Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 473 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, colleagues, the dream of home ownership is dying, and this is a big deal. Your home is your castle. This is a major source of wealth for middle-class families. And a factor killing the dream of home ownership is private equity and hedge funds buying up homes all across America. In fact, ordinary families can't compete with their all-cash, no inspection offers. They are driving up the prices to buy homes. They are driving up the rent. So today, let's take a step toward restoring the dream of homeownership. This is a deficit-neutral reserve fund that creates incentives for private-equity hedge funds to ease their way out of this market so that families can continue to be homeowners in America, their children can continue to be homeowners. Let's not let this dream die on our watch. I encourage you to vote for this because houses should be homes for families, not a profit center for Wall Street.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, families lose, billionaires win. That is the proposition at the heart of the Republican budget resolution. Now, this plan is going to be explored tonight through a series of amendments. As the American people watch how we vote on these amendments, it will become clearer and clearer what it is all about; families lose, billionaires win. We will see tonight that Democrats vote against irreparable increases to the deficit, and Republicans vote to explode the deficit. We will see tonight, Democrats vote against tax giveaways to the billionaires, and Republicans vote for tax giveaways to the billionaires. We will see tonight, Democrats vote again and again to protect programs that support families while Republicans vote time and time again to slash those programs, those programs that families depend on to be on their feet and to thrive, to move into the middle class, to move beyond the middle class, to know with confidence that their children will have a strong foundation for growing up. That is what we will see tonight; families lose, and billionaires win. Democrats will fight this terrible vision for America in every single way we can. Now, our Republican colleagues earlier on the floor said: Oh, no, no. This bill is nothing except a little bit about border security and national security. If that were true, then why isn't this a conversation in the spending committee, the Appropriations Committee? If that were true, why did our Republican colleagues repeatedly block bipartisan border and Defense bills? Last year, the Appropriations Committee passed a strong bipartisan defense bill. Let's pass it. Last year, the Senate negotiated a bipartisan border deal, and Donald Trump, the candidate, killed it saying he wanted to exploit the issue of immigration on the campaign trail. Well, the campaign is over. There is a path now for that same bipartisan bill on the border. All of this makes it absolutely clear that this bill is not about border and defense. This bill is all about this; families losing, billionaires winning. This bill has a budget table that relays that they are going to slash $1 trillion in programs for families in just the last 6 months of this fiscal year--between now and September 30--and to do so, to fund more tax giveaways to megamillionaires and billionaires, cut the programs for families to fund tax cuts for billionaires. That is what this is about. We saw that also last Wednesday in the Budget Committee. Democrats offered amendment after amendment to protect the programs, and what did we see to protect against the rising cost of groceries? Democrats voted for that protection; Republicans rejected it. Make sure that we don't lose the tax credits that enable the middle class to buy health insurance on the exchange? Democrats defended those credits; Republicans voted against it. Attack Medicaid, healthcare for the poor? Democrats voted to protect Medicaid, and Republicans voted against it. Lower the price of prescription drugs so we don't pay more than people in other countries? Democrats voted for that protection; Republicans rejected it. And on and on. Renting or buying a home, controlling the costs? Democrats voted to defend and lower housing costs; Republicans rejected it. Making college more expensive? Democrats said: No way. We voted against that. Republicans rejected it so they could raise costs of college loans and childcare. That is what this bill is about; families lose, and billionaires win. Republicans rejected every single amendment to help families stand on their feet and thrive, and families are going to pay a much higher price. In fact, this budget resolution opens the door to higher prices on groceries. That is Trumpflation. Trumpflation has arrived. This budget opens the door to making healthcare more expensive, both for low-income families and for middle-class families. Trumpflation, this budget opens the door to making college more expensive. I was the first in my family to go to college. It was a really big deal that we found a way to be able to afford to go. My family helped out, and I worked my way all through college. Making it more expensive, that is wrong. Trumpflation has arrived in the form of making college more expensive--all of this strategy to increase the costs for Americans. Boy, I am not getting any calls to my office. Are you getting any calls to your office, colleagues? Saying we want to raise the cost for Americans? Didn't I hear Trump on the campaign trail saying he was all about lowering costs? But tonight, this bill is about Trumpflation increasing the cost of goods to ordinary Americans. Yes, it is about decreasing the cost to billionaires through massive tax cuts. This bill is all about helping the billionaire team. But those thousands of phone calls I have gotten--some days I have had over 2,000 phone calls--not one--not one single one said: We want Trumpflation. Not one single one said: We want tax cuts for billionaires. Not one single call at 2,000 a day said: We want you to cut the programs that enable families to be on their feet in healthcare and housing and education and childcare. Candidate Trump is a different person from President Trump. Candidate Trump said: I am running to fight for families. But now who is he fighting for? He is fighting for the megamillionaires and the billionaires. This is a great betrayal. And this connection exists between cutting the programs for families and funding tax giveaways to those megamillionaires and billionaires, and we have seen this movie before. We saw it in the 2017 strategy during the last Trump administration. They did a tax bill and almost all the money went to the wealthiest Americans. So this isn't some, like, fiction about President Trump. This is a clear replay of the Republican plan. They did it before, and they are doing it again. Now, you probably heard the expression during your life: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Well, America, you are getting fooled a second time. This is the great betrayal. Let's not let that happen. We will fight it here, but it is going to take American citizens rising up to their feet, getting off of the couch, joining organizations, making their voice heard. That is what is going to make the difference in the course of what happens here in Congress. It is the voice of the people on the streets, as well as the battle we lead inside this Chamber, that is going to save us from Trumpflation, that is going to save us from the plan that attacks families and feathers the nests of billionaires. This connection between cutting programs for families and increasing tax giveaways for billionaires, it is actually in the Republican bill on the House side. They made it explicit. This House language says for every additional dollar they cut from the safety net, they can give away an additional dollar to billionaires in tax cuts. It is in the Republican bill in the House just down the hall. That is a pretty remarkable and bold thing to lay out for all of America to read. There is an additional factor here in the Republican plan, and that is to run the Nation deeper into debt. We have seen this play again before. Each of these bars represents an administration. The first President Bush administration, the Clinton administration, George W. Bush, his 8 years, Obama's 8 years, Trump's 4 years, Biden's 4 years, and what you see is the difference between the deficit their first year in office and their last year in office. So what happened over the course of H.W. Bush's 4 years is the deficit went up. What you see in Clinton's 8 years is the annual deficit went down. His last deficit was not even a deficit, it was a surplus. George W. Bush came along and said: Let's run that deficit right back up, and he did it, 8 years; a lot more deficit in his eighth year than his first year. Obama came along and set fiscal discipline. Let's lower that deficit, and he lowered it year after year from his first year to his eighth year. And then we come to the first Trump administration, and he just blew the top off it all. Talk about the biggest contributor, the biggest deficits, the biggest contributors to national debt, it is the first Trump administration. And along comes the Biden administration and says: We have got to lower those deficits; and in his 4 years, his fourth deficit was much lower than his first. Now we are seeing Trump II, and this budget plan tonight, that is this bar. This is going back up. Maybe not as large to be planned as Trump I in terms of that, but absolutely going in the wrong direction. So it is a mystery. My Republican colleagues, they campaign as fiscally conservative. They say they are going to lower the deficit, and every single time they fool us. They come in here, they cut the taxes for the richest Americans, revenues proceed to fail to compensate, and they run up the deficit. And now they are going to do it again if we let this budget resolution pass. So let's not let it pass. Let's oppose it. Republican colleagues, come and join us in fiscal responsibility and take this budget resolution that is laying out a vision of more and more deficits and more and more debt and put it in the woodchipper. We have been hearing a lot about the woodchipper. Take this plan that cuts programs for families and put it in the woodchipper. Take this plan that gives tax giveaways to the richest Americans--the megamillionaires and the billionaires--and put it in the woodchipper because it is wrong for America to attack the programs for families in order to fund tax giveaways to billionaires. President Trump has said he wants a ``big, beautiful''--beautiful-- ``bill.'' But you know what? There is nothing beautiful about the bill that is on the floor tonight. There is nothing beautiful about destroying the programs families depend on. There is nothing beautiful about using those cuts to fund tax cuts for billionaires. There is nothing beautiful about running up the deficits and debt Republican- style that they do every single time. What we have right now is not government by and for the people. What we have right now is by and for the billionaires. President Trump made that very clear at his inaugural address. Who do we have standing right behind him? Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire of Facebook; at this end, the scowl on his face, Elon Musk, CEO of so many companies, including Tesla. Who do we have? Jeff Bezos of Amazon, one of the richest men in the world along with Elon Musk. And we have Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, the mother company of Google. By and for billionaires, that is what that is all about. So Democrats will not rest tonight until we vote on each of our amendments to protect working families. We will not rest tonight till we vote on each of our amendments to stop the tax giveaways to billionaires. And tonight, Democrats will be fighting by ourselves, inviting our Republican colleagues to join us. But we will not be fighting for ourselves alone; we are fighting for the American family. This Republican budget, it is the great betrayal; and we, the Democrats, will fight to stop it. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this evening we had a vote on the motion to proceed to the Republican budget resolution, and that passed. It was a simple majority vote. And this budget resolution has a very simple, straightforward theme: Families lose, and billionaires win. The plan is simple: Slash programs for families, give massive tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires, and run the country deeper into debt. That is not a plan that my constituents back home would vote for or support. They don't want to see the programs that enable families to stand on their feet be slashed or destroyed. They don't think that our megamillionaires and billionaires need more massive giveaways, and they certainly don't want to see the debt run up in the process. But that is where we are. Now, my Republican colleagues might say: Well, not so fast. This bill is really about securing our border and national defense. But don't let that fool you. Senate Democrats are happy to entertain an appropriations bill to address these issues. In fact, we had a strong, bipartisan defense spending bill in the Appropriations Committee last year. Senate Democrats also supported a bipartisan immigration bill, and that was just a year ago May; but the bill was killed. Bipartisan, negotiated bill was killed when then-Candidate Trump said: Senate Republicans, I don't want you to fix the problem. I want to have this as a campaign element, the chaos at the border, so don't fix it. So it was killed. So you have Democrats ready to work on national defense, as we have in the past, and willing to work on security at the border. So this bill is not about that. This bill is about this: Slashing programs for families, giving massive tax giveaways to the richest Americans. That is the real soul of the Republican budget resolution. Now, this resolution proposes over $9 trillion in cuts to programs. Just look at the budget table that accompanies the resolution. You will see it in there. Basically, it has a line: unallocated cuts, $9 trillion--and that includes cutting a trillion dollars out of the programs in the last 6 months of this year. One of our colleagues on the Republican side did an amendment that showed what those cuts of a trillion dollars would do--let alone 9 trillion--and it would, basically, wipe out five major programs and cut another five major programs in half at the end of this year. So that vision of massive cuts to programs families depend on is right at the heart of this budget resolution. And this really is the great betrayal because Candidate Trump campaigned on the vision of helping families. But now that he is in office, he is reverting to the same plan he had in the last year of his first administration, which is slashing programs for families and giving massive tax cuts to megamillionaires and billionaires. We have seen this movie before, and the movie's director is a man named Russell Vought. He was head of OMB in the Trump administration the first time around. And who has Trump nominated to put in place of the Director of OMB and now been confirmed by the Senate? The same man, Russell Vought. And do we see the architecture of this plan anywhere else? Well, yes, we do. It is called Project 2025--that plan that President Trump said he didn't know anything about. But it was his Director of OMB who was the architect of the plan, and it is that plan that is being implemented right now. And what is that plan? That plan is the great betrayal: slash the programs for families, give tax giveaways to the richest Americans. Now, in the Budget Committee, we had a chance to examine this plan and propose amendments to it. We proposed 44 amendments, and all of them were voted down on a party line. So that was quite disappointing because, really, what we were about was to say, Hey, to our Republican colleagues, if you want to protect families and this program isn't really about slashing programs for families, then vote with us to protect those programs. Well, so we put up amendment after amendment to protect those programs. One was about the cost of groceries. Democrats said: Don't allow provisions into this bill that are going to drive up the cost of groceries. Democrats voted for protection; Republicans voted it down. Democrats said: Don't put provisions into this bill that are going to cut Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security or, in any other way, make healthcare more expensive. Democrats voted for that protection. Republicans rejected it. Democrats put forward an amendment for provisions that would--against provisions that would raise the cost of rent or raise the cost of buying a home. Republicans on the committee rejected it. Democrats put forward an amendment to protect or hopefully lower the cost of drugs, and Republicans rejected it. Democrats put forward an amendment that said: Don't make changes in the law when this bill comes back that will increase the cost of going to college. Republicans rejected it. Protecting the National School Lunch Program? Republicans rejected it. Protecting families against an increase in childcare? Republicans rejected it. Protecting the investment in research for cancer, Alzheimer's, and other lifesaving major medical measures? Protect the funding for that? Republicans rejected it. Now, if this bill wasn't about slashing all those programs, why would Republicans vote against all those things? If they actually wanted to protect families--the programs that provide the foundation for families to be on their feet, to thrive, to move in the middle class, to prosper--why would they vote to open the door to slashing all those programs? Then we see that they are