Department, either voluntarily or involuntarily, because of actions taken by this administration. Our fidelity to the Constitution and our dedication to our country did not end when our jobs did. Now that we've left the Department, we believe it's our duty to sound the alarm about this administration's degradation of DOJ's vital work, and its assault on the public servants who do it. It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice Department before it's too late. DOJ's mission is to ``to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.'' It's failing on all three fronts: The Justice Department cannot uphold the rule of law when it carries out the President's retribution campaign and protects his allies; violates court orders and evades due process requirements; directs attorneys to violate their ethical responsibilities; and fires its employees without notice or cause in violation of civil service laws. It also cannot keep our country safe when it ousts FBI employees, prosecutors, national security experts, and ATF officials; shutters offices that prevent community violence and dismantle drug trafficking operations; purges the attorneys who enforce laws that protect the environment; and shifts highly trained special agents away from counterintelligence and counterterrorism. And it cannot protect civil rights when it drives out 75% of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and refuses to enforce the nation's civil rights laws as Congress intended, using them instead as a cudgel against marginalized groups. The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work the Department has done to protect communities and the rule of law, too. Its plans to eliminate the Tax Division, which saves the country billions of dollars by pursuing tax evaders, will leave us poorer. Gutting the Public Integrity Section and FBI public corruption squads has paved the way for government graft. Cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants has left at-risk communities less protected and crime victims less supported. The list could go on. As for its treatment of its employees, the current leadership's behavior has been appalling. This administration's lies about the ``deep state'' and exaggerations about government inefficiency have eroded the respect our country once held for public servants. And demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us--draining the Department of priceless institutional knowledge and expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting top talent. We may feel the effects of this for generations. The Justice Department's backbone has always been its career workforce, and those who were part of it are best positioned to explain why the current leaders' actions are catastrophic for the nation. We call on these leaders to reverse course--to remember the oath we all took to uphold the Constitution--and adhere to the legal guardrails and institutional norms on which our justice system relies. We call on our fellow alumni to join us in sounding the alarm, and in mobilizing to support our colleagues still there. They deserve respect and gratitude, neither of which they're getting from this administration. We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously. Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we're witnessing. And we call on all Americans--whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ--to speak out against its destruction. Our democracy is only as strong as the rule of law, and the rule of law can't survive without the principal institution that enforces it. Well, that is a powerful letter from these 292 former career employees of the Department of Justice. I was very struck about the phrase that says: ``We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities.'' That came up about an hour ago, in one of the conversations, that we could do so much more and we should try to be partnering with our Republican colleagues to provide that essential function of oversight. That is one of the checks and balances, and we should be deeply engaged in making it as effective as possible because here is quite a list of the things going wrong with the Department of Justice. These things beg for hearings to be held, for issues to be understood, for the press to be able to report, for solutions to be able to be found, for lines that prevent unacceptable conduct to be clearly delineated. But that can't happen unless Congress exercises its oversight ability. OK. We have Chapter 8. So we are headed back to the book, and the book is this book, ``How Democracies Die.'' And with each chapter, I am trying to give some sense of the chapter but not every element of it. So I will read some of the pages, maybe scan through some others, and try to address a few of the issues that I will raise. This particular chapter addresses President Trump's first year in his first administration, and it is titled: Trump's first year: an authoritarian report card. So remember this was just his first year in office. We are now in his fifth year in office, headed toward his sixth year in office, and we have seen such an acceleration. So the items identified in the first year, well, we may well see that they become more serious over time. Donald Trump's first year in office followed a familiar script. Like Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chavez, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, America's new president began his tenure by launching blistering rhetorical attacks on his opponents. He called the media the ``enemy of the American people,'' questioned judges' legitimacy, and threatened to cut federal funding to major cities. Predictably, these attacks triggered dismay, shock, and anger across the political spectrum. Journalists found themselves at the front lines, exposing-- but also provoking--the president's norm-breaking behavior. A study by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found that the major news outlets were ``unsparing'' in their coverage of the Trump administration's first hundred days. Of news reports with a clear tone, the study found, 80 percent were negative--much higher than under Clinton (60 percent), George W. Bush (57 percent), and Obama (41 percent). Soon, Trump administration officials were feeling besieged. Not a single week went by in which press coverage wasn't at least 70 percent negative. And amid swirling rumors about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, a high profile special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed to oversee investigations into the case. Just a few months into his presidency, President Trump faced talk of