Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Colorado. I don't think it is unique to the States out West, be it Oregon or Colorado or California or Idaho or Nevada or so forth. I think people in every single State care about access to healthcare. Now, I came to the Senate in 2009, and in that year, we decided to make a major effort to fill in huge holes in our healthcare system. Well, we had Medicaid for the least affluent, but then folks who were just above that, they couldn't afford private insurance; they also didn't qualify for Medicaid, so we created extended Medicaid and made it a State option that covered a lot more people. And then when you came to the middle class, you had folks who had insurance through their employer but not every employer provided insurance. And so we created the healthcare exchange where you could buy insurance and you could do so with tax credits to help you make the payments so that they were affordable. Well, that plan was pretty straightforward, but a man named Frank Luntz--he was a pollster and messagemaker for the Republicans--put out a memo. And I was one of the first Members of the Senate to see this memo. It was April of 2009. And the memo said: Whatever the Democrats come up with to improve healthcare, we are going to call it a government takeover because we have done focus groups, and that scares Americans. It makes them dread this. And it doesn't matter what the policy is, we will call it a government takeover. And I came down here to the floor, at that point my desk was much farther over here, around the corner, and I waved this around and said: Is this what America has come to? Instead of working together to improve the healthcare system, instead, we are so polarized that the minority wants to stop us from improving healthcare, even if it makes sense. And they are going to make up a falsehood and sell it across America. Well, apparently, that is what America had come to because they did promote that falsehood all across America. Now back home in Oregon, I have made a commitment to go to a townhall in each of my 36 counties every year, open hour. People can come and share whatever they want. I am out in Prineville, OR, where, normally, there would be, like, 30 or 50 people at a townhall and about 500 people show up. Why? Because they are terrified of a government takeover of the healthcare system. There was about 200 people inside the room. There are several hundred people outside who can't get in because the room is completely packed. And they are angry. They are very angry. And one man shouts out and says: Why won't you listen to us and stop this government takeover? And I said: I will listen to everybody in this room. I will describe major features of the plan, and you all can respond to me: Step forward or step backward. So I said: How about requiring insurance policies to cover pre-existing conditions? Step forward--80 percent of the people in the room raised their hand. Step backwards--about 10 percent. Another 10 percent didn't vote. I said: How about having preventive tests free because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Step forward--80 percent yes. How about having children on your policy to age 26? Again, 80 percent yes. How about having a website where you can compare private insurance policies so you can pick the best one for your family? Again, 80 percent yes. Well, by now, people are looking around the room going: Well, this all sounds pretty good. Of course, they came, and they were very angry. I said: Let's talk about the economics of this. How about providing tax credits to help middle-class Americans buy insurance from private companies? Again, 80 percent yes. People liked that idea. How about expanding Medicaid because we have the least affluent in our society who are trapped between just a little too affluent to qualify for Medicaid, but they certainly can't afford private insurance. Oh, no. That sounds good too. And so I would say then: Thank you very much for the feedback on the major features of the plan. There is no government takeover in it, but you have all expressed to me your support for many of the features, and that is why I am supporting it. Well, this was the year 2009. You had a blue trifecta that said: Let's fill in the holes on healthcare, and we went about and did it. And now let's fast forward to 2025. You don't have a blue trifecta; you have a red trifecta. And the red trifecta knows how important health insurance is, so they made some promises. And the promises were: We will not touch your healthcare. We will not force people off insurance. And, in fact, they did exactly the opposite. In 2009, the House, the Senate, the Oval Office working together to fill in the holes and make sure everybody could get healthcare; 2025, the red trifecta, the Oval Office, Republican leadership in the House and Senate say: We are going to tear down your access to healthcare. And that is what they did in the one big ugly betrayal of a bill voted a few weeks ago right here in this Chamber, tearing down your healthcare. And 15 million Americans are going to lose access to healthcare because of this bill. Here is the philosophy we saw: Roll out the red carpet for the rich and powerful. Roll