racing their House counterparts. At 10 a.m. last week, when we considered in committee the Republican Senate budget resolution, the House proceeded to put forward--they are just down the hallway through this door over here--the House--at the end of the hallway--put forward their own budget resolution, which is very, very similar except in magnitude. The House bill provides even more tax cuts for the richest Americans than does the Senate bill. So the stakes couldn't be higher. Where are we headed? Are we headed towards a bill this year that is going to make the rich richer, increase income inequality, proceed to help the wealthy run this country by and for the powerful and undermine the vision of government by and for the people? That is exactly where the Republican budget resolution is headed. If you kind of want to make sure that you really understand how true this is, think about the fact that the last budget presented by President Trump in his first term, his first 4 years, which was written by his current OMB Director, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought--that had exactly the same architecture. It proposed slashing $1 trillion over a decade from programs for families. It slashed healthcare and housing for seniors and veterans, slashed funding for hospitals and community health centers, slashed school meal programs and food pantries, slashed Head Start and police and firefighting grants, slashed tax relief for families and veterans and retirement--$1 trillion in the last budget. But that was $1 trillion over 10 years. What Republicans are now proposing is $1 trillion over 1 year--just 1 year. It is only actually half a year. There are only 6 months left in fiscal year 2025. When President Trump ran, when he was Candidate Trump, he talked about reducing the costs for families, but everything he is doing now is sending costs upwards. It is Trumpflation. Trumpflation has arrived in the United States of America. Instead of slashing the price of groceries, he is proposing programs that will drive up costs for hard- working families. That is Trumpflation. This budget resolution opens the door to making healthcare more expensive for families--not cheaper, more expensive. That is Trumpflation. This budget opens the door to making college more expensive by changing how college loans are administered. That is Trumpflation. This budget opens the door to unleashing carbon dioxide and methane pollution that drive climate chaos, that will drive up the cost of flood and fire insurance across America. In the West, it is fire insurance. In the gulf in Florida, the Southern States, it is flood insurance. That is Trumpflation. This budget opens the door to increasing the cost of childcare-- something working families really struggle with. It is Trumpflation. It opens the door to increasing the cost of prescription drugs. Trumpflation has arrived. In each of these areas, we said: Don't do it. We said: Don't proceed to put into this budget resolution opening these doors to these assaults on American families. Democrats said it in every way we could, and Republicans said: No. We want to cut those programs. We are not closing those doors. I know American families don't agree with this vision. My office--the office of every Senator here, every Senator represented by their desk in this room--every office is receiving thousands of phone calls. I had a couple of days last week that I got over 2,000 phone calls from Oregon. That is an incredible number. And we had so many members of the team working, trying to answer every call live, but we couldn't keep up. Even though my team has a highly coordinated ability to expand the number of people answering the phone, we couldn't keep up because people are so disturbed about this vision for America, this vision of attacking families and gold-plating billionaires. That is not an American vision, but it is the vision of President Trump. Then we have the second piece--the tax giveaways. The Senate budget resolution proposes $3.7 trillion in tax giveaways. The megamillionaires and billionaires get most of that, just like in the first Trump tax cut proposal, tax giveaway proposal. It was something like 80 percent that went to the top 10 percent in America. Well, I know that Elon Musk doesn't need more of our Treasury money. I know that the richest Americans, the megabillionaires, don't need more of our Treasury and to run up our debt. But that is what this proposal does. The House budget resolution goes further, proposing $4.5 trillion in tax giveaways. Over the weekend, there was article after article of Republicans saying: That is not enough. We have all these tax giveaways we want to do for the powerful, and we can't fit them all into $4.5 trillion. We need more space. If you think I am exaggerating, take a look at the budget put out by House Republicans last week. They included a mechanism to guarantee that they follow through on their tax cut programs to families--they linked the tax cuts directly to the program cuts for families. They said that for every additional dollar they cut from safety net programs, they will be able to give away an additional dollar to billionaires. They put that into their plan, that these two things are linked--cuts to programs for families--the more you cut it, the more you can do tax giveaways to the wealthy. It doesn't stop there. All of this is going to result in higher deficits here in the United States. My Republican colleagues are famous for campaigning on fiscal responsibility but not delivering. This chart shows the difference between the first year of each Republican administration and the last year in terms of deficits. If you are looking at H.W. Bush, he had more deficits in his last year than he did in his first. Clinton went the other direction; Clinton dropped the deficit year after year. In fact, in the end, he produced a surplus at the end of his 8 years. Along comes the second Bush Presidency. He drives up the deficits from his first year to his last year, over those 8 years. In comes Obama. Obama decreases them. In comes Trump in his first Presidency, and he blows the lid off the whole thing--like a bomb to the deficit and a bomb to the debt. Then comes in Biden, and the deficits drop down again. This is the pattern. You have seen this movie before. It is often said: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Well, Americans, you have been fooled time and time again, and you are being fooled again, and it is all embedded in this budget resolution that is on the floor of the Senate right now. I find it just so remarkable that Democrats deliver on decreasing deficits, but somehow, through the magic of marketing--selling the sizzle instead of the steak; giving the talk instead of doing the walk--Republicans somehow still present themselves as fiscally conservative. I encourage my colleagues to say that we are going to keep putting a spotlight on the fact that deficits are going to go up under President Trump, just as they have under every previous Republican President going back decades. I would like to think that we could come together as Democrats and Republicans and say: Yes, there are efficiencies to be found in programs, but it is also absurd to be giving away the Treasury to the richest Americans. But if you want a symbol of where this administration is coming from, just take a look at the picture of President Trump doing his inaugural address--also just down this hallway in the Rotunda. All you see is him backed up by one billionaire after another, four in a row right behind him. They love this idea because, after all, there is never enough money for a billionaire. Well, I can tell you, where I live, billionaires do not struggle. Where I live, families struggle. They struggle with healthcare. They struggle with housing--housing--that vision of home ownership for your children. My father was a union mechanic. My mother, when she had children, stayed at home. She worked in the home, did all kinds of activities with her kids. On a single mechanic's income, you could easily buy a home, but not today, not a single income. No. The price of homes is through the roof. The dream of home ownership is dying. Why? Because hedge funds are buying up single-family housing across America and because we haven't invested enough in creating starter homes, incentivizing the building of starter homes. In the Budget Committee, we had a proposal that said: Make it easier to put legislation forward that would discourage hedge funds from buying up single-family housing. They have been hard at it since 2009 when all those hundreds of thousands--millions--of homes went into foreclosure because of banking regulations creating a massive national fiasco. Every Democrat said: Yes, make it easier to take on the issue of home ownership. Every Republican said no. I don't like that this is a partisan outcome. I would love to see us partner to help out American families, partner across the aisle for families. But we have an administration that is all about the rich and making them richer, and it is all about slashing the programs families depend on. We have yet another threat to families. That threat is the concentration of authoritarian power in the White House in a way we haven't seen in the entire history--almost 250 years--of our Republic. We have a President who has a thirst for authoritarian power, who admires Xi in China, admires Putin in Russia, sent his Vice President over to Munich just days ago to bad-mouth the democracies of Europe that share our values of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. Wow. But we not only have a President who admires authoritarian figures, admires dictators, he is acting like a dictator right here. He is breaking the law, and he is violating the Constitution. He proceeded to say: I am going to cut all of these programs that I don't like. Well, do you know what? He doesn't have that power. We have what is called a separation of powers in America. It means Congress sets the law, and then we have an Executive, the President, who implements it. Now, President Nixon--you remember him. You remember Watergate. You remember the impeachment. You remember the conviction. You remember the resignation. Actually, it never got to a conviction because he resigned first. What did he do? He said: I am going to be a bit imperial, and I am going to not provide the funds that Congress told me had to be provided to various programs. And do you know what? The courts said: Hell no. You can't do that. We have what is called a Republic. It is called a separation of powers. It is called what it says in the Constitution: that Congress writes the law and the President executes it. Now, the President can request Congress to change a program that has already been authorized, that is already in the law. It is called a rescission. He sends a note over to Congress and says: You know, we don't need to spend as much money as you all appropriated for this program; or maybe that nuclear warhead we were going to refurbish has no longer got the right one for the right missile, so we can cancel that program. He can send those over to us, but he doesn't get a line-item veto. He doesn't get a line-item reduction. In fact, in 1996, the Republican Congress provided a line-item veto power to the President, and the Supreme Court said: No, you can't delegate that authority. If you violate that line between Congress making the law and the President executing it, you have destroyed the separation of powers, which is the heart of every democracy. It is that thin line of Congress making the laws that is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship, and it is under assault. We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis. If you look at the speech that President Trump gave at the inauguration in the Rotunda, down the hall, he didn't talk about a vision in which he was going to work with Congress to get it implemented--to pass laws to make it happen. He talked about Executive order after Executive order as to what he was going to do. That is the mind of an autocrat. That is a king, not a President. That is a threat to our Constitution. It is a threat to our Republic. He has issued more than 60 Executive orders--bypassing Congress entirely. He went further. He handed the keys to the data systems across America to Elon Musk. Now, Elon Musk was not elected. He was not confirmed by the Senate. He has no independent oversight. Elon represents a concentration of power we have rarely seen--first, his power by being the CEO of large companies, like SpaceX and Tesla and Starlink. Now, those companies have lots of lobbyists here on Capitol Hill. So that is a lot of power that Elon Musk has right there. And do you know? Here is something you might not know: He gets about $8 million a day in Federal subsidies for his companies. I would say that is a conflict of interest. Yes, $8 million a day is, roughly, $2.5 billion over the course of a year. So here is a man--the richest man in the world. So he has that massive personal wealth; he has that power--that power to run media campaigns or to hire lobbyists and hire lawyers. He has got his three companies, and they have that ability to do media campaigns and hire lobbyists and hire lawyers. So you have tremendous power there, but now he has been given the keys to Agency after Agency all across the U.S. Government. What kind of a threat is that? Well, it is huge--it is huge--because those databases contain the most private information on every American--the private healthcare records of people who are on Medicaid or Medicare, the financial records of every family who files a tax return. His minions are now the foxes in the henhouse--so his corporate wealth, his personal wealth and power, and now his team--controlling databases all across the government, including the payment systems as to what gets paid and what doesn't get paid. I don't want this man to have my Social Security information or yours, my tax information or yours, my address or my bank account numbers or my records or yours. Then he put the CFPB on the chopping block, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He posted a message that said: ``CFPB,'' rest in peace, ``RIP.'' Now, why does the richest man in the world want to get rid of an Agency that has delivered $21 billion in checks back to consumers who were ripped off by illegal practices? I would say that is something where one could say: Hey, the CFPB is a hero for working families, a hero for families in returning $21 billion to families who were ripped off by illegal practices. And because they shut down those illegal practices, they probably saved consumers across this country and saved families across this country some other enormous sum. Maybe it is five times that $21 billion. I know that, when I worked on payday loans in Oregon and we got rid of those 500-percent, 400-percent, 300-percent interest rates, millions--not millions--but tens of thousands of Oregonians who were victims of the 300-, 400-, 500-percent loan-sharking benefited enormously. Well, who is the similar watchdog here for the Nation? It is the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The rich hate it because they are the ones who have engaged in illegal practices to rip off consumers, and so they hate it that there is a watchdog. So here is Trump and Musk getting rid of the watchdogs, getting rid of the inspectors general, and breaking the law while they do so. The law says you have to give 30 days' notice to dismiss an inspector general, and you have to do it for cause, because we need watchdogs to make sure that the executive branch is playing by the rules. He fired them. He fired the FBI agents who are specialists in executive branch behavior, watching to make sure they follow the law. He fired them and now the CFPB. What else? Well, I can tell you this: Musk and his minions could create a lot of damage with the access, and it is not just privacy to your records and my records. It could also be by accidentally screwing up the computer code because they don't fully understand the details on what they are playing with. Let's be clear: Seniors living on fixed incomes cannot afford a single missed payment. They won't be able to buy their groceries or pay their rent or pay their mortgage. This chaos unleashed by Trump and unleashed by Musk is illegal, unconstitutional, and just plain corrupt. Here is another piece of the puzzle that should disturb you all: In budget resolutions, deficits cannot be maintained for more than 10 years. It is bad enough that Republicans want to increase the deficit over the 10-year period, but they have come up with a plan where they change the baseline so that they can actually project those deficits beyond 10 years--basically indefinitely into the future. That is not fiscal responsibility. Not only are they planning to run up the debt for 10 years, but they want to be able to run it up forever more, until you get a Congress that has the spine to change it. Why does the party that has claimed fiscal responsibility want to change the baseline so they can run up debts far into the future? They have gotten off this game. They have sold this game--this scam--time after time. They sold it under Bush 1. They sold it under Bush 2. They sold it under Trump. They are going to do it again. They think they can get away with it again. So that is our job, to shine the spotlight on it and say: No. The American people see what is happening and say, ``No.'' Say you want programs of healthcare, housing, education, support for childcare, and for nutrition. You want to help families thrive so they can move into the middle class or move beyond the middle class. American families, speak up, because it is very true that, in our Republic, the one thing that can move this Chamber is citizens back home telling us what they think about what is happening. Families lose. Billionaires win. That is what is at stake in this budget resolution. The plan is simple: Slash programs for families. Give massive tax giveaways to megamillionaires and billionaires. Run up the deficit in the process, and let Elon Musk and the minions dismantle the Federal Agencies that protect families from getting ripped off and exploited. This Republican budget is not a government of, by, and for the people. This Republican budget is a government of, by, and for the powerful. And Democrats will fight day and night against this diabolical plan to attack America's families.