impeachment. But he retained the support of his base, and like other elected demagogues, he doubled down. He claimed his administration was beset by powerful establishment forces, telling graduates of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that ``no politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.'' The question, then, was how Trump would respond. Would an outsider president who considered himself to be under unwarranted assault lash out, as happened in Peru and Turkey? President Trump exhibited clear authoritarian instincts during his first year in office. In Chapter 4, we presented three strategies by which elected authoritarians seek to consolidate power: capturing the referees, sidelining the key players, and rewriting the rules to tilt the playing field against opponents. Trump attempted all three of these strategies. President Trump demonstrated striking hostility toward the referees--law enforcement, intelligence, ethics agencies, and the courts. Soon after his inauguration, he sought to ensure that the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, would be personally loyal to him, apparently in the hope of using these agencies as a shield against investigations into his campaign's Russia ties. During his first week in office, President Trump summoned FBI Director James Comey to a one- on-one dinner in the White House in which, according to Comey, the president asked for a pledge of loyalty. He later reportedly pressured Comey to drop investigations into his recently departed national security director, Michael Flynn, pressed Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to intervene in Comey's investigation, and personally appealed to Coats and NSA head Michael Rogers to release statements denying the existence of any collusion with Russia (both refused). President Trump also tried to punish or purge agencies that acted with independence. Most prominently, he dismissed Comey after it became clear that Comey could not be pressured into protecting the administration and was expanding its Russia investigation. Only once in the FBI's eighty-two-year history had a president fired the bureau's director before his ten- year term was up--and in that case, the move was in response to clear ethical violations and enjoyed bipartisan support. The Comey firing was not President Trump's only assault on referees who refused to come to his personal defense. Trump had attempted to establish a personal relationship with Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose investigations into money laundering reportedly threatened to reach Trump's inner circle; when Bharara, a respected anticorruption figure, continued the investigation, the president removed him. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointed the respected former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the investigation, Trump publicly shamed Sessions, reportedly seeking his resignation. White House lawyers even launched an effort to dig up dirt on Mueller, seeking conflicts of interest that could be used to discredit or dismiss him. By late 2017, many of Trump's allies were openly calling on him to fire Mueller, and there was widespread concern that he would soon do so. So in this section, we are hearing about all of the attacks on the referees during Trump's--and this is just a classic part of an authoritarian government--attack the referees. And, of course, we saw it in year five, this year. Immediately, Trump took out special investigators of the various Agencies and did so in order to make sure that there wasn't the type of oversight that would point out to the public or to Congress where things were going wrong. Take out the referees--that is the authoritarian strategy being laid out here. President Trump's efforts to derail independent investigations evoked the kind of assaults on the referees routinely seen in less democratic countries--for example, the dismissal of Venezuelan Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega, a chavista appointee who asserted her independence and began to investigate corruption and abuse in the Maduro government. Although Ortega's term did not expire until 2021 and she could be legally removed only by the legislature (which was in opposition hands), the government's dubiously elected Constituent Assembly sacked her in August 2017. President Trump also attacked judges who ruled against him. After Judge James Robart of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the administration's initial travel ban, Trump spoke of ``the opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country.'' Two months later, when the same court temporarily blocked the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary cities, the White House denounced the judgment as an attack on the rule of law by an ``unelected judge.'' Trump himself responded by threatening to break up the Ninth Circuit. The president took an indirect swipe at the judiciary in August 2017 when he pardoned the controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of violating a federal court order to stop racial profiling. Arpaio was a political ally and a hero to many of Trump's anti-immigrant supporters. As we noted earlier, the chief executive's constitutional power to pardon is without limit, but presidents have historically exercised it with great restraint, seeking advice from the Justice Department and never issuing pardons for self-protection or political gain. President Trump boldly violated these norms. Not only did he not consult the Justice Department, but the pardon was clearly political--it was popular with his base. The move reinforced fears that the President would eventually pardon himself and his inner circle--something that was reportedly explored by his lawyers. Such a move would constitute an unprecedented attack on judicial independence. As constitutional scholar Martin Redish put it, ``If the president can immunize his agents in this manner, the courts will effectively lose any meaningful authority to protect constitutional rights against invasion by the executive branch.'' This discussion over pardoning himself and the risk it creates of misbehavior is an interesting prelude to the fact that, essentially, the Supreme Court pardoned Trump, saying that the President cannot commit a crime. If he can't commit a crime, then you can do whatever and you don't have to be pardoned because you haven't committed a crime. So the Supreme Court essentially gave him the same protection and created the same risk for an authoritarian state that Trump pardoning himself would have resulted in. The administration responded by launching attacks on the

Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Arizona on the floor, and, yes, I would yield for a question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Arizona for your question. I so appreciate the decades of experience and knowledge you bring in regard to the services. I have only a small chapter in my life of 2 years working for Secretary Weinberger as a Presidential fellow. But I didn't wear a uniform. I was a civilian working on a host of different programs for 4 months or so. They were great assignments. I learned an awful lot. But everything you are talking about comes from your deep connection, involvement in the uniformed services, and such a wealth of knowledge just listening to you. I so appreciate that you bring that to bear. In terms of my concern about the military, I felt, from my much more limited world, mostly the Pentagon, that folks have worked incredibly hard not to be partisan. Certainly, the Secretary of Defense brought a set of missions that tied into President Reagan's administration and his goals. But people didn't overtly talk about pardons or press in terms of the sort of derisive commentary we have now and heard on cable television on both sides. When I think about these last few years, I am concerned that the military has been substantially politicalized. I may be wrong about that because I don't have that view from inside. But I think about how the President gave the speech to the 800 generals, and he basically said: If you don't like what I am saying, you can leave the room. If you leave, I will strip you of your rank and your career will end. To me, that was: I want you to be loyal to me, not the Constitution. I want you to be loyal to me, the President of the United States, which is, I felt, very inappropriate and out of sync with the military I saw, ready to work in partnership with administrations of either side. But I don't know if we see, for example, the speeches at the military academy. I recall some story about folks cheering and clapping for what was a partisan set of political points being made. I don't know. I am going to leave it to your analysis because you have a much better sense of that. But when it comes to the effort to create a pathway to use the military against civilians inside the United States of America, that is of grave concern to my constituents; to look at the current dynamic now in which President Trump said Portland is a war zone, it is war- ravaged, it is in complete chaos--while he was saying that, there might have been two or three protesters outside the ICE building conducting themselves peacefully; there have been weeks with no arrests--that is a real invention. When our Governor talked to President Trump, she pointed that out, and I gather he was like, ``Well, I have seen the tapes.'' I don't know what tapes he was watching, maybe 2020 tapes when we did have actual conflict in the city. But here you have Portlanders, who have been so restrained. Even when they have suffered being hit by pepper balls, tear gas, they have not engaged in the scuffles with police, and they have been protesting with joy and whimsy. I mean, it is a strange feeling to see people bringing their pets down and having ``Keep Your Paws Off Portland'' signs or folks handing out pastries in pajamas or otherwise proceeding to celebrate their joy as a way of saying to President Trump: There is no riot here. Don't use anything that you have said as a foundation for deploying troops to our city. In fact, a district judge simply said that the President's description of the city is untethered to the facts. There is a huge concern that the President is striving to get the courts to make decisions that will open the doors and say there will be deference to the President so he can deploy, under title 10, the National Guard, the federalized National Guard, against peaceful protesters or that the President will proceed to using the Insurrection Act, which does inherently give more support, deference, to the President. So there is a lot of concern, to my colleague from Arizona, about what is going to unfold. Meanwhile, I am delighted to see my colleague from New Mexico on the floor, and I would welcome a question if he has one.