out the redtape for the less affluent. Wow. What a horrific strategy to rip healthcare away from 15 million people. What does that mean to a family when they lose health insurance? Well, I will tell you. It means that they don't go to the doctor. And when they don't go to the doctor, that lump they ignored becomes ravaging breast cancer with horrific consequences for the woman, the family, the children. It means diabetes delayed is diabetes that is much more severe and hard to treat. It means all sorts of risks for the individual and all sorts of consequences for the family and the stress of knowing you have a healthcare condition and you should go to a doctor but you don't go because you can't afford to go. Or maybe you do buy a policy, but now it is more expensive. Here is what is going to happen on the healthcare exchange in Oregon. The cost is going to go up by 68 percent, an estimated $1,300 per family, because the big ugly betrayal of a bill raised the cost of buying healthcare on the exchange because it didn't extend the premium tax credits that were in the bill previously, that were in the system previously. Well, that is a shocker. If people spend the money there, it may well be that they don't have the money for their rent, may not have their money to purchase the prescription pills that the doctor they went to said they need to buy, or maybe it is an impact on groceries. And I will tell you what else happens. With so many people losing Medicaid--in Oregon, the Oregon Health Plan--and in Oregon, the estimate is 150,000 to 200,000 people will lose Medicaid. Well, now in your rural clinics and hospitals, we have a situation where the revenue that flows to that clinic or hospital drops dramatically. This is from the Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina--real experts on rural healthcare. And what do they say in this study? They say that more than 300 rural hospitals are at risk of either closing or significantly reducing their services because of the big ugly betrayal of a bill. Oregon, four rural hospitals or clinics. Almost every state is listed here. Is that really what we want to do? We want to shut down rural healthcare? And when you shut down a clinic, when you shut down a rural hospital, you aren't just affecting the least affluent who were on the State's Medicaid plan; you are affecting everyone in the community. Every single person loses access to the healthcare when the clinic or hospital shuts down. We lost, 2 years ago, a maternity care ward in Baker City, OR. Tragic for the community. If you are getting ready to have a child, now you are thinking about the fact, to have it delivered, I have to go at least 70 miles down I-84, and I-84 is often closed in winter due to ice and snow. Is that the stress? We want to rip healthcare out of our rural community and put on the stress? And I will tell you what else happens: People simply don't get down the road for the medical treatment that they should be accessing. So here is the story. This is wrong, so we are going to introduce a bill that reverses this and says: Everything that was ripped out of American healthcare by the big ugly betrayal of a bill, we are going to restore it. And we are going to add in the same tax credits people had access to last year. That way, there won't be a 68 percent increase for people buying healthcare on the exchange on Oregon, a $1,300 increase. That way, the middle class will still be able to afford to buy policies, and the less affluent will still have health insurance so they will get the care that they need, and the rural communities will still have the cash flow to be able to keep their clinics and hospitals open. That is the right vision, not the vision of: Families lose and billionaires win. That is the whole vision of the big ugly betrayal of a bill. No, but, instead, a better vision. And what is that better vision? Families thrive and billionaires pay their fair share. Let's fight for that vision.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, on July 1, 2025, the Senate passed H.R. 1, which is nothing more than one big, beautiful, betrayal for Americans across the country. This bill slashes healthcare for 17 million Americans by gutting Medicaid and dismantling the Affordable Care Act. It shuts down rural hospitals, it takes food away from more than 4 million hungry children, it makes college more expensive for families, and it ends clean energy investments to fight climate chaos. All to make tax cuts permanent and help billionaires get richer. And if that isn't bad enough, it destroys the architecture of fiscal discipline put in place 51 years ago and explodes the debt by $3.3 trillion over 10 years and by more than $30 trillion over 30 years-- again, all in pursuit of making billionaires richer. And if those eye-popping debt numbers aren't alarming enough, CBO projects that if interest rates go up by as little as 1 percent, the costs could double. This is the most fiscally irresponsible bill ever to come to the Senate floor and wasn't supposed to be possible after Congress passed the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act. In 1974, addressing the deficit was such a bipartisan priority that the Budget Act created a special