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, my colleague from Connecticut is here past midnight. Why is he here past midnight? Because the health and welfare of our children and our families are at stake. That is why I am here, too--because it matters. It matters that you have someone in charge of Health and Human Services who has some at least basic understanding of the issues and basic experience managing a Department or managing an organization. But the candidate, the nominee, RFK, Jr., fails--fails on experience, fails on ethics, fails on qualifications. I must say the diagnosis is grim in each of these three areas. Let's talk a little about his experience running an agency or his medical experience. In fact, when Mr. Kennedy was asked during his confirmation hearings about some of the Agencies he would oversee, he got his facts completely wrong about just the core basics--about Medicare, a critical healthcare program for seniors throughout our Nation. It has these parts--A, B, and C--and people in the medical world all know every detail about this. When he was asked about it, he kind of just guessed, and he said: Well, Part A covers primary care, Part B covers physicians, and Part C is a full menu of healthcare services. Well, not even close--not even close. Part A covers inpatient hospital services; part B, outpatient and home health services; and Part C, Medicare Advantage. I don't know if he could have explained what Medicare Advantage is. Everyone who works in the field of providing healthcare through Medicare understands these core, basic foundations, as well as lots of other details. Senator Cassidy talked about another piece of the healthcare puzzle. We have Medicare. We also have Medicaid. Medicaid in Oregon is the Oregon Health Plan. It provides healthcare to families who are struggling, who are not yet fully into the middle class. He said that all of Medicaid is fully paid by the Federal Government. No. No, it is not. In fact, in Oregon, the State picks up two-fifths of the tab, and there are different categories and different ratios. Maybe one could say that these details--one doesn't need to know every aspect of it, but the architecture of our healthcare system, the basic architecture, just the simplest, most fundamental pieces, he has no idea about. These are incredibly important programs in our States, Medicare and Medicaid. Forty-four percent of the births in Oregon are covered by Medicaid. You know, Oregon is a very rural State. We have some big cities, but we have a lot of rural areas. Medicaid coverage rates are higher in rural areas because incomes are lower and more people qualify. Medicaid is incredibly important in the counties that are very rural in my State. In my 36 counties, a good two-thirds of them or three- fourths of them would be considered extremely rural. It is important to people in rural America that you have a leader who understands and cares about the healthcare program for rural America, but that individual is not RFK, Jr. Not only that, it is vital that the Health and Human Services Secretary understands which ideas don't work. Once again, our Republican colleagues are pushing to impose work requirements on Medicaid enrollees. Now, every developed country but the United States fully backs the idea that healthcare is a right. It is not a privilege that comes out of your wealth. They understand that in order to be able to work, you have to have healthcare so you can be well enough to work. That is every other country. But here, the elite across the aisle only want healthcare for the rich. They want to cut down Medicaid. They want poor people to struggle and never be able to get wealth so they can never get a job so they can keep talking about how lazy people are. Well, that is just absurd and wrong in every possible way. Ninety-one percent of Medicaid enrollees who aren't disabled are either employed, in school, or caring for family members. Yet, every few years, my colleagues across the aisle trot out this myth, and every few years, it gets debunked, and then they bring it back. Just in a cycle, like sunspots or something, it comes around every few years. We actually have facts on what has happened when this misbegotten idea is undertaken. In 2018, when Arkansas implemented new work requirements during the first Trump administration, to maintain their health insurance, Arkansas Medicaid enrollees had to fill out a mountain of paperwork every month. Many of these folks worked part time. Many worked hourly jobs. Some worked several jobs to make ends meet. Not surprisingly, it is very hard, when you are struggling with making multiple jobs fit, to have the time to do massive paperwork all the time. They are working their jobs, and they are taking care of their families. So what happened? Other Medicaid enrollees were working but could not reliably meet the required number of hours given the normal fluctuations of low-wage and hourly work. If you ever, ever have lived in a blue-collar community--and I live in a blue-collar community-- people who are patching together various part-time jobs--the managers change the schedules continuously. So now your schedule for one job conflicts with the schedule for the other job. Anyway, it is very stressful and it is very challenging to be getting minimum wage or near minimum wage and conflicting schedules and managers changing those schedules and still trying to deal with raising kids and being there when you need to be there. Roughly 18,000 people lost health insurance in Arkansas before a Federal judge halted the new work requirements for violating the intended purpose of the Medicaid Program. Well, there was another State that tried this out--Georgia. They implemented work requirements in 2023. Not wanting their work requirements to be struck down by the courts, Georgia lawmakers lowered the requirements for Medicaid enrollment, thereby technically expanding coverage to fulfill the purpose of the program. In doing so, the State of Georgia estimated that another 175,000 people would enroll in the program. They estimated 175,000, and only 6,500 people enrolled. The State of Georgia spent $60 million in administrative fees tracking compliance with the work requirements--$60 million; 6,500 people; $10,000 for a Medicaid enrollee in Georgia just on administrative overhead, not providing healthcare. The costs just kept piling up. Uninsured people still need to see a doctor, but instead of seeing their doctor and getting care early, uninsured people wait to get care until they wind up in the emergency rooms. There is an old but accurate saying: ``An uninsured patient is the most expensive patient.'' So anyone with half a brain would want people to be insured. They will get care earlier. They don't end up in the emergency room. It will save money. People are healthier. They are more likely to work. And it costs less. It is a win-win on every level. Well, if you strike down the support for Medicaid here, States have to figure out if they can pick up the difference. Picking up the difference means they have to wrestle with whether to raise taxes. Why do my colleagues across the aisle in other States have to raise taxes to provide basic healthcare? Oh, my goodness, yeah, impose that burden on families trying to get on their feet and be able to thrive. According to the Congressional Budget Office, every Medicaid dollar spent today reduces future deficits by $2. That is a pretty good return. That is an investment we can't afford not to make. And the loss of Medicaid coverage hits rural communities particularly hard. As I have noted, most of my home State is rural. A couple of weeks ago, we saw what happened when Medicaid funding was frozen after Donald Trump's dead-of-night directive to cut off funding for programs that families depended on. Critical access hospitals, rural clinics, federally qualified health centers were terrified that they would have to lay off staff or shut their doors. Any loss of Medicaid funding for these communities would threaten what are often the only hospitals or clinics in these rural areas. They are always struggling. But when Medicaid was expanded, when Oregon seized that opportunity, a lot of patients who were never able to pay a bill could now pay the bill because they had insurance, and that meant a much stronger foundation for rural healthcare. Don't we want a stronger foundation for rural healthcare? It is critical to have a Secretary for Health and Human Services who understands these issues, and that individual is not RFK, Jr. He is, however, something else: one of the world's best-known purveyors of conspiracy theories about the alleged harm that comes from effective vaccines. That is, he is a conspiracy theorist who says these effective vaccines that everyone else knows are effective, he is going to tell you something different. He is going to tell you that HPV and measles and tetanus and flu and polio and chickenpox vaccines don't work. His conspiracy theories have been debunked time and time again. They have been repudiated time and time again, including the big one--and that is that vaccines cause autism. This is a straightforward thing that has been studied time and time and time again. And it is a powerful conspiracy theory if you happen to have a child who has autism and if it starts appearing about the same time that you are giving a lot of childhood vaccines. You could believe that maybe that is the cause. So it has been studied time and time again in children who have vaccines, who don't have vaccines. The vaccines do not cause autism. And yet, what has he done? He says: I believe autism comes from vaccines. In the middle of a 2017 measles outbreak in Minnesota's Somali- American community, he falsely told parents the following: Africans and African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to vaccine injuries including autism. He also falsely claimed that the global decline in measles was caused by ``nutrition and clean water,'' not the measles vaccine, and that children in California were getting measles ``from the vaccine or . . . from somebody who got the vaccine.'' In other words, he stood it on its head and said those who are getting sick--who are getting sick because they did not have the vaccine--were getting sick because they had the vaccine. All of this misinformation does real harm. He even raised doubt over flu shots, claiming that ``there is zero evidence that the flu shot prevents any hospitalizations or any deaths.'' This is completely untrue. This is wrong. A lot of people in America die every year from the flu, so this has been extensively studied. Now, I didn't get flu shots until the COVID epidemic came and my wife, who was a nurse, said: While you are getting that COVID shot, get your flu shot. I had never gotten a flu shot before. I never worried about it. I didn't think about it. It never occurred to me. Lots of people didn't. So it was very easy to study those who get flu shots and those who don't. And what RFK, Jr., did was not be honest with people--in fact, to tell people information he undoubtedly knew was untrue. And the result is more people get sick, more people die. Finally, Kennedy also referred to the COVID vaccine as ``the deadliest vaccine ever made.'' Well, we know how many people were dying before we had the COVID vaccine, and we now know how much safer things are. We are not sitting here on the floor tonight with a mask over our face. Our accompanying staff do not have masks over their face. The folks in the elevator today didn't have a mask because the threat of COVID has receded because we have a COVID vaccine. This misinformation isn't just some harmless fun. These conspiracy theories are not some harmless fun. They do real harm. They do real harm. I want to read to you a letter from Josh Green. He is the current Governor of Hawaii, and he is a physician. He wrote the following. I am going to quote it extensively: Mr. Kennedy has spent years undermining one of the greatest public health achievements in history: vaccines. His rhetoric directly contributed to the tragic 2019 measles epidemic in Samoa, which infected thousands and killed 83 people, primarily children. He goes on to say--the Governor of Hawaii, current Governor, a physician: I witnessed this personally. As Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor at the time-- This is the Governor now-- and a practicing physician at the time, I led an emergency medical team to Samoa to administer life-saving vaccinations after misinformation--much of it spread by Mr. Kennedy and his network--led to a collapse in immunization rates. We saw firsthand the devastating consequences: grieving parents, overwhelmed hospitals, and a nation in crisis. The impact of Mr. Kennedy's reckless actions extends beyond Samoa. He has spread vaccine misinformation globally, leading to preventable disease outbreaks that have infected countless people. That is the letter from the Governor of Hawaii, also a physician, who went on an emergency medical trip to Samoa and witnessed firsthand people--children--dying because of the lies from RFK, Jr. That is not a person you bring in to lead your healthcare system, and every one of my colleagues across the aisle knows it. They know they are hurting people by putting him into this office. So I ask them: Rethink your responsibility to serve the people of the United States. That is your responsibility as a Member of this U.S. Senate. You have constituents in your home State. The President is not your constituent. The President has platinum-plated healthcare. We are not worried about the President getting the best healthcare. We are concerned about our constituents. I could tell you a lot more because I have a lot of information here. My colleague from California is here, and I am looking in his direction to see if he is ready to speak. If he is, I am going to wrap up. I am particularly struck by the letter written to us by Caroline Kennedy, first cousin to RFK, Jr. I will just summarize it and say, it is not complimentary. She says in the most dramatic terms that we are making a massive mistake to put him in charge; that he has served his wallet, he has served without ethics, he has served in a way that has hurt people time and time again, and he does not belong in office. Mr. President, we are here, as my colleague was before me, Chris Murphy from Connecticut, as my colleague from California is now--we are all here after midnight. We are here after midnight because this matters, because more people will suffer and die across this country, more children will die because of the incompetence and the full lack of ethics of the individual being considered to head up our healthcare system. Let's not make this mistake when we vote on his final nomination.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes of my postcloture debate time on the Vought nomination to Senator Van Hollen, and I yield 60 minutes of my postcloture debate time on the Vought nomination to Senator Schatz.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. To protect Americans from Big Brother government exploiting their Social Security and tax records, I vote no.