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I am yielding for your question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for your question. You have laid out so many points here about kind of the mismanagement of America's funds, and we could add a few more to them: the craziness of spending more money than it costs to buy a Presidential jet--to rehab a jet that was given to the President so that he could actually send it on to his personal library after he leaves office. It is profoundly disturbing, and I appreciate the way you framed it. There is enough money for luxury glitz--for a megaballroom. I can't even imagine how anything could cost that much to build. Maybe there will be an eighth-inch of gold on every surface or something--I don't know--but that doesn't serve the American people. It doesn't make one single person in America have better healthcare or a better education or a decent home in a decent community or a better job. It doesn't give you quality of opportunity. It doesn't tackle any of the environmental issues. It is simply a gross display by the President, who has constructed his entire administration on the basis of a theory to govern, which is ``families lose, and billionaires win.'' Families lose their healthcare so there can be massive tax breaks for billionaires. They lose their Medicaid on top of their ACA healthcare in order to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires. They lose their nutrition assistance to fund tax breaks for billionaires. Then, over the next 30 years, their bill runs up $30 trillion in additional debt to fund these tax breaks for billionaires. Maybe I should say ``trillionaires'' now. You think about how that debt, that additional $30 trillion in debt, how much that would compromise the ability to have future programs for healthcare and housing and education. Folks in my State--probably the same thing with folks in your State-- last Wednesday--the information come out a week ago so people could look on the exchange and see what their policies are going to cost. We don't have a new, comprehensive analysis. The preanalysis, the projection, was that the average cost would go up not 5 percent or 10 percent or 15 percent but about 68 percent. That is because the premium goes up, the tax credits come down, and costs become massively more expensive--now maybe a lot more because the average across the country is that premium payments would go up 114 percent--more than double. How do you explain to anyone that you slashed their healthcare affordability to fund a giveaway of $20 to $40 billion to Argentina or to fund that new ballroom? I mean, that is insane. I mean, that is, well, just like the rich rubbing our nose in it, for ordinary Americans: You won't be able to afford healthcare, but, wow, we got that new jet, that jet you talked about, for Noem--I hadn't heard about that one. We got the new ballroom. We got the tax breaks for the richest people. This government by and for the billionaires ties into the authoritarian perspective, because if you are a regular leader of a democracy, you feel you are accountable to the people, and you would never ever pursue a bill that defunds healthcare for ordinary families to put more dollars in the pockets of the already richest Americans. But if you are an authoritarian--and the entire time I have been on the floor has been to ring the alarm bells. Ring the alarm bells. Authoritarianism is here now. I am told that each time I say this, lots of bells are posted online. So just for my team's fun, ring the alarm bells. I want that to be heard all across America, that we are way off track. This is the wrong way to go. In a democracy, you want to have the foundation for families to thrive because you are accountable to the people, and the people that run the operation. But in an authoritarian government, boy, that is not the case at all. Instead, it is like the leaders feel like the people are accountable to them. So if they have to do without, well, too bad. As the phrase goes, let them eat cake. If they don't have bread, oh, let them eat cake. So there we are. And our responsibility is to say to the American people that the way to stop this authoritarian takeover is to have very significant, robust demonstrations across America, like we had on Saturday. The citizens have to make a big deal. Protest outside our offices. Write to us. Phone us. Give us a hard time. Tell us we should be doing more. It is that feedback that really caused me to say I need to try to do more to ring the alarm bells about where we are headed and, thus, to be up here all night and now through the morning and into the afternoon. I am getting a little unsteady on my feet, but if we collectively, through this dialogue, are bringing attention to people in saying: Yes, 7 million people were out there in the streets--next time, we need 10 million. Do your local demonstration with those who went. Hear about what they did, and spread the word that this is not normal, this destruction of our rights; this weaponization of the judiciary to go after political enemies; the effort to open the doors so that the President can deploy, with the court's approval, the military into our cities when there is no rebellion, no insurrection, and no invasion. So that is our responsibility--to call it out and to carry on the fight. I believe the American people are starting to understand just how much their freedoms are being crushed, and that is why we need to be in partnership, to steer this country back and save our Republic.

Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Washington State is on the floor, and I would be very happy to yield for a question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Too many.

Mr. MERKLEY. I note that my colleague from Delaware is on the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY. I would welcome a question if you have one.

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you so much to my colleague from Delaware. That question rather answers itself after listening to all the points you were making, which were right on. How can it possibly be the right priorities if you are spending your money on tax breaks for billionaires while cutting the tax credits that enable families to buy insurance at an affordable price? How can it possibly be the right thing to do that you are cutting child nutrition while you are spending a huge amount on a ballroom--undoubtedly a Trumpian gold-style ballroom. How much was it: 200 million or 300 million? Some crazy, crazy sum. I can't even imagine how you could spend that much on a room. And you mentioned this $20 billion bailout--20 billion with a ``b'' bailout--for Argentina. Now, that one came out of nowhere. I don't remember a bill on the floor here saying that we are passing a spending bill that has in it a 20--and the President said maybe as much as a $40 billion bailout. Is there some authority I don't know about, maybe? I don't know. The books are complicated. But I doubt it because what this President is doing as an authoritarian is just saying: I am going to do what the hell I want. I am in charge. The bank account of America is mine. Hell, I am going to build a glitzy ballroom, and I am going to try to refurbish a jet for Air Force One that will only be workable for a few months, if that, before I send it off to my Presidential library--a huge waste of our money. And this bailout for Argentina--you know, earlier I was talking to a colleague from Washington State who said a lot of soybeans are shipped through Washington State but they are normally bought by China. Well, China isn't buying a single bean this year because of the tension and the argument between our two nations over tariffs. One moment, the President put a 50-percent tariff on China; and the next moment, they are saying they are not going to send out any strategic minerals, critical minerals. Next: Well, I will put a 100-percent tariff on you. I mean, nobody makes an investment in the United States of America, a factory here, when we are in tariff chaos. There is nothing about this that does anything except throw people up and down, and everyone gets hurt. They don't know if the tariffs are going to affect what they sell. They don't know if they are going to be able to affect the inputs of the things they manufacture. They don't know what they should plant if they are farmers. And where are all these beans--unsold soybeans--going to go this year? Where are they going to be stored? Are they going to be wasted? Are they going to be plowed back into the ground for fertilizer? I don't know. But I do know this chaos is terrible for America. And the small business world came and talked to me yesterday, the representatives-- maybe you had them in your office as well--and they said: Main Street is Pain Street. And I did hear that--I am going to note that Senator Markey may have been the first person I heard that from. But I thought that was a way to describe it. And they certainly said: Yes, there are two components of that pain. One is the loss of the credits to buy healthcare--because small businesses don't have big plans with big insurers. They provide some help, and folks go and buy on the exchange. And they said, second of all, the tariffs. So Main Street is Pain Street. That is not a good future for America. And families with no health insurance, that is a terrible look for America. And by ``look,'' I don't mean the atmospherics of it; I mean that is the wrong mission in a republic. And the connection I have been drawing between Trump's authoritarian personality and tendencies is that an authoritarian feels that people are accountable to him so he can do any damn thing he wants and control anything without advice or controls or checks from anyone. And he has hated it every time checks were applied in the past. He is going after some of those folks now who applied those checks in the past. And the leader of a democracy says: I am accountable to the people. The people need healthcare, housing, education, good-paying jobs, investment in infrastructure, quality of opportunity, and let's take on some of those environmental problems. That is what a leader of a democracy does. So here we have this authoritarian President crushing our freedoms, trying to steal the power of the purse from Congress to concentrate it in the Executive, proceeding to spend money wherever he wants. That $20 billion, I would love to see--I am not being coy. I would rather have all of the Senators right here and say: Let's pass a bill right now and say ``hell no.'' You know, a lot of that $20 billion is going to the debt that has been built up in Argentina, and friends of President Trump have reportedly bought that debt at a huge discount. I didn't see how much of a discount. But what that means: If you buy a dollar of debt and you buy it at, say--let's make the math easy--25 cents, then you get a 400-percent return if the money goes to Argentina and they pay off the debt at face value. That is not about making America first; that is about making Scott Bessent and his friends--at least I have seen Scott Bessent's name in some of those articles--and his friends, who are connected to buying up Argentine debt. I am not sure if Scott himself bought it or not. But, the point is, make some billionaires richer. It is another make a few friends of the President and friends of his Cabinet members richer-- that $20 billion--or possibly $40 billion, the President said. Think about that--20 billion. That is $50 for every single American tossed in a pot to hand out to a strongman in Argentina. Forty billion--$100 a person, handed out to a strongman. Every one of us, take $100 out of our pocket.