filibuster-free fast-track process, known as reconciliation, for the sole purpose of reducing the deficit. That is right, the original purpose of reconciliation was to reduce the deficit. The reconciliation process was built on three pillars. First, a reconciliation bill cannot create deficits in the first 10 years. Second, a reconciliation bill can't increase the deficit in any year after the first 10 years. And third, it should be measured using honest numbers from the independent, nonpartisan, scorekeepers. So how did we go from every Senator voting for a special process for deficit reduction in 1974, to almost every Republican, the party who claims to support fiscal responsibility, supporting a 2025 reconciliation bill that adds tens of trillions to the debt? It started in 1996, when the Republicans wanted to pass tax giveaways for the wealthy and didn't have the required 60 votes so they turned to the reconciliation process. Except they had one problem, reconciliation wasn't supposed to increase the deficit in the first 10 years. Instead of finding a compromise, the Republicans decided to change the rules and allow a reconciliation bill to increase the deficit in the first 10 years. That was the end of pillar one, and the reconciliation process has been abused in the same way ever since--for the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the 2003 Bust tax cuts, and the 2017 Trump cuts. But pillar two and pillar three were still standing. That is, until now. In the Republican's never-ending quest to make billionaires richer, they once again changed the rules. This time in order to hide the true cost of this bill. In doing so, pillar two and pillar three collapsed and all remaining remnants of fiscal discipline with it. During consideration of H.R. 1, Senate Republicans upended decades of law and precedent and allowed the Budget Committee chair to abuse the authority under section 312 of the Budget Act to determine violations of section 313 of the Budget Act, also known as the Byrd Rule. I recognize that section 312 of the Budget Act gives the Budget chair scorekeeping duties. Read in isolation, or with no understanding of past precedent, section 312 could appear to be unlimited. But it is not. The authority in section 312 must be read in combination with other provisions of the Budget Act, with other budget laws, and with Senate precedent, particularly in relationship to the Byrd Rule as it always has been. I do not dispute that when bills are considered under regular order, it is the Budget Committee chair's responsibility to determine what numeric budget points of order lie. However, the Budget Committee chair has never determined whether provisions of a reconciliation bill comply with the Byrd Rule, that has always been the responsibility of the Parliamentarian's office. And why is the Byrd Rule so unique from other budget enforcement tools? It is unique where it applies--just in the Senate, and not the House; it is unique when it applies--only for reconciliation, a fast track process, not regular order; it is unique how it applies and is adjudicated--a formal litigation where the Parliamentarian's office issues guidance based on written and oral arguments and nonpartisan current law scoring estimates. It is not normal budget enforcement. Why is that? Because reconciliation is a fast track process, and Senators, with eyes wide open, voted to impose these strict guardrails on this process. The majority's assertion of 312 authority also runs counter to section 257 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, which defines the current law baseline. The section 257 baseline, as it is called, has been the foundation for the nonpartisan cost estimates for the past 40 years, estimates produced by the independent scorekeepers: the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. The Senate has never, before consideration of H.R. 1, used cost estimates based on something other than the section 257 baseline to assess reconciliation legislation for compliance with the Byrd Rule. To reiterate: in developing their guidance under the Byrd Rule, the Parliamentarian's office has never--never--used cost estimates other than those based on the section 257 baseline. With the majority's actions on H.R.1, Republicans have dealt the remaining pillars of reconciliation a fatal blow. While section 312 has never been used in reconciliation, I agree that it has been used in regular order. But I want to make clear that use of section 312 authority, up until now, has only been invoked when the issue at hand was narrow, technical, often bipartisan, involved relatively small amounts of money, and was done in regular order. For example, during the bipartisan ``side deal'' between Leader Schumer and Speaker Johnson for the fiscal year 2024 appropriations process, Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chair Whitehouse and Republican House Budget Committee Chair Arrington included a direction to CBO to use the Office of Management and Budget's estimate of housing receipts, which allowed for an extra $2.8 billion in offsets for that package. In 2023, when the Agriculture Committee wanted to extend a dairy provision, CBO's initial estimate counted the same spending