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, since yesterday afternoon, Democrats have held this floor to ring the alarm bells across the United States of America about the nomination of Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Russ Vought may not be as famous as Donald Trump's other nominees, but as you have heard from so many Democrats, ``Radical Russ'' is Donald Trump's most dangerous nominee. He is the mastermind behind Project 2025. In following that script, he proudly breaks the law, he proudly violates the Constitution, and he proudly seeks to gut programs for ordinary American families to deliver trillions in tax giveaways to the richest Americans. Russell Vought's dead-of-night directives to freeze government payments have already sown massive damage across our Nation--programs for healthcare and housing and education and children. Then, just today, I learned that the Bureau of Land Management is ordering small businesses to cease and desist all work for forest management--that of thinning the forests and doing prescribed burns to prevent massive forest fires from burning down our cities. That is literally Trump and Russ Vought playing with fire. The American people are angry about this sweeping authoritarian coup. They are calling our offices. Two thousand Oregonians called my office yesterday. Thousands of people showed up to my nine townhalls over the last two weekends. They are asking tough questions: How is it possible that Donald Trump could order dead-of-night directives and cut off funding for all of the programs that help families get on their feet and thrive and get to the middle class-- those addressing child nutrition and affordable housing and healthcare? How is it possible that Trump can break the law to fire 17 inspectors general who protect the American people from executive branch corruption? How is it possible Trump can break the law to fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board, who protects workers' rights? How is it possible Trump can dismantle USAID, which provides food and medicine and humanitarian aid around the world? How is it possible Russ Vought and President Trump can send Elon Musk's groupies to access sensitive programs and access our data regarding Social Security payments and Medicare payments and veterans' benefits and the tax records of every single American? This breach of privacy by Big Brother government is an extraordinary threat to the security of every single citizen. ``Radical Russ'' has a three-part plan for America: Gut programs for working families, borrow trillions from the Treasury, and give massive tax giveaways to the very richest Americans. This is the robber baron script: Take from ordinary families to give more to the best off. This is the opposite of what Trump campaigned on. He campaigned on helping families, and now that he is in office, the campaign is giving way to, instead, Project 2025, which is about government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires. That is why the Democratic members of the Budget Committee asked to delay the vote on sending his nomination here to the floor--because we wanted to find out. We asked questions about what he was doing already over at the Office of Management and Budget when he hadn't been confirmed yet, holding meetings and sending out directives. He wouldn't answer those questions, so his file is incomplete. So we said to hold off for 2 weeks, but the Budget Committee chair refused to hold off and make sure that the file was complete. Then we said: Well, at least hold the meeting in public so we can share our thoughts back and forth, and the public can come in and witness it and see our arguments about why he should or shouldn't be voted to send to the floor. Instead, the meeting was held in private. So that was why we were so concerned then and, as you have heard from 41 Democrats over the last 30 hours, why we are so concerned now with the philosophy and actions of ``Radical Russ'' Vought. We are working day and night, fighting for working families, fighting for the Constitution, and fighting to stop this sweeping authoritarian takeover. To my friends across the aisle: ``Radical Russ'' wants to steal the power of the purse given to Congress in this Constitution--our Constitution--and give it to Donald Trump to decide what is and isn't funded. ``Radical Russ'' wants to steal the power to write laws given to Congress and the Constitution and give it to Donald Trump to rule by Executive order and Presidential fiat. ``Radical Russ'' has attacked the Constitution before. Remember, he is the force that said ``Let's stop payments to Ukraine'' that got President Trump into trouble in his first administration. We here have taken an oath to defend the Constitution for working Americans--for all Americans. Join us in voting no because ``Radical Russ'' is dangerously unfit for public office.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our constituents, our country, and our Constitution are under attack by Donald Trump and Russell Vought. Democrats are fighting back. Russell Vought--also pronounced ``vote''--is the mastermind of Project 2025 and of all of the chaos and the lawlessness that Trump has unleashed across our country. Today, my Republican colleagues are trying to jam through the confirmation of this man, Russell Vought, and it is our job to say ``stop'' because this man is incredibly dangerous to the foundations of our Republic, the system of laws and checks and balances of our Constitution. When you put into the Office of Management and Budget an individual who willfully avoids and rolls over the laws of the country and says he will not abide by the separation of powers, that is a fundamental danger that all of us, having taken an oath to the Constitution, must stop. He is Donald Trump's most dangerous nominee. Oh, you may not have heard of him as much as you have heard of the nominee for the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Hegseth. You may not have heard about him in the same way you have heard about Tulsi Gabbard, who went to Syria without the permission of the State Department to consult with a dictator. But this man, who is the chief engineer--the chief engineer--of the Trump train--a train that plans to disregard the law and the Constitution--is a bigger danger to our Republic. That is why Democrats are taking the floor now and will continue to hold the floor over every minute allowed under our rules to say: This is a mistake. To colleagues across the aisle, you, too, took an oath to the Constitution. You have a responsibility to defend it, and the only way to defend it at the end of this 30 hours is to vote no on Russell Vought. The American people are watching us today, and I know they are feeling rage about what Trump and Vought are doing. I know this because, this last weekend, I had five townhalls in Oregon, and we had three to eight times the number of people turn out who turned out a year ago, which was an election year, which has a bigger turnout than a normal year. They wondered: How is it possible to break the law in firing inspectors general? How is it possible to break the law in firing a member of the National Labor Relations Board in the middle of an 8-year term when the law doesn't allow you to do that? How is it possible to break the law and proceed to dismantle USAID when the law doesn't allow you to dismantle an organization? Yes, the President can ask Congress to write a new law, but to do it through Executive fiat? No, the Constitution does not allow that. The impoundment of funds people asked about. It has been very clear since the time of Nixon--when Nixon impounded funds, Congress then stood together and said, ``Hell no, you cannot do that,'' and the courts said, ``Hell no, you cannot do that,'' and then Nixon followed the issue as the courts decided. But Mr. Russell Vought--or ``vote''--he doesn't care, he said. He says: The President doesn't agree that this should be the interpretation of the Constitution, and I don't agree. So we are just going to impound funds as we want. That is a dangerous man to our Republic. So I encourage citizens across this country: It is your opportunity to be heard as you were this weekend at my townhalls. Take to the streets. Take to the phones. Let your message amplify and ring from the eastern coast to the western coast and the southern border to the northern border with Canada. Let your message ring that true patriots will stand with the Constitution of the United States of America, that true patriots will defend the separation of powers, that true patriots will defend the checks and balances inherent in our Constitution. Well, just know we stand with you, America, and we are fighting back from the outside and the inside--patriots, together, patriots united-- in defending our Constitution against this sweeping, authoritarian coup. That is what we are doing. Now, I know you hear the word ``coup,'' and you think: Isn't it a coup when the military comes in and takes over in violation of the Constitution? There is also a quieter kind of coup. When the President refuses to follow the laws of the Constitution, that is a coup as well, and that is what we are facing now. That is why every Member of this body should be standing up to say no to the architect of this coup--Russell Vought. What we have now in President Trump is government by billionaires for billionaires. Our fight is to say that that is not the vision of our Constitution. Our vision of the Constitution is of a ``we the people'' Constitution or, as Abraham Lincoln said, ``a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' That is a very different vision-- the vision embedded in our Constitution--than the vision being pursued by the President at this moment. So you will hear from many Members of the Democratic caucus over the next 30 hours, and we ask of our colleagues: Listen to what is said. Don't mindlessly follow the dictates of an authoritarian President who is trying to violate the Constitution, because that is not your responsibility, and recognize that what he is doing is trying to take away the legislative power of the House and Senate and replace it with Executive fiats. Wasn't it strange to listen to an inaugural speech in which President Trump didn't talk about legislative initiatives? It was just one Executive order after the other. The message was clear. He was telling America: I am not going to be a President who executes the laws; I am going to be a President who overrides the laws with Executive orders. Just within hours--mere hours--of taking the oath to the Constitution, he put forward an Executive order that violated the 14th Amendment on birthright citizenship. Just days after taking the oath to the Constitution, he put forward a strategy of impoundment that violates the core of the Constitution, where the power of the purse is given to Congress, not to the President. So here we are, going forward. We are in dangerous times for our Nation. We are in the midst of this unfolding authoritarian coup, and we have the responsibility to stop it. Now, it is hard to focus on any one thing. The expression I have heard almost hourly is the President is ``flooding the zone,'' meaning he is doing so many things at once and so many Executive orders that it just creates, well, confusion and chaos, and it makes it hard to focus on any one action that is so diabolical that normally all of us would be focused on it and saying: No. So this strategy is an effective one, but that is why we are taking the next 30 hours to not focus on 100 things but 1 thing: the danger Russell Vought presents to our Constitution and our responsibility--our responsibility--in advice and consent under the Constitution to vet that candidate, realize who he is, and say he is not fit to be the Director of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. In fact, he is not fit to serve in any governmental capacity. It was quite troubling to experience Donald Trump's dead-of-night directive a week ago Monday night to cut off funding for programs that families depend on--programs to feed children, programs to pay rent, programs to see the doctor--cutoffs that are cruel and indiscriminate and illegal because the President has the responsibility to execute the laws, not ignore them or violate them. We saw so much happen in terms of disrespecting or breaking the law. The inspectors general--17 and counting--are the watchdogs who say to the executive branch: You must obey the law. So, if you want to see what an authoritarian President does who is seeking an imperial Presidency where he can write the laws through fiat, one of the first things you do is tear down the watchdogs, and that is what he did. The watchdog for the Department of Labor, the watchdog for the Interior, the watchdog for Housing and Urban Development, the watchdog for the Defense Department, the watchdog for the State Department, the watchdog for Agriculture, the watchdog for Health and Human Services, the watchdog for the Department of Education--all fired in violation of the law. The law does give the President the ability to dismiss an inspector general under two conditions. The first condition--30-days' notice. The second condition is that it be for cause. Both were broken. Why is no Member of the President's party standing up on the floor of the Senate and saying, ``Respect the law, Mr. President''? That is an obligation we all share. It isn't the responsibility of the minority party to say ``defend the Constitution'' alone; it is the responsibility of the majority party as well, of every individual Member here in the Senate. Then we had the President fire a member of the National Labor Relations Board, but the law says you can't do that. They have a term. You get to put in and nominate a new person at the end of the term. But he was fired anyway. Why? Because it is part of the attack on families and the ability to enforce labor protections this President opposes. He wants to give free rein to corporations to run over labor provisions embedded in the law. If there is no one to appeal to, then there is no constraint on the abuses put onto working people. That is what we are facing. The President fired the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I can tell you, protection of consumers from terrible financial products is incredibly important. You know, when I was elected to the Senate, we had two types of loans that were predatory mortgage loans that were turning the dream of home ownership into a nightmare. One was called the triple option loan. What that meant was that you could pay a smaller amount, and the amount you owed on your house would actually escalate over time. Then when you got to a certain point of escalation, then the loan would switch, and you would have to pay a different amount that many people couldn't afford. So it resulted in a lot of foreclosures. Then we had another type of home mortgage with an exploding interest rate. You would get a subsidized interest rate for a couple of years, and then the interest rate explodes to 9 or 10 percent. People couldn't make those payments. They had been steered into those loans by mortgage brokers who were getting kickbacks undisclosed to the person taking out the loan. They were being betrayed by kickbacks called steering payments. That is the type of thing that hurt America terribly because the foreclosures then were a key factor driving the collapse of the economy in 2007, 2008, into 2009. Hundreds of thousands, millions of homes were foreclosed on, all because there wasn't a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to say those loans were not OK. I was very pleased to lead the charge in Dodd-Frank to end those predatory loans. But for ongoing protection against scurrilous, scandalous scams, you need a watchdog for the consumer. The President, favoring billionaires and corporations over the American workers, proceeded to fire the watchdog that protects us against scandalous scams in financial products. Then the President fired members of the FBI, experts who were focused on making sure the executive branch stays within the confines of the law. Well, if you don't want the FBI checking out the fact that you are breaking the law, you fire them so there is no one there to hold you accountable or do a report. These are the acts of a President determined to rule by fiat and break the laws and break the Constitution. Then Donald Trump gave Elon Musk unprecedented and unacceptable access to the U.S. Treasury's most sensitive payment systems. Those payment systems control over $5 trillion a year in payments. Those payment systems have everyone's private information. Do you like the fact that Elon Musk and his team of muskrats, with their laptops, has been in there downloading information on you? Don't you kind of worry about the type of Big Brother government that downloads your private information and sends in inexperienced people to take over the payments and take your private information: where you live, how much you earn, your tax returns, whether you get Medicare, whether you get Social Security, your Social Security number-- everything within that world. That is a massive assault on the privacy of American citizens by a Big Brother government--the type of government that wants to be an authoritarian Presidency and control everything and have power over everything, and so they invade the Treasury and the system of payments. Not only is it a huge risk to the privacy of Americans across this land, but it also is an invitation to exploitation. It is an invitation to extortion because now Big Brother government, in the form of Mr. Trump and Elon Musk and his muskrats, has your information that they can use against you should they so please. Finally, there is the danger that this crew that invaded Treasury alters the codes and screws up the payments. Maybe they don't intend to, but they do because they don't know what they are doing. They are not experts on the code. Then suddenly the Medicare or Social Security payments or tax returns don't go out the way they are supposed to. A whole lot of Americans aren't like billionaire Trump and his band of billionaire bros. They are living paycheck to paycheck. So screwing up a single payment can put a family in a world of hurt, including missing a rent payment that gets them thrown out of their house. That is not the only way that Team Trump is attacking ordinary families. There is also the big sales tax he wants to impose across the Nation in the form of tariffs. Mr. Trump says: Huh, it will be the Ford companies that pay for tariffs. Well, just factually, that is wrong. The importer pays the tariff bill, not the group that exports to the United States. The American company that imports pays the tariff. Then, in order to pay the tariff, they raise their prices. So it becomes a sales tax on the American people. So a 25-percent tariff on Mexico or Canada becomes a 25-percent tax more or less on working America. You know, President Trump posted on Truth Social that tariffs should never have been ended in favor of the income tax system. Just recognize this: Tariffs that result in higher prices on Americans are incredibly regressive. They have a much bigger impact on those who are less well off who have to buy food and groceries. Unlike a sales tax that has an exemption for healthcare or food or groceries, there is no exemption from the higher prices driven by a tariff. So they are incredibly regressive. The tariffs are a strategy to attack working families across this land. Trump was very clear. He said basically we should go back to the old system of funding our government by tariffs, the system we had before 1913, when America ratified the 16th Amendment and allowed the income tax. In other words, he wants to go from a tax system on income that can, if implemented carefully--and