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for another question. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, there is, absolutely, such a powerful connection because the authoritarian doesn't care about the fundamental programs for the people because they don't feel they are accountable to the people. So just as our authoritarian President is weaponizing the judiciary to go after his opponents, he is using the power of the government over licenses and mergers in order to try to control what broadcasting does to attack freedom of speech, trying to control what our universities teach by threatening the collapse--threatening and taking away the research grants and telling them they can't have foreign students that are essential to their revenue streams. All of those authoritarian pieces--the stealing of the purse--but then there is this piece, the philosophy, and the philosophy is: The people owe me, the authoritarian; not I am accountable to them. So, therefore, it is totally legit to go for legislation that slashes the programs that are fundamental to families to make the rich richer. And I want to go back to that picture that I had up earlier of the billionaires standing behind President Trump at the inauguration. And at that point, maybe we didn't know for sure that he had campaigned on helping families. But we didn't see champions of families behind him. We saw the billionaires behind him. That is exactly what has happened. The philosophy is: Families lose and billionaires win. And our effort, as those in a democracy, is that we are fighting for the vision that families thrive, and the rich and powerful pay a fair share.

Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question. Yes.

Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from New York, the minority leader, is absolutely right. The Trump priorities are absolutely perverse. Well, here we are in a structure of the Senate, and what is the Senate about? Coming together and saying here is where I want to go; where do you want to go? How can we make those two things work together to make America better? We can't always find the answer, but I will tell you one thing is damn sure: You can't find the answer if you can't sit down and have the conversation. And here with are with the House on vacation for over a month. I guess they are getting paid. And here we are in the Senate without an agreement to just sit down and talk to each other about the framework because it appears that the key, as you have suggested, the lynchpin is they will not sit down and offer ideas and work out a deal without Trump in the room or Trump guiding the outcomes. So he is the factor. So as he jets off--and in Oregon, last week, people, a week ago Wednesday, they saw what their prices are going to be. The premiums are higher; the credits lower. They have got to fill in the gap in between. And are they going to be able to afford insurance? Are they going to be able to make that decision by January 1? They are stressed about this. I had small businesses in yesterday, representatives from Oregon, and the vision there is ``Main Street is in Pain Street'' because of the tariffs and because of the fact that many of them--a large share of them--buy their insurance on the exchange. And this man who runs a small company--it is a lighting-for-events company--and I think he said he had four employees. I talked to three of them, and three of them said: We are not buying insurance.

Mr. MERKLEY. We can't afford it. We looked at the new prices. We can't afford it. We are going to go without insurance. We all know the huge calamity. Well, when the Speaker of the House that I saw on the boob tube--on the television--says there is nothing to talk about, I think immediately: There are 20 million reasons to talk about. Those 20 million are the 20 million Americans seeing these huge increases. Many of them will not be able to buy insurance at all. Let's add to that, since the bill, also, is just 15 months out now from slashing in a devastating fashion our Medicaid Program, which in combination with the effects on the Affordable Care exchange will put 15 million people out of healthcare, 235,000 in my home State of Oregon--and 70 percent of the kids in my rural areas are part of the Oregon Health Plan and are on Medicaid. I can just not even conceive of the carnage that will be done to the quality of life without healthcare available to so many people. Isn't that a hell of a number of reasons to sit down and brainstorm together? You can't get to a common purpose if you can't even talk to each other. You are here. Your office is open. You are available to talk. You are inviting them to talk. They are saying no. That is a travesty in our Republic.

Mr. MERKLEY. That is horrific that he is flying away. He absolutely should be sitting down right now and holding a conversation with you about how we solve this problem for millions of Americans.

Mr. MERKLEY. I see my colleague from Vermont on the floor. I will take a question if he has one.

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.