twice. Again, Democratic Chair Whitehouse and Republican Chair Arrington used the section 312 authority in a bipartisan manner to instruct CBO to conform to the way it originally scored the program. On a bipartisan basis during the fiscal years 2023-2025 appropriations cycles, Budget chairs have directed CBO to score appropriations language related to the Purchase Power and Wheeling activities of three Federal Power Marketing Administrations consistent with a 2000 bipartisan scorekeeping agreement that CBO had recently deviated from. By far the most common use of section 312 authority over the past decade relates to directing CBO to follow legislative text commonly included in omnibus legislation to allocate the budgetary effects to the proper committee. These examples all illustrate how section 312 allows the Budget chair to step in to address scoring issues and resolve ambiguities. In all cases, these efforts have been narrowly applied and concerned discrete polices with limited budgetary impacts. And again, in none of these examples was the Senate considering a reconciliation bill. During debate on H.R.1, the majority has also falsely claimed precedent exists for their actions. I will now explain why each instance the Republicans cite is clearly distinguishable from their current abuse of section 312 authority. Senator Graham, the current chair of the Budget Committee, claimed that former Budget Chair Kent Conrad ``used a new baseline in the budget so he could get the farm bill in the budget.'' This is a mischaracterization. In 2008, during Farm Bill negotiations, Budget Chair Conrad chose not to apply an updated CBO baseline while the bill was in conference committee. Over the course of the prior year, both the House and Senate had passed a Farm Bill and having to change all the numbers during conference negotiations would have undone a year's worth of work. There is also longstanding precedent to not update for new baseline estimates at the last minute when a bill that has been carefully negotiated is nearing completion. Further, Chair Conrad used a current law baseline to measure the farm bill. This was not a scoring manipulation meant to skirt the guardrails of a fast-track process. Second, the majority has repeatedly referred to the Obama administration's supposed use of a current policy baseline to score a tax bill in 2012 that extended most of the expiring Bush tax cuts. At the time, the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget produced a ``current policy'' score that they used when publicly talking about the benefits of the bill. It served a purely messaging purpose. Congress did not--I repeat, did not--use a current policy baseline for official budget enforcement purposes in the Senate. Congress used the current law score from CBO. This bill also passed under regular order, not reconciliation. Another example cited by the majority party is former Budget Chair Bernie Sanders including a scoring rule for childcare and pre- kindergarten legislation in the fiscal year 2022 budget resolution. This scoring rule did not override current law; rather it forced CBO to conform to current law as laid out in section 257. This Head Start scoring rule was isolated to one program that affected $18 billion over 10 years and was never ultimately used. Before it was further amended on the Senate floor, the Senate reconciliation bill added $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the 10-year budget window. By abusing the authority under section 312, the Republicans claim that H.R. 1 actually saves $500 billion. The Finance Committee title alone adds $3.5 trillion to the deficit over the 10- year budget window. But the Republican's claim, alleging section 312 authority, that the Finance title actually saves $300 billion and thus meets its reconciliation instruction. The blatant abuse of claiming section 312 authority to determine H.R. 1 complied with section 313 of the Budget Act is unprecedented, overrides current law, and will forever change the Senate. And it was all done to further an agenda of families lose, billionaires win.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2863 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. MERKLEY. Colleagues, a bipartisan story: In 1984, four Senators came together to reduce the risk of war. All four were veterans of World War II: two Republicans--Mark Hatfield, a Navy lieutenant, and Ted Stevens, Army Air Corps pilot; and two Democrats--John Glenn, a Navy fighter pilot, and Sparky Matsunaga with the 100th Infantry Battalion. They knew the horror of war, and they resolved to ensure that conflict resolution and diplomacy would always be tools available to reduce the risk of war; to resolve world challenges; to reduce the risk of American servicemen and servicewomen dying in such wars. So they created the U.S. Institute of Peace. It was signed into law by President Reagan. Marine Major General Zinni testified to the effectiveness--often unseen, often behind the scenes--of their work in Asia, in the Balkans, in Africa, and in the Middle East. Tonight, let's channel that bipartisan support for reducing the risk of war, saving the lives of our service men and women, and sustain funding for the Institute of Peace.