often it is not, and it has way too many loopholes--it can be progressive; that is, the rich who can afford to pay more can pay a higher percent. But the tariffs converted into a sales tax on Americans--that is, in fact, incredibly regressive, hurting the poor. It is why rich folks always want to have a sales tax replace an income tax, because they know they pay less. The rich pay less, and the working stiffs have to pay more because their paycheck has to go directly to consumption because that is what they have, paycheck to paycheck. They have got to pay the rent, got to pay for food, got to pay the utility bill. But the well off are taking their extra funds and they are investing. So they don't have to spend every dime on consumption. That is the mechanics of how a tariff becomes a regressive sales tax. Let's be crystal clear about what is happening. There is a three-part plan in Project 2025--again, the architect of which is up for confirmation right now--on the question of advice and consent by the Senate. So the architect of Project 2025 has a three-step plan. Attack working families--that is step 1. That is what happens when you cut the programs for healthcare and housing and education and children--you attack the families. Step 2, borrow trillions from the Treasury and run up the debt, currently estimated to be in the area of about $3 trillion. Then take and deliver a massive tax giveaway to the billionaires. That is the plan: Attack families, borrow trillions, and give away trillions to the billionaires. In fact, the current estimate for the amount given to the trillionaires is around $4.6 trillion--or to the billionaires or mega millionaires, the richest Americans--$4.6 trillion. Kind of ironic, isn't it, that a President who campaigned on helping families is actually driving a plan, in partnership with Russell Vought, to attack families and deliver for the billionaires? Campaign on government for families, get elected, and immediately pivot to attacking families and delivering for billionaires--that is what we are facing. This is the great betrayal, a betrayal of all the voters who believed Donald Trump when he said ``I am for you,'' who believed him when he said he wants to protect and help working families, and yet he attacks the ability of workers to organize and get a fair day's pay for an honest day's work. That is the great betrayal. The architect of this is up for confirmation right now. The architect for this is advocating for the President to violate the laws and has already demonstrated that these last 2 weeks. The architect of this is arguing that we cut programs, run up the debt, and give it all to the richest Americans. That is the plan. So over the next 30 hours, Democrats are coming to the floor united, determined to stand with the families of the United States of America. Mr. Trump is standing with the billionaires. My colleagues who have indicated they want to confirm Russell Vought, confirm the architect of Project 2025, confirm the person who inspired the attacks on family programs a week ago Monday night--they are standing with the billionaires. I invite them, come join us. Do not stand for government by and for billionaires. Come join us and fight for families. Come join us and honor the responsibility of the executive branch to obey the laws. Come join us and protect the constitutional separation of powers. After all, the President's effort to move the power of the purse from Congress--the power of Congress is to say: Here are the instructions. We want you to fund this program and this program and this program. The President wants to say: It doesn't matter; those are just suggestions. I have news for you: Read the Constitution. The President is not a king, and a law is not a suggestion. So come join us united in support of the law and the Constitution. Russell Vought is a leading proponent of the impoundment theory that says a President can decide how much to spend on programs that Congress has written into the law; in other words, that the appropriations bills are simply suggestions, not the law. No. We had this conversation back in the Nixon era. Remember President Nixon, along with Watergate? Remember that other unconstitutional thing he did? That was to say: I as President can stop the funding of programs that the law says I am supposed to fund. Well, the Court said otherwise. It said, in fact: No way. That is unconstitutional. Then in 1974, in the Budget and Impoundment Control Act, Congress said: Hey, Mr. President, we will give you a mechanism by which you can present the idea of changing current law. You don't think we need to spend money on, say, that weapon program because the technology is outdated or maybe you don't need to spend money on some feeding program because it is duplicative of another feeding program or food program or you don't need to spend money on X, Y, or Z. Maybe a nuclear warhead was being rebuilt to be on a certain missile, but we are not building the missile anymore. So the President could proceed to say: Here is a letter that comes to Congress saying: I know these are in the law. I know I have to fund them. But we shouldn't fund them, so, please, over the next 45 days, debate and vote on changing the current law so that we save this money. It is called a rescission. It is in the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act. We gave the President a tool by which he could follow the Constitution and ask for reductions in programs already passed into law. Now, I am quite sure that not a single Senator here, not a single Senator wandering around the Capitol somewhere, has received a rescission letter from President Trump or one on behalf of President Trump from the Office of Management and Budget. If you want to cut programs that are already in the law, there is a mechanism to do it lawfully. You ask Congress to do so in a letter for a rescission. It is a fancy word. We don't talk about it much. Presidents don't very often ask us to undo programs we have just passed because we budget on an annual basis; we pass those laws on an annual basis. So they are rarely so out of date that a President says: OK, undo that program. But they have the power to do so because we gave the President the ability to ask in the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act. And by the way, the lower court rescissions that preceded that 1974 law, those were then reviewed and made it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, absolutely, the President cannot impound funds. It is a violation of the Constitution. So to my colleagues, if you are saying: I don't know if Senator Merkley from Oregon is right about this, read the Supreme Court case. And you have a responsibility to defend the Constitution, and that is why you have a responsibility to vote no on Russell Vought, who wants to violate the Constitution. Another piece that I am concerned about with Mr. Vought is that he didn't wait to be confirmed to start being, essentially, the shadow director of the Office of Management and Budget. I can't count how many nominees have come through and said: Well, actually, I can't go near that office until I am confirmed because that would be a violation of the intent of the Constitution that people have to be confirmed before they take a role. But what did we hear from the White House after all these illegal Executive orders were put out? Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: Russell Vought told me to tell all of you the line to his office is open. So here is Mr. Vought basically saying: I am really the power already at OMB. My line is open; call me. Well, Mr. Vought, if you would quit breaking the law and advocating for breaking the law, you would know you shouldn't be in the Office of Management and Budget essentially acting as if you have been confirmed when you haven't been confirmed yet. Again, it is a confirmation of the inclination of this individual to say: The laws don't matter; I will do what I want no matter how much damage it does to the law or the Constitution. So we did send a letter to Mr. Vought saying: Are you on the payroll currently? Do you have a title? Have you been hired as a senior assistant? Is that legal given you are up for nomination to run the place? Is it legal for you to be hired as an adviser and then act as if you are running the place? Is that legal? We didn't get any answers. Another reason to vote no: The file is not complete. He hasn't answered. Why does he not want to answer? Because you wouldn't like the answer. The American people wouldn't like the answer that he is over there running OMB at a time he hasn't even been confirmed by the Senate. So he doesn't answer. That, too, should bother colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Because we didn't have answers, the Democrats on the Budget Committee wrote to the chair of the Budget Committee and said: Delay this vote. Delay it for 2 weeks so we can get answers to questions and get a complete file. Well, that is a reasonable request in this situation because both sides of the aisle have often worked together to say nominees have to complete their paperwork, they have to answer the questions raised by the committee. But we were told: No. This position is so urgent. The President so desperately needs the architect of Project 2025 to be the engineer on the train that we can't actually wait and get answers and have the file completed. I certainly disagree with that answer. I think it disrespects the entire membership of the Budget Committee. And then, the vote in committee was scheduled without the file complete, and it was scheduled to be done in a little room off the floor over here where the public cannot attend and where members would not be allowed to talk to each other and share their observations or concerns, which basically violates the whole premise of members on a committee sharing their observations to try to get to a better answer. Now, I was told that, as the ranking Democrat, I can make a few comments, but the rest of my committee--other Democrats or even the other members of the Republican side--were told they couldn't make any comments or attempt to influence each other. So we said: No, that is not right. This is such an important nomination and his background is so troubling and his current actions are so troubling, hold that conversation about the vote in a public forum. Just that morning, we had held just such a public conversation on the Ambassador to the United Nations in the Foreign Relations room. Each member was asked: Do you want to add anything as we consider whether or not to send this nomination to the floor? Well, the Ambassador to the United Nations is a pretty important role. But, you know, the chief engineer of the Office of Management and Budget, the architect of this entire strategy that Trump has laid out, that is very important as well. So we asked for a public hearing or discussion so that members could talk to each other, share their concerns, maybe persuade each other--though not often enough do we listen to each other--and the result was, from the chair of the Budget Committee: No, we are not holding a public dialogue about whether people think he should be confirmed. So the vote was held in a tiny room. I think one reporter was allowed in. No public was allowed in, no expanded press corps, no dialogue between the members. We asked a reasonable request that this be done publicly, and that was denied. I am sorry to the American public that you were excluded because you would have heard then what you are hearing from me now and what you will hear from Members of the Democrats over the next 30 hours: how fabulously unfit this individual is to serve in any government role. So we are here tonight, on through now, through the night, into the morning--we are here for the next 30 hours to raise the alarm about how dangerously unfit this nominee is to serve in the role of chief engineer because he doesn't respect the law, he doesn't respect the Constitution. He has already demonstrated that by stepping into the role and coordinating the dark-of-night decisions to cut programs to working families all across this land. Now, I would say: Hmm, but does he really believe in this whole impoundment thing? Is he really an advocate of breaking the law? Well, we saw it Monday night, but we also saw it during the first Trump administration when Russell Vought was the architect of impoundment of the funds destined by law to go to Ukraine. So this isn't some empty theory. It is already in the historical record. Russell Vought coordinated a strategy of refusing to send the funds required by law to go to Ukraine. Now, there was another element of this, which was President Trump, during his first term, was trying to use those funds and the impoundment of those funds to get the President of Ukraine to say bad things about a member of the Biden family. That combination of impoundment, which was illegal, and then essentially using that to extort a statement from the President of Ukraine--which the President of Ukraine refused to do--led to Trump's first impeachment trial. So Russell Vought's illegal, unconstitutional strategy of impoundment and using it as a tool of extortion to try to attack a political opponent led to Trump's first impeachment and first trial here in the Senate. So have no doubt that the man who advocated for impoundment and the extortion of a statement from the President of Ukraine back in the first Trump administration is certainly very honest when he says he is still for impoundment right now. That is the one thing I will say. He didn't try to disguise this fact. He said: The President doesn't like what the Supreme Court decided on the Constitution. I don't like it. So we are going to ignore it. He ignored it before. He intends to ignore it again. I will tell you something else that I think is deeply disturbing, and that is Russell Vought's absolute disdain for the nonpartisan professionals who work for the American people as civil servants. He wants to take folks who are members of the civil service and make them at-will employees of the President so the President can sweep out of position tens of thousands--fire tens of thousands of servants to the American people who use their professional skills to deliver services as efficiently and as effectively as possible and replace them with loyalist lackeys. I don't want a loyalist lackey in the control tower deciding when planes land. I want a nonpartisan professional. I don't want a loyalist lackey having access to the Treasury payment system and trying to use that to extort favors from people around the country or disclosing the private information of individuals or actually screwing up the computer code and causing payments not to be delivered effectively. I want a nonpartisan professional. I don't want a loyalist lackey deciding on how to transport vaccines across the country, who doesn't know a damn thing about whether they have to be refrigerated or not or how long they can sit on the shelf or how to get them effectively delivered. I want a nonpartisan professional. But not Russell Vought. In fact, Russell Vought called for Federal workers to be traumatized so that they would consider themselves to be villains and would leave public service and could be replaced by loyalist lackeys. That should concern everyone. And, listen, I understand the pressure my colleagues are under. We all become, as part of our party, essentially part of a team, and the inclination is to support the member of your team who is now President. But there is a higher responsibility here. It is a responsibility to the law, and it is a responsibility to the Constitution that you took an oath to. And, certainly, supporting the firing of tens of thousands of nonpartisan professionals and replacing them with loyalist lackeys is a huge disservice to the families of America who depend upon all of those core programs in healthcare, housing, education, programs for children, standing on their feet so they can thrive and move into the middle class. It is part of the attack on families embedded in Trump and Russell Vought's Project 2025. I will tell you what else I don't like about Russell Vought. He wants to weaponize the justice system to prosecute officials who investigated President Trump's crime. Weaponizing the justice system is absolutely wrong. That is what happens in third-world countries with dictators. And I realize, as an advocate of the imperial Presidency, Vought wants to use every tool available, like a dictator does. But that is wrong. We are a republic; we are not a monarchy. We are not an authoritarian state--unless we become one by refusing to stand up against violations of laws and the Constitution. You know, Ben Franklin, when he was leaving the Constitutional Convention, was asked by a bystander, because they had met and worked on this crafting of the Constitution: Ben Franklin, what do we have? What type of government do we have? And he responded: A republic, if we can keep it. But what are the fundamental elements of a republic? The integrity of the voting booth is one--the ballot box, the integrity of an election--and that integrity is under assault across this country. Second, the peaceful transfer of power--and President Trump, at the end of his first term, did everything possible, including incentivizing a riot that stormed through these doors and took over this Chamber, to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. They were calling for the Vice President, who was fulfilling his constitutional role, just down the hallway through those doors--down the hallway--to count the electoral votes. They were calling for him to be hung. What else is critical to a republic? Well, it is a foundation of laws that will be respected by the Executive branch. That is being violated. And it is the separation of powers that Trump is violating right now. So every piece of our Republic is under attack by Russell Vought and Donald Trump. Ben Franklin, right now, is turning over in his grave, fearing, perhaps for the first time since he was buried 6 feet under, that we might lose our Republic. Russell Vought also supports the use of the military to quell domestic unrest. That is an absolute violation of the law, but he supports doing it. Russell Vought has called for an end to any drugs that provide medical abortions. He wants them banned. He wants to interfere with the right of every family, every woman in America, to exercise her judgment in partnership with her spiritual adviser and her family and her doctor. He wants Big Brother government to be in the exam room of every woman in America, dictating whether or not they can use drugs as part of an abortion process. And he also doubles down on this saying there should be no exceptions to a law banning abortions, for rape or for incest or to save the life of the mother. You know, I was absolutely struck by the recent memo from the new Secretary of Transportation that said: We are going to prioritize giving our grants to communities that have the highest birthrate and highest marriage rate. What? Big Brother, socially programming, using transportation grants to determine who gets to repair their bridges or repair their roads or expand their metro system or build bike lanes, or whatever, depending on your marriage rate and your childbirth rate? That is in the memo from the Department of Transportation. Well, here is Russell Vought. His social programming is he wants his view of reproductive healthcare to be imposed across America with Big Brother, Big Government, in the exam room of every American woman. That is who this man is. Those are his dangerous views. Presidents are not kings. Laws are not suggestions--unless Russell Vought is confirmed and makes it so. If he is confirmed and makes it so, we have failed to defend our democracy. We have failed to defend our Republic. We were elected by our citizens of our respective States to be here with the vision of government by and for the people, not the vision of government by billionaires, for billionaires; not the vision of Big Brother government going into our living rooms and into our exam rooms, telling us to have children in order to get a transportation grant. But that is the type of social programming we are facing. To my colleagues across the aisle, you all have pointed out quite accurately that you are threatened with a primary funded by Elon Musk if you don't loyally follow step by step, move by move, everything Trump wants to do, including confirming Russell Vought. I say to you: Stop trembling in your boots. You are being threatened. You are being pressed. You are being extorted. Stand up and say: I am a Senator of the United States of America. I was not elected by President Trump. I was not elected by Russell Vought. I was not elected by Elon Musk and the billionaires. I was elected by the people of my State, and I am going to fight for them. That is your responsibility. That is your path to escape the dilemma we have heard you express. I don't believe, at any other time in our history, the President of the United States has threatened to sic the billionaires against Members of the U.S. Senate, and we need to stand together and say: Hell no. That is what it means to defend the Constitution. That is what it means to be a Senator, this privileged position, elected by the citizens of our State in order to pursue what the people are asking us to do to build a stronger Union and better opportunity for every, every citizen. Donald Trump and Russell Vought are trying to use their Executive orders to break the spirit of the American people, to break the will of Congress, to break the back of the Constitution. Such plans are evil, and every one of us, Democrat or Republican, should say: We will not be intimidated. We will not cower. And we will not bend to fear of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Trump may inflict his worst, but we must awaken our best. President Franklin Roosevelt said: We won't let them ``clip the wings of the American eagle to feather their own nests.'' Colleagues, stand with me. Stand together. Stand as Senators united to stop the President from clipping the wings of the American eagle to feather the nest of the billionaires. To protect our constituents, to protect the Constitution, to oppose this sweeping authoritarian coup, to stand with American families and against the betrayal of those same families, we are coming to the floor united to say: We must not confirm the nomination of the most unfit man to be considered as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. You all have heard me say a few words about impoundments. It is a big word, but it is a big word for a simple action. It means that the President refuses to spend the money that he is required to spend by law on a program. Oh, I don't like healthcare programs that we are doing. And the law says here is what you must spend for this particular program in the coming year, and the President says: No, not doing it. Yes, well, that is illegal, and it is unconstitutional. It is not up for debate. In the 1970s, President Nixon did exactly this action, impoundment, to stop funds for the Environmental Protection Agency for individual programs that he didn't like. He told his EPA Administrator, Russell Train, to withhold the funding. A recipient of those funds was the city of New York, and the city sued. And in that case, Train vs. City of New York, the Supreme Court ruled that the White House did not have the power to impound funds and refuse to do what the law says you are supposed to do. And, furthermore, the Supreme Court said: This is inherent in the Constitution. The Executive is to execute the laws, not to make the laws, not to remake the laws, not to ignore the laws, not to treat the laws as a suggestion. The Executive must faithfully implement the laws of the United States of America. That is the responsibility. Congress, in the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, did create a way for the President to say: I am not just waiting on the budget next year. I am not just weighing in on what programs I want for the next year. I want to change the ones this year. And we gave him--Congress did--a tool to do so. That is the tool of rescission that I mentioned before. Well, let's fast forward from 1974 and the battle with Nixon to 1996. In 1996, there was a very interesting debate over the balanced budget amendment. And you needed 67 Senators to approve, in both bodies, this constitutional amendment. The House easily passed it. Here, in the Senate, the Republican chair of the Appropriations Committee said: No, every year, through our revenue bills and through our spending bills-- appropriations bills--we decide what the deficit will be, and we can decide, in a year, it shall be zero. But we shouldn't be so constrained to address national emergencies, whether it be a famine from drought or whether it be war or whether it be COVID--of course, COVID or some disease--that we shouldn't be so constrained as to be unable to meet the moment. So Senator Hatfield from Oregon said no, he would not be the 67th vote. And then he offered to resign. And what the history books rarely record is that in Oregon the Governor does not have the power to appoint an individual to the Senate seat, which meant there would have been 99 Senators, and 66 would have been enough to pass that constitutional change, and it would have gone out to the States for ratification. Well, the majority leader, Robert Dole, turned down Hatfield's offer to resign. So the 67 standard was not met. Well, then the Republican leadership said: Let's give the President line-item veto--essentially, give the President impoundment power, impoundment power that the Courts said the President doesn't have. And so they passed a law and gave the President impoundment power-- line-item veto--and it went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said: Hey, Congress, the Constitution charges you with the responsibility to lay out what will be funded for what programming. You can't simply delegate to that President. If you could, you could have a majority in the two Chambers that says: We give the power to make up any law the President wants and then to enforce it. In other words, it would be a pathway toward an authoritarian takeover of our country, if Congress abandoned its constitutional role to set the parameters for what programs are funded. And so the Supreme Court struck it down. Well, here we have, again, Russell Vought ignoring the Supreme Court in Train vs. City of New York, ignoring the Supreme Court when it struck down the line-item veto, and once again threatening to so undermine the law and the Constitution. Colleagues, my fellow caucus members will be coming through the night to share their perspectives and why Russell Vought is untrustworthy, unelected, and unfit to serve as the Director of Office of Management and Budget. I believe that my colleague from Hawaii is going to carry the train of this conversation forward, and, therefore, I am wrapping up my comments while he figures out some issue at the counter. But I want you to all go forward into this long 30 hours knowing just a core fact: that we only have a republic if we can keep it, and we can't keep it if we put a man at the head of OMB who is determined to break the law and violate the Constitution. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges to my interns for their shadow days on the following dates: Olivia Sumerfield for February 4, 2025; Kira Shertz for February 6, 2025; Eleanor White for February 12, 2025; Ji Reichle for February 19, 2025; Diya Jaisankar for February 25, 2015; Lauren Pak for February 27, 2025; Reuben Hallsworth for March 5, 2025; Lila Batcheller for March 12, 2025; and Lucy Eckel for April 2, 2025.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, as much as President Trump desires it, the President is not a king. We are here tonight because, as much as President Trump desires it, the law is not a suggestion. We are here tonight because President Trump has decided he is a king, that the law is a suggestion, and he has decided to betray American families. You have heard of the Great Depression, but right now, we are living through the ``Great Betrayal''--the story of a man who ran for the Presidency, saying he was going to be a champion for families. Then, shortly after taking office--just 8 days ago--he proceeds to launch an attack on the very core programs that families, parents, children, and communities depend on. Wow--have you ever seen anything like it? Have you ever seen anything like it in your life that someone campaigns for families, and just after they are sworn into office, they launch a huge attack on America's families? That attack is actually illegal because the law--once programs are funded, it is the Executive's responsibility to implement those programs, not to say, ``Well, I will implement this one but not that one,'' or ``I will shut down all the funding for all the programs.'' No. In fact, we have had that conversation in the past. Let's turn the clock back to President Nixon. President Nixon said: You all reached a compromise, and you had some programs some of you liked and some programs others liked, and you agreed to fund those programs. But do you know what? I am only going to fund the ones I like. I am only going to distribute the funds for those programs which fit my agenda. The courts responded. They said: No, you can't do that. The power of the purse sits with Congress. It is Congress that decides what is going to be spent on what, and it is the Executive's--the President's-- responsibility to implement that. Then Congress said: Do you know what? We will give the President a break. If the President wants to roll back a program that has already been authorized and funded, he can ask Congress to do it. It is in the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, and it is called a rescission. The President sends a message out to us and says: Hey, do you know what? I don't think we need all the funds for developing that new nuclear warhead because it turns out it won't fit on a missile. I would like to have those funds rescinded and put back in the Treasury. And we have 45 days to act. It is a privileged motion. All right. So along comes the ``Great Betrayal'' President, President Trump, who campaigned on families and then decided to attack the programs for families just 1 week into office, and he says: I don't like that rescission structure. I am just going to do what Nixon did. I am going to do what the Court said couldn't be done because I don't like what the Supreme Court decided previously. I am just going to break the law. Now, is this, like, out of character for President Trump? Well, certainly, just hours after being sworn into office and taking the oath to the Constitution of the United States of America, he said: The 14th Amendment--the one about, you know, birthright citizenship--I am canceling it. Wow. Now, we have two major instances of breaking the Constitution with just 8 days into the office. That is quite the record. The thing is the real victims across this country. My colleagues have laid it out so well, the fact that that grant to run the women's shelter is locked up. That program to run the childcare center is canceled. The grant to keep us at the forefront of the semiconductor R&D in Corvallis, OR, is on hold. That medical research is frozen. That contract for vaccination programs so we don't end up with an epidemic that will hurt children can't be written. That employment program for veterans returning from a theater of war ain't happening. No, that is crazy. And all these things are affecting our families-- and not just our families, our infrastructure. We worked so hard in a bipartisan way to launch the biggest infrastructure program since Eisenhower. We did the massive national interstate highway system. But do you know what? It was a long time ago, so we said: We have to rebuild our bridges; we have to improve our mass transit. And we had a very large expenditure trying to bring these up to speed. You know, in my State, there is a bridge on the interstate between Oregon and Washington. It is still a drawbridge. It is like the last drawbridge in the United States of America. It has to be replaced, but now it is on hold. We have another bridge that is under contract or grants to be able to be earthquake-resistant because it will play a critical role when the big one, the one we always talk about--like, California might fall into the sea--when that earthquake that happens roughly every 300 years off the coast of the United States on the West Coast--like, we need to have a bridge that actually holds up to it. Well, who knows if that is going to get built now. So not only does this attack families, not only does this obstruct and delay infrastructure projects, but it drives up costs. I seem to have an echo in my ear about the President saying he wants to reduce costs. But, instead, when you slow down projects, the cost of materials goes up. What is that? That is called driving up costs. So we are here tonight to say this cannot happen. We are here tonight to say to our Republican colleagues: This is not about red and blue or Republican and Democratic States. I talked to a colleague earlier today who said: I am getting all kinds of calls from my home. I bet that is true for every one of our 100 Senators. I know everybody on this side of the aisle has been hearing from folks back home saying: We are pretty upset. We are pretty worried. What is happening? You know, that portal where we get funding from Medicaid or that portal where we get funding for veterans benefits--or whatever it is--it is all shut down. I am sure all 100 Senators have been getting these calls. This is an attack by an authoritarian in the executive branch on the constitutional powers of Congress. You know, when we talk about the branches of government, we talk about article I and article II and article III. Article I of the Constitution is about Congress, because at the heart of democracy are folks who are elected down the hall in the House of Representatives and here in the Senate to wrestle with and shape the law. Article II is the executive, who executes those laws. Article III are the judges who defend the Constitution. Well, so here we are, article II, the President, with authoritarian impulses, is attacking all of us here, all 100 Senators, all 430 or -5 or so Members of the House of Representatives, and saying: I want to have the power and decide how things get distributed for things that have already been enacted. So that is why we are here. I must say, it is even worse. It is even worse than simply his attack on families in this violation on the Constitution. It is part of a vast authoritarian power grab. In just the past few days, the inspectors general for Agency after Agency have been fired. The inspectors general are the ones who make sure the executive branch is behaving according to the law. They do all kinds of reports that hold people accountable. They do things that determine this program is working, that program is not working, this is being done in accordance with the law, this isn't. If the inspectors general are not there, there is no one to hold people accountable. That is the point of firing them all. That should put terror in every one about the lawlessness President Trump intends to go forward with. I know there are all kinds of other things, all kinds of other attacks. For example, all those lawyers in the Department of Justice who are assigned to environmental crimes, like when companies have huge amounts of asbestos and dump it in the wrong place or huge amounts of chemicals that contaminate some groundwater and cause all kinds of citizens to have wells that they can't use anymore, or so on and so forth--every one of them has been tossed. They got the word. They are not there anymore, just within a few days of the start of this administration. So I thank my colleagues who came here tonight to talk about this. The architect of this plan is a man named Russell Vought. Russell Vought did the last budget for Trump the first time he served. And then he started a nonprofit think tank that worked to develop the basic plans for Project 2025. Then he became the architect of Project 2025. And it has three main parts. The first part: Attack and tear down programs for America's families, the ones that help them get on their feet and be able to thrive and move into the middle class. The second part is to borrow $2 to $3 trillion from the Federal Treasury. And the third part is to do massive tax giveaways to the richest Americans. He has laid all three of them out. Check it out in Project 2025. He came and talked to us all about all these programs, these three steps: Savage the programs for families--of course, that wasn't exactly the words he used; he just said massive cuts to things like Medicaid, massive cuts to things like childcare program. Everybody should be on their own, with no foundation to have any assistance getting on their feet and being able to move forward--not on healthcare, not on housing, not on education, not on childcare, not on anything. Well, that is the attack on families. That is the great betrayal. He is going to be voted on this Thursday in the Budget Committee. The Budget Democrats and our Democratic leader have written and said this vote should be delayed. We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis. The architect of that crisis is the man to be voted on on Thursday. This is wrong. Let's fix this constitutional crisis and then continue with the conversation about confirmation of the nominee Russell Vought. Let's work together, Democrats and Republicans, to defend the institutions of our democracy. Let's say no to this sweeping authoritarian power grab. Let's defend the Constitution.