Mr. MERKLEY. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. My colleagues from Wisconsin and Michigan have spoken to the destructive nature of this rescission because of the programs that will be canceled midstream. I have seen, so often, the power of our international aid programs in assisting in nutrition and fighting tuberculosis and malaria and AIDS across the world. But what many may not understand is that the small fraction--less than one-third of 1 percent--that we spend on those programs has an incredible yield not just in doing good works around the world, but have been doing good for America because of relationships that are forged through those programs. The respect that is forged through those programs comes back to benefit us in all kinds of cooperation on a huge range of diplomatic goals--be they economic; be they trade; be they issues of national security. That is, in fact, what is referred to as ``soft power,'' and soft power is at risk with this strategy of canceling these programs. I think about rural Oregon, where so often the warnings on floods or fires is broadcast over the public radio system, and all kinds of different channels have different programs that people become quite attached to. So there are simply good humor programs that are fun to listen to, and others are good music programs. But a lot of it is good news programs--things deeply appreciated throughout the State but often harder to access in rural Oregon. So I am concerned about this concerted attack on rural America. First, my colleagues across the aisle say: We are going to make it very, very hard for people in rural America to get healthcare if they are on Medicaid. And then, without Medicaid financing and paying for services, you lose an entire hospital or you lose an entire clinic. The whole rural community is profoundly damaged because everyone's healthcare is affected. An attack on rural America continues through this bill. But what I really want to talk about now is to give a sense of how this bill is an attack on the separations of power that we all here in the Senate have taken a constitutional oath to defend. When I first came to Congress as an intern for Senator Hatfield, we were celebrating our 200th anniversary. That is so long ago, 49 years ago. And Senator Hatfield had a saying about appropriators, and that was that appropriators--that is, those Members of the Senate who served on the spending committee--they were first appropriators, and then they were Republicans or Democrats. That is how strongly they felt about their shared responsibility to manage the power of the purse. The power of the purse--article I, section 9, of the Constitution says: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law. And here is the thing. The Congress is vested with that power, but when you decide how to spend money, you are really talking about your values. So those who serve on the Appropriations Committee were doing their best to enact the values of our country, be they investment in healthcare, in housing, in education; investments that created good- paying jobs, investments that helped small communities thrive, investments that helped build infrastructure across the country. That was the responsibility that was so cherished. And there was a term for those who chaired the 12 subcommittees on Appropriations, and that term--the colloquial term--was that they were the Senate's ``cardinals.'' It was taken from the Catholic Church, where cardinals helped steer the church on the right path. And the cardinals of the Senate had the responsibility of steering our Nation, through our spending decisions, on the right path for the people of America. This is, in fact, a key part of government by and for the people: that shared responsibility to spend that money wisely. But even in the early years that I was here in the Senate, we were starting to see signs of the breakdown of that relationship. In the last conversation I had with Senator Hatfield before he passed away, he said: What happened to the Appropriations Committee? Now, Senator Hatfield was a Republican, and he had been chair of the Appropriations Committee. And he said: I worked so closely with Dan Inouye of Hawaii, and I worked so closely with Patty Murray of Washington. What has happened to that collaboration? That was several years ago. But as we have watched, over time, some significant things are happening that we should understand as Senators. In the not so distant past, you have tried to have a fair allocation of revenue laws that raised money, and then, as you filled the Treasury, the question became: How shall we spend it? So the responsibility shifted from the Finance Committee to the Appropriations Committee. But, over time, it has become more and more popular to spend money for programs through tax credits and deductions. So much of the spending that was in the Appropriations Committee has shifted to the Finance Committee. And then it became more and more popular to shift discretionary spending, over which the Appropriations Committee has control, into mandatory spending. If it is mandatory, it is not a decision decided by the appropriators. And then, on top of all that, we started to build up more and more national debt, and so all the money that went to interest on that debt is money unavailable to be spent on basic programs of healthcare, housing, education, investments that create good-paying jobs across America, infrastructure, security. That money isn't so available because it is tied up paying for interest. So these trends are changing the role of those Senate cardinals--the chairs and the ranking members of the subcommittees who help guide us in the 12 different sections of spending. And, I will say, that problem of the debt growing, that is very significant. Back in 1974, Democrats and Republicans came together and said: Let's have an architecture to ensure that we are very responsible and don't run up massive debt. We will have a filibuster-free pathway for one purpose, and that is to reduce deficits--only to reduce deficits. And then my colleagues, 22 years later, across the aisle--my Republican colleagues--said: Well, you know, we want a filibuster-free pathway to do tax cuts