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, when I came out of graduate school, I was hired by Secretary Weinberger as a Presidential Management Intern--now called PMF, or Presidential Management Fellows--five of us who were brought in to do a series of rotations to bring, well, an injection of policy determination to the conversation in Secretary of Defense's Office. And it was really quite an enlightening experience. My first assignment involved being desk officer for Jordan at the Defense Security Systems Agency, because the desk officer who worked for both Jordan and Lebanon had to pay a lot more attention to Lebanon because we had the horrific bombing of the Marines in the tower. And then there was an argument inside the defense establishment about how to keep Russia from going forward at a faster pace technologically. And the research and development side said: If you classify everything, you will slow us down and Russia will catch up. And the policy said: Unless we classify everything, the Russians will steal so much, they will speed up and catch up. And there was this fundamental difference of opinion about how to control technology in order to maintain our technological lead over Russia. And I was asked to set up a steering committee and bring both parties to the table to try to work out where they could work together and try to resolve their differences. And in the course of things, I was drafted to become a programmer to do computer studies of survivability related to what strategies with our strategic forces would decrease the risk of nuclear war happening? What would strengthen deterrence? And then on to a service at NATO, and then to an R&D budgeting cycle, where I learned many of the budget games the Defense Department employs in order to get a whole lot of money that seems to be never accounted for. In fact, it has become universally recognized that the Defense Department can never pass a budget, can never pass a budget test--that is, an audit--because they don't track anything very closely, and there are just all kinds of loose ends left. And year after year, Democrats and Republicans have said: Audit the Secretary of Defense. Audit the Defense Department. We want to know where our funds go. And here we are, decades and decades later, and we still have that same problem. You know, it was a valuable several years that led, then, to me working for Congress on strategic nuclear issues. And in the decade of the 1980s, we saw some real advances in our security. We saw some real advances in terms of the stability of the nuclear dynamic with the then-Soviet Union. And, in fact, the folks who put together the Doomsday Clock, which was very close to midnight when I started working on defense issues, was turned back some 13 or 15 minutes from midnight by the late eighties because of a series of agreements and policies and force changes that had been worked out over the eighties. The Defense Department is massive. It is massive--an annual budget of about $850 billion, 3.4 million people working for it, 2.5 million servicemembers, 900,000 civilians. It is massive. It is complicated. But what experience does Mr. Hegseth bring? He ran two little micrononprofits, and he ran them into the ground. He had documented problems with drinking on the job. He had credible and repeated accusations of sexual assault. He showed disrespect for female servicemembers and diverse servicemembers, including the current--well, the former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Brown. What? This man who couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag, who mismanaged the enterprise he had undertaken--that is the man we are going to confirm to run the U.S. military that has massive needs for reform? Is this man some expert in military strategy? No. Is he some esteemed driver of the new technology of war with drones? No. Did he have diverse experiences inside the Defense Department that gave him many perspectives about the incredible sections of the Defense Department that deal with so many different issues? No, no. So why are we having this conversation? What has happened to the idea of credible leadership? I can tell you what happened. The President of the United States, President Trump, said: Do what I want, or I will primary you. And now we have a bunch of folks across the aisle that are not doing their job under the Constitution. The Constitution says it is our responsibility to advise and consent, to vet nominees and to make sure they are qualified before they take these positions. I say to my colleagues: Stop shaking and shivering under the aura of an authoritarian President and do your job. And your job is to say no, because this man is not qualified. He did not even tell President-elect Trump about all the accusations made against him. If he could not tell President Trump the truth before he was serving and before President Trump is President Trump, how will he be able to stand up for the truth and say what needs to be said after President Trump is in office and he is Secretary of Defense? The Department of Defense has failed seven audits in a row. The Secretary of Defense must be able to get the department on track to pass an audit. It is mandated by Congress. It has been mandated before, and they still fail year after year. But both sides say it should happen. We should put some teeth into that. But I tell you, putting a man who can't manage a tiny nonprofit isn't going to get the job done. They ran up enormous debt. And by 2008, the financial records show they were unable to pay their creditors-- irresponsible in the max. I know running a small nonprofit is hard. I was the director of an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, and I ran the housing division of another nonprofit that developed affordable housing, and then I was President of the World Affairs Council and had the managerial responsibilities. And it was tough making sure we hit payroll each month, making sure we raise more money for the aspirations we had for those organizations. It was hard work. I worried about it all the time, but we always met payroll. We always advanced in our mission. Maybe, if we are going to hire somebody from a sole nonprofit to run a gigantic organization, we should at least know they can run the small organization before they get promoted to running an organization with millions of people and the better part of a trillion dollars in its budget. A Republican strategist who worked with him at that organization said: I don't know how he's going to run an organization with an $857 billion budget and 3 million individuals. On more than a dozen occasions, Mr. Hegseth's FOX News colleagues report smelling alcohol on him before he went on air, including just a couple of months ago. Former employees of the nonprofit he ran reported him being drunk on the job and having to be carried out of events. That is the person we want running the Department of Defense? A former employee noted in a letter of complaint that Mr. Hegseth was drunkenly chanting ``Kill all Muslims, Kill all Muslims'' at a bar while on a work trip. You know, we have many faiths serving us in the defense of this country because we are a multifaith Nation. Having a person who advocates for killing people of a particular religious faith is not acceptable to run the Department of Defense. He said: Well, I will reform. I have broken the rules on drinking before, but I will reform. How many times have you heard that from people who are--well, they have an addiction. They try to reform. Maybe they make it for a little while. But in the end, they relapse. Shall we put that risk upon the security of the United States of America? We used to have a more responsible attitude here in the Senate. In 1989, when President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, an FBI investigation revealed that he was a drunk and a womanizer and Mr. Tower pledged not to drink any alcoholic beverages during his time as Secretary of Defense, just as Mr. Hegseth has. And then the Senate weighed the risk of putting somebody with an addiction in charge of the Department of Defense and rejected his nomination. It is an insult to the servicemembers of the United States of America to put a man with an addiction in charge of them. It is irresponsible to the security of the Nation and all civilians of this Nation. The Department of Defense struggles with high levels of sexual assault of female servicemembers, so a person who has been involved in numerous incidents of misbehavior on the issue of treating women isn't the right person to have as the Secretary of Defense. In 2023, the year I have numbers for, 29,000 Active-Duty troops reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact. Mr. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault. He paid the accuser $50,000 in a settlement. It took place in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women's event in Monterey, CA. No charges were filed. But this, in combination with multiple other reports of his treatment--accusations of mistreatment of women, means he is the wrong person to have at an organization in which women provide enormously valuable contributions. During his time at the head of a veterans' organization, the employees report that Mr. Hegseth ``sexually pursued the organization's female staffers.'' It is not like this was one misunderstood event somewhere in his way past life. Women are 18 percent of our Active-Duty servicemembers, but Mr. Hegseth dismisses them. We need moms. But not in the military, especially not in combat boots. He went on to say: I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective. Hasn't made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated. And he is wrong on every point. Women in combat roles have helped fill out ranks. We do have a volunteer Army. We do recruit to get the staff we need in the military in order to be able to operate the weapons systems and the communication systems and the supply systems and the repair systems--all of it. They work in every role--valuable, valuable contributors. We should not put a person at the head of our Department of Defense who somehow thinks half the jobs in the world can only be done by men, because it is wrong and because it undermines the effectiveness of the military providing security. He also doesn't like minorities. Well, minority groups comprise 30 percent of servicemembers. I don't care what color of skin you have. I do care if you work hard as a member of the military to support the security of this Nation. And people of every race are a valuable part of our military. And a man who thinks the color of your skin controls the content of your character and the ability and talents that you possess doesn't belong as the head of the military. He has said: The dumbest phrase on planet Earth is ``our diversity is our strength.'' You take away the diversity in our service and you will soon see our diverse servicemembers are invaluable, and a person who doesn't understand that should never be confirmed. That is our job. Our job, under the Constitution, is to say: Mr. President, sometime Presidents get it wrong. Maybe it is for political reasons; maybe you woke up and didn't know all the background of the person. But we have to vet them, and we have to help make sure your executive branch is successful. That is our job. You are not helping President Trump by voting for a man totally unqualified--the most unqualified man who could be found in America to head the Department of Defense. Mr. Hegseth says: I told my platoon they could ignore directives limiting when they can shoot. A person who violates the directives in the military doesn't belong running the military. There is a strong command structure in the military, and it includes how you behave in certain situations that are crucial to the security of this Nation. But he did not understand that. He has argued that ``U.S. forces should ignore the Geneva Conventions and other elements of international law governing the conduct of war.'' As my colleague from Maryland was just talking about and reciting the wisdom of John McCain saying how the Geneva Conventions and rules on torture serve us well, because you get misinformation when you torture people and you get Americans tortured when they are captured if we are torturing people. So a man who believes in torturing people doesn't understand how to get accurate information and is putting our own servicemembers at risk when they are captured. Why would any Member of this body so disrespect the servicemembers of the United States of America as to put this man in charge? I was honored to work for Secretary Weinberger. I believed that the world was at great risk of the possibility of nuclear war, and that is the issue I focused on in my time there and then my time working for Congress. There is nothing I saw during my time in the Pentagon that equals this level of failure to protect and defend the United States of America. I did not see people put into command who talked about killing members who were of a different religion than they were. I did not hear people talking about how women should not even be there or how diversity was a problem rather than a strength. I saw her as people working hard together, people who had served in Vietnam together. Many of the folks who I served with during those 2 years in my role as a civilian being hired to work with Secretary Weinberger had served in Vietnam. The war had ended by the time I had reached draft age, and I so respected the service that they had given and their dedication to the security of this country. If you are dedicated to the security of this country, if you respect the servicemembers of the United States of America, then do not give them a boss who is the wrong fit in every way possible.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. We are now entering the vote that is referred to as cloture--or close debate--but we can still consider amendments by unanimous consent. I came to the floor yesterday to point out that there is a deep flaw related to children in this bill, and both the majority leader and the floor leader have expressed support for an amendment process. So I am asking to work with me and with my leadership that we might examine this challenge. The challenge is specifically that children, without being charged, without being convicted, are required to be arrested and imprisoned--or not arrested but imprisoned after an arrest with no chance for appeal. My colleagues expressed the belief that the Flores agreement somehow provides protection, but the experts on Flores have said that is incorrect because a bill trumps an agreement, it trumps a rule, and Flores was about children coming to the border, not children living in our community. Furthermore, a family with a parent who is required mandatory imprisonment without appeal is suddenly swept away from their children. Realize we should care about all those children left without a parent at their house, but that is both citizen and noncitizen children. So let's not pretend this flaw only affects folks who are undocumented; it affects our citizen children as well. But, again, we should care about both sets of children thriving. So I ask help from the majority leader and the floor leader. If we have a dispute on legal interpretation, let's bring those lawyers together and understand if they are ships passing in the night or is there a misunderstanding that we can correct or clarify. With that appeal for additional amendments by unanimous consent, which I will continue to negotiate for, I thank you, Mr. President. Cloture Motion

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes to speak to this bill.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you. We are in the same hallway over in the Hart Building.

Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague laid out quite a set of factors there, but let's not blur the picture. The picture is this: A child came here when they were 2 months old. They have been here for 12 years or 14. They walk out of a store with a group of children. A police officer thinks they saw them put something into their pocket and arrests them. It turns out they didn't put anything into their pocket. Nothing was in there, but they have been arrested. Now ICE is required to indefinitely imprison that child--that child in Alabama who was going to be a great, outstanding member of their school and of their community--sentencing that child, with no charge, no conviction, no crime, to prison. We know exactly what harm that type of imprisonment does. That is what this amendment is about. I can't take on all of the other issues, but I will say that last year, we had a bipartisan group develop a comprehensive bill, and my colleagues across the aisle blocked it from coming to the floor. But that was last year's debate. This is a bill that has a purpose, but I don't think the purpose is to wrongly, indefinitely, mandatorily imprison innocent children. So I would ask my colleague, while you are objecting now, let's continue this conversation because it is that important to fairness in America. There is a legal difference of opinion currently, so I am just going to describe that. It was sold on the House side by saying that there is a settlement called the Flores settlement which will continue to protect children and prevent this from happening--an innocent child indefinitely detained in prison with no review process. But let's turn to the counsel for Flores. The counsel for Flores has put out a detailed statement. I have a copy. I understand that other lawyers may have other opinions, but these are the experts. They say: The Flores settlement does not apply to undocumented children in the community. It applies only to children detained in Federal immigration custody by DHS under Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement in certain circumstances and so on and so forth. ``Neither the Flores Settlement, nor any other existing legal protection, would prevent undocumented children from being mandatorily detained by ICE under the Laken Riley Act'' as it is currently written. It goes on to note and explain that the Flores settlement is a consent decree, and law, Federal law, trumps consent decrees. It goes on to say that ``children, including toddlers, are not exempted from the Laken Riley Act'' and that ``24 states have no minimum age for prosecuting children,'' meaning you can be arrested at any age, even a toddler. So I will ask my colleague not, again, to consider granting consent for this amendment, but I would ask that you work with me to explore this topic and see if we can fix this problem to our mutual satisfaction so we don't do harm to children, if you would consider doing that.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about the impact of the Laken Riley bill upon children here in the United States of America and to suggest that we have a debate over several amendments designed as to how to more appropriately treat our children who reside here in the United States so we do not end up doing significant injury to them, which I very much believe is going to be the result if we proceed without some changes. But let me start just by noting that my thoughts are--as I think the thoughts of every Senator are--with Laken Riley's family. Whenever there is a tragedy--no tragedy should happen, whether it is perpetuated by a citizen or it is perpetuated by an immigrant. Americans should be safe in their communities. It is absolutely clear that we need comprehensive, commonsense immigration reform. Here in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans worked together back in 2013 to pass just such a bill--an enormous investment in border security 12 years ago, approved in this body by Democrats and Republicans together. That bill never got a hearing in the House of Representatives. So I hope we will, in fact, try to resurrect the spirit that inspired us 12 years ago in this coming year for comprehensive reform. This particular bill is very troubling in how it impacts children. I am troubled that a bill of such consequence and, quite frankly, legal complexity was brought to the floor without going through a committee. Really, here in the Senate, the way to do responsible work on complicated, consequential bills is to have them go before a committee so the committee can bring in all the experts necessary to resolve disputes and misunderstandings about how the bill might work. From that common understanding, needed reforms can be implemented. But here on the floor of the Senate, where often only one or two of us are here at a time, there is no such consideration. We can't bring experts to the floor here to resolve these issues. My colleague from Alabama is here today, and when I propose that we consider certain amendments, I anticipate that she is going to object, although I will try to persuade her otherwise with the logic of my presentation. But I would say that the core point stands that this bill is consequential, it is complicated, and the potential impact on children is dramatic. So let's work to prevent something really awful from happening here in our country because I know that is not the intent of my colleague. This bill as written requires ICE officers to detain individuals who have neither been charged nor convicted of a crime--neither charged nor convicted. Children imprisoned without being charged or convicted of a crime--that is what this bill does. In the current system, children can be, in fact, detained, but it is at discretion on the front end and discretion on the back end to understand the whole of the circumstances. Is the individual a flight risk? Does the individual pose a risk to the community? Are we talking about an assault with a deadly weapon or are we talking about grabbing and eating an apple while walking down the aisle of a grocery store? That discretion is obliterated in this bill. If a 5-year-old girl in either of our States--I am from Oregon, and Senator Britt from Alabama--gets hungry and grabs that apple, the Laken Riley Act says that young girl, if arrested, must be put into an ICE prison--must be, without discretion--and there is no provision in the bill to get that girl out. There is no required review. This is an obliteration of everything we understand about due process. A child arrested but never charged because there was, in fact, in the end, no evidence--no conviction because since there is no evidence, there is no trial--is still sitting in prison without recourse, in an ICE prison. This is not the America I know, and I don't believe this is the America my colleagues across the aisle want. So I come here to say let's work together to fix this bill. That is what we are looking to do today. I have three amendments. I will explain each of the amendments before I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so that the amendment can, in fact, be debated and voted on. The first amendment excludes children from this bill. If the idea is that mandatory detention should apply to adults, then let's exclude children. Children would still be subject to potential detention that exists under the current law at the discretion--in fact, under current law, they can be detained with discretion even just for an arrest, before they have been charged or convicted, but there is discretion involved. I know of no case in which there has been permanent, mandatory imprisonment of a child who has only been arrested and never charged and never convicted in the entire history of the United States of America, and we are about to change that. That is wrong. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I can offer my amendment No. 73; that there be up to 15 minutes for debate on the amendment; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the amendment without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I was hoping those last two words weren't ``I object.'' But this is an important issue that has been raised, and we need to look carefully because there is no intention to leave a houseful of children home alone when the parent poses no flight risk, has committed no crime, poses no risk to the community, and those children are being harmed. In fact, I do take factual dispute with a few of my colleague's points. She noted that no due process had been taken. When you eliminate the discretion on the front end, you change due process. A judge can no longer say this person is no flight risk, no risk to the community, has children at home, so we will put a high bond. They will absolutely show up. We know where all their relatives are. And that will be best because, if the person is subsequently charged, they will be there for trial. That due process is stripped away on the front end. There is due process in existence now on the back end, where a person can challenge their detention and whether or not they should be there. In fact, during the previous Trump administration, there were children who were released with such challenges, but that is taken away. So, yes, due process is dramatically changed, with a huge impact on children. And my colleague mentioned that we don't want children to be targeted for gangs. Amen to that. Who is more of a target for gangs than children left alone in the home because their parent has been unjustly imprisoned? That does exactly the opposite of what my colleague wants to achieve. So I know this conversation will continue; at least, I hope it will. We are now under a filed cloture motion, which means the majority intends to close debate probably on Monday, and yet one Democratic amendment has been heard--one. The majority leader has said he wants to do things differently; that he wants there to be an amendment process. The amendment process I saw when I first came to this Senate consisted of standing up and saying: I have a relevant, germane amendment. I am asking for the existing amendment to be set aside so that mine can be brought up, which puts it in a queue for consideration. People can study it. And then you go to a whole series of votes on all those things that are in that queue. We did this on Dodd-Frank. We did this on ObamaCare. I think we should do it here because the consequences are high. But if that can't be done, then I would ask my colleague who has worked so hard on this particular bill to take a look at whether the Republican side will agree to hear these amendments and vote on them. They may be voted down, but I think they are important. I think it is extremely important that kids not be wrapped up in this. They can currently be detained, but it is with discretion of the circumstances. I think it is particularly important that we have a standard for children in terms of their best interest. I think it is particularly important that we have a way, after a few weeks, to have some look at whether children who have been left home alone--and if the circumstances are appropriate and there is no flight risk, the circumstances are appropriate and there is no community risk--to help address that situation or we are harming children this was never meant to harm. So I ask for my Republican colleagues to consider providing an opportunity because they--it takes 100 percent. Every single Senator has to agree to hear an amendment. We used to have the Senate code. The Senate code was: I won't object to your amendment. You don't object to mine. They are on the topic before us. These are on the topic before us. These are not some crazy thing. These are addressing core due process issues that affect children. So I would ask that at least they get some discussion for the possibility of consideration. I thank my colleague from Alabama for coming and hearing me out as well as--I am not really thanking you for objecting, but I am thanking you in the spirit in which I think you want to do the right thing. And I will keep striving to convince you that the right thing here is we should debate these amendments.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I do disagree with my colleague because this bill eliminates the flexibility in the current system to consider the totality of the circumstances, and restoring the best interest standard that every State is intimately familiar with is remedying the lack of flexibility in the bill as it is written. But again, we will continue this conversation. I view coming to the floor and having this dialogue as kind of a way for us to do something that is too rare--way too rare--here in the Senate. We rarely have these types of conversations in front of the American people, and I think it is important we have them, especially when there is some value--that maybe we share the same value but have different interpretations of how that value will be impacted. I am sure we share the same value on trying not to do kids wrong. That is why I value this dialogue with my colleague, and I hope it will lead to the opportunity to resolve these issues. I have a third amendment, and the third amendment is related to another aspect of the way children are affected, including American citizen children. Imagine the parent who goes to work who is accused--I don't know--of stealing a tool out of the factory, and so he is arrested or she is arrested. And now, under this bill, that adult has to be locked up--no flexibility on the front end--even though it turns out that they did not steal the tool; they had nothing in their bag that they had with them. The officer thought they did; they didn't. They never get charged. They never get convicted so there is no trial. They are charged. But that parent who has maybe one, two, three, four American citizen children at home waiting for them--they come home from school, and no parent comes home. They have to be locked up under this bill. So we are not just talking about an impact in this bill on immigrant children. We are talking about an impact on citizen children. Now, I care about both, but I just want to note that there has been a conversation about this bill as if it only affects immigrants. No, it affects American citizens too. It affects spouses who might be American citizens. It certainly affects the children who are likely American citizens. So this amendment says that if an adult with children under 17 is subject to the mandatory detention that currently has no end, no back end to it, has no ability to appeal--it is permanent detention, permanent imprisonment--that if they have children at home, after 30 days, there would be a court proceeding to consider whether or not the conditions should exist for release after the normal set of issues are considered, such as is this person a danger to the community; is this person a flight risk; can they be released with bail--the same things we have now--because back at that home are a bunch of children, maybe noncitizen children, maybe citizen children, but a bunch of children who are going: My parent never came home. I am not just a latchkey kid with a parent coming home at 10 p.m. because that is when their shift ends; I am a kid who doesn't know what the hell to do now, and my life has been shattered. So this would create the opportunity for that flexibility that exists in current law after 30 days of mandatory detention. I think it is an appropriate way to address the potential for impact that I am sure no one intended in writing this bill, which was to leave a bunch of children back in a home with no parent and no support. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so that I can offer amendment No. 71; that there be up to 15 minutes for debate on the amendment; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the amendment without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY. I look forward to cooperating on many topics, but this is perhaps the most important one at the moment. A second amendment that I have creates some of the flexibility that exists in current law that doesn't exist under this bill. It requires DHS to employ what is referred to as the best interest standard for the child. This is a standard that is used in virtually every single State in the foster care and child service industry. And so the amendment reads--it is nice to have very short amendments. It requires DHS to only detain children in a manner consistent with the best interest of the child and that does not abrogate, modify, or replace protections for children in applicable Federal law, regulation, court orders, and decrees--in other words, preserving the flexibility that exists in current law, which means could be detained but that a judge can consider the totality of the circumstances, the level of the crime, whether or not there is a flight risk, whether or not there is a potential harm to the community. The best interest standard seems like an appropriate thing to apply when we are, in fact, collectively striving for the best interest of the children. So I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so that I may offer up amendment No. 72; that there be up to 15 minutes for debate on the amendment; and that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the amendment without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, let's talk about Trump's betrayal of middle-class America. In 2017, many of us warned that Trump's tax giveaway was a disaster for working families. It was a giveaway to billionaires. It was a giveaway to powerful corporations. It stole from America