which will increase the deficit. And they brought in a new Parliamentarian in order to get a ruling that they could do the exact opposite of what 100 Senators had agreed to. So more and more payments diverted into interest. We had that Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump calls it--or as many of us call it, the ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill.'' You know the one I am talking about, the one where families lose and billionaires win that was passed 2 weeks ago. Well, this rescission bill is a continuation of that vision of families lose--particularly rural families, particularly all Americans, who lose out on the advantages of soft power that we exercise around the world--and billionaires win. But it is a direct attack, as well, on the immediate process of Democrats and Republicans working together on the Appropriations Committee in this really sacred responsibility of exercising the power of the purse. Let's examine that word ``rescission.'' It is a fancy term. What does it really mean? A rescission is a repeal of a previous spending law. A law was passed. It spent a certain amount of money on a certain program or on a certain Agency. And a repeal of it--that is all that fancy term means. And so the spending process is one where those members of the spending committee come together--Democrats and Republicans together-- and they work out a bipartisan bill. And in that bill, last year, for fiscal year 2025, 11 out of 12 bills that came out of the spending committee, out of the Appropriations Committee, were unanimous or nearly unanimous. Where do you look for that type of bipartisan cooperation in Congress anymore? Well, last year, in the Appropriations Committee, 11 out of 12 bills passing unanimously or nearly unanimously out of committee. But what is happening right now is consideration of undoing that bipartisan work with a partisan repeal. Now, just kind of stick with me here about a normal deal. You make an agreement with a friend: I will do this if you do that. Well, everyone kind of understands that is a partnership. You have an agreement. But what if one person bails on that agreement later? It is a betrayal. But bailing on the agreement is exactly what this bill is. Democrats and Republicans together made those spending decisions, and now they are being undone in a purely partisan fashion. They are breaking the deal. They are going back on the agreement. They are breaking their word. That is pretty shameful, and it is why my colleagues have been saying: Don't do it--because it is wrong, and it has a huge impact going forward. Once somebody you have made an agreement with breaks their end of the bargain, are you going to make a second bargain with that same individual, knowing that they bailed on the first deal? The answer is probably not. So how will we come together and continue what we did a year ago--11 out of 12 bills passing out of the Senate committee in a hugely bipartisan fashion--if one side comes back and breaks the deal? I would invite my Republican colleagues: Come to the floor and explain to me how breaking the deal that you were participating in a year ago is an honorable thing to do, and explain to me how we are going to do future deals if you are breaking the existing deal. Now, never in the history of the Senate has there been a partisan repeal--never. This is the first time. Why? Because we understood together that a deal is a deal. That doesn't mean the President doesn't have influence. Hey, that was just about last year's bill. The President lays out a budget for the next year and has a huge influence. The President can veto the next set of spending bills or any one of them. But once it is locked into law--passed by the House, passed by the Senate, signed by a President--to come back and undo that in this partisan fashion, you are breaking the honor code that has made bipartisan collaboration so successful. That is why you shouldn't do it. That is why you should vote no. Now, this question of how this affects our Constitution is significant because, as I cited, the Constitution assigns the responsibility of the power of the purse to Congress in article I, section 9. But there have been occasions before when Presidents said: We would like to actually have that power of the purse. And the President who really pursued that aggressively was President Nixon, in the 1970s. President Nixon signed a law about how money would be spent but then decided not to spend it and withheld the money from being spent on housing, on education, on highways, on agriculture, and on pollution prevention programs. Well, of course, this was appealed on a constitutional basis because the Constitution doesn't give the President the power to impound funds. Congress, by law--and by law signed by a President--had said: Here is what must be spent on these programs. And the President came along, and President Nixon said: I don't want to do it. I am not going to do it. Take me to court. So they went to court. And it didn't actually make it to the Supreme Court until after President Nixon was out of office, after having resigned because of the Watergate scandal. But, in a way, this was really almost a bigger scandal. This was an attack on the Constitution. So what did the Court say in Train v. New York? And the piece of spending that made it to the Supreme Court was related to spending on water treatment systems, of all things. And the Court said: You cannot do this. You cannot impound funds. It is unconstitutional because the Constitution assigns that responsibility to Congress. Now, if the law had been written by Congress to say the President has flexibility between here and here, maybe a modest amount of flexibility may have survived the constitutional test. But the idea that the President could just simply ignore the law? No. The Court said no. Then there was a second test. The second test had to do, in 1996, with Congress, where Republicans controlled the House and they controlled the Senate. They decided: You know how we will tackle the deficit now--now that we have destroyed the 1974 law that said the fast track can only be used for reducing the deficit and how we switched that and said it could be used for increasing the deficit--now we have destroyed that, and we have a new plan, and we will just simply say to the President: You can line-item veto. Again, the court weighed in, and the court said: Hell no, no you can't, because the Constitution does not say you can delegate to the President powers the Constitution assigns to you. It assigns it to us. That is our responsibility. So, again, the core concept here is that bipartisan work in forging a spending bill should not be done by one partner bailing on the deal that was agreed to the previous year. Now, there is a formal way to go about doing this in a bipartisan fashion, and that is, each spending bill, in addition to saying what we will spend next year, can contain agreements on undoing the spending from the previous year because it is the same set of people saying: We assigned funds last year, but now we see they are not needed. Maybe the President pointed out that they are not needed. We will undo it, but we will undo it in a bipartisan fashion in the Appropriations Committee in that same sense of a partnership working together. So rescissions, yes. We do them all the time. But they are done on a bipartisan basis in the spending committee, not in a partisan special bill, one-sided, basically bailing on the deal struck last year-- because this strategy is a recipe for disaster, destroying the bond of trust on a deal made with each side having its priorities in a bill and then one side bailing on it--because of that, it has never happened before, and it should never happen now. Mr. President, let's step back from the immediate loyalty test the President of the United States has put forward. The President said: It is a loyalty test. I want you to do this because I want you to bend the knee to me. That is not the responsibility of a Senator of the United States of America, to bend the knee to the executive branch. The Constitution gives us the responsibility to design how the executive branch functions. It gives us, the Senate, the responsibility to fund the programs and the services. The way you lose government of, by, and for the people is to have an acquiescent legislature that stops doing its job and just says ``We will respond; we will just do what the President asks'' and a deferential court. Right now, we have both. But we took an oath to the Constitution, each one of us, to honor that oath. Do not engage for the first time ever in creating this recipe for disaster of our bipartisan responsibilities.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges to my intern for her shadow days on the following dates: Malia Perry for July 23, 2025.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive section 313 of that act for the purpose of the pending amendment. I ask for the yeas and nays. Vote on Motion

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wouldn't have much dispute for subsidizing the out-of-pocket expenses of our public school teachers. When I was a child, my dad, the mechanic, said: Son, because we are so fortunate to live in America, if you go through the doors of that public school and you study hard, you can do just about anything. So I am certainly a lifetime fan of public education. But in addition to expanding this for public school teachers, it has a new policy of expanding it to homeschool teachers. Well, that is quite a new policy to put into a reconciliation bill. It really should be in the Education Committee and debated and bring people to bear. I am not immediately struck that that is a great idea, but certainly, as a new policy, it should go through committee. For that reason--for that reason--I think I will do a point of order on this particular amendment. Point of Order Mr. President, I raise a point of order that the amendment violates section 4106 of the fiscal year 2018 Budget Resolution, H. Con. Res. 71, of the 115th Congress, known as the Senate pay-as-you-go point of order.

Mr. MERKLEY. I appeal the ruling of the Chair, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it has been an extraordinary period here in the Senate--not a good one because it is ``families lose and billionaires win.'' We kept advocating: Join us in a better vision for America in which families thrive and billionaires--they pay their fair share for a change. Thank you so much to the floor staff for your steadfast support through the night. The Parliamentarian team, led by Elizabeth MacDonough, has been amazing. But I want to give particular thanks to the budget team, the revenue team, and the minority leader's team, who worked so carefully together--competently, expertly. But the result--the result is bad for America. We need to come back and have a vision in which we lift up opportunity and hope for everyone in America, not this strategy of more wealth for the best off while cutting the programs of healthcare--16 million people losing healthcare to fund tax breaks for billionaires; 4 million children going hungry to fund tax breaks for billionaires. This is morally wrong, and we will keep fighting to the very end to say we can put America on a better course for this generation and the next.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2446 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, and in this letter, it notes that the baseline was prepared--the alternative baseline--based on a request made by the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget. But the letter goes on to say this: The CBO estimates that enacting this title [VII] would increase the deficit by $3.5 trillion over the 2025-3034 period. Clearly, that amount, done by honest numbers from CBO, exceeds the budget resolution level, and, therefore, we should not affirm the ruling of the Chair. It is said in this ruling, I just heard, that precedent provides a foundation for this. But, in fact, the ability of the Chair to create a phony baseline has never been used in reconciliation, not ever, and, in fact, the example cited over Head Start--Head Start--that never appeared in any budget reconciliation. And, in fact, that conversation about Jeffrey Zients that we heard from the majority leader, that, too, was absolutely wrong. Current law was used for estimating the cost of that bill.

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

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to cut any part of this ``Big Ugly Bill'' that would force rural hospitals to limit their services or actually close their doors. I have released a list of more than 300 rural hospitals across the country at risk of closing or stopping services because of any major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Today, that is what Republicans are guaranteeing with a $1 trillion cut to our healthcare system that they would create in this bill. My Republican colleagues' so-called Medicaid cuts replacement fund is like giving aspirin to a cancer patient. It is not enough. It is pathetically inadequate to deal with the healthcare crisis Republicans are creating here today on the Senate floor. No billionaire tax break or Donald Trump pat-on-the-back is worth the risk of people's lives. Vote yes on this motion. Stop these healthcare cuts.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I raise a point of order. The amendment violates the Byrd rule, section 313(b)(1)(D) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Once again, Republicans have chosen the comforting embrace of partisan politics, but here are a few facts to cut through the noise: Zero Federal dollars are spent on health coverage. Second, this policy dictates how States spent their own funds. What happened to States' rights? Third, this policy violates ``innocent until proven guilty'' because it even talks about those charged with a crime. But most importantly, what this amendment says is that if one person, despite State law, through a bureaucratic mistake is receiving funds, then the whole State pays a price and has their rate on expanded Medicaid changed from 90 percent to 80 percent. This is a backdoor for 41 States--which includes the majority of Republican States--to reduce the Federal mandate from 90 percent to 80 percent, with huge, huge impact on the coverage of individuals across this country. Haven't we done enough damage already to the fundamental principle of healthcare without this collective punishment of American citizens by reducing the State funding from 90 percent to 80 percent? I renew my point of order.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this amendment is about defending the integrity of the legislative process. Every now and then, a new strategy creates either the appearance of a conflict of interest or a real conflict of interest. That is the case with elected officials who promote and/or sell cryptocoins in which they have a personal financial stake. These digital coins cost little to make, so the buyers know they are enriching the elected officials who are selling them. Some people believe, therefore, that perhaps they can influence government policy by buying these coins, enrich the individuals who serve in government, and, therefore, change policy. In fact, a buyer of $2 million in meme coins announced that he bought the coins to get favorable consideration in a change in trade policy. My friends, the sale of cryptocoins by any of us for a financial benefit is corrupting our responsibility to govern by and for the people. Vote aye to defend the integrity of our ``we the people'' government.

Mr. MERKLEY. This is a 51-year tradition of the Senate for honest numbers--

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the CBO letter of June 29 to the ranking member of the Budget Committee be printed in the Record.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President. I would like to thank the Democratic staff of the Senate Budget Committee for all their hard work and dedication over this past month challenging the most egregious parts of this bill. Staff includes: Ben Ward, Mike Jones, Jill Harrelson, Josh Smith, Tyler Evilsizer, Melissa Kaplan-Pistiner, Sion Bell, Misha Rafiq, Brian Lyons, Anna Barnes, Connor Jennings, Ethan Rosenkranz, Andrew Cobain, Anirudh Srirangam, Fiona Forrester, Lauran Pauley, Caitlin Rowley, and Alycia Cooper.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. You mentioned the use of section 312, which gives some flexibility to resolve, as you put it, minor issues on a bipartisan basis to correct an issue, a technical issue. In those cases you mentioned, were those on a reconciliation bill?

Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator from Rhode Island yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. No, they were not. In fact, that power has never been used on a reconciliation bill because the following section, 313, gives very specific instructions. It says each provision must be costed out for its impact on both outlays, the spending side, or revenue, should it be a revenue measure. If you are saying ``Well, how do I do that?'' you say ``Well, if we pass this provision, what will it cost as compared to not passing this provision, not having it in the bill?'' That is a comparison to current law. This ability of the Budget chair--and actually the law says the Budget Committee--to correct technical issues or narrow issues on a bipartisan basis basically solves snarly little budgeting questions, like on the dairy program that you mentioned. It was never used on reconciliation, ever; never used on a broad basis, ever; never used to create a lie about what a bill costs in this fashion. Now, we are turning to the Senator from Maryland, who was ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee for 6 years, so he brings a lot of experience and knowledge about the budget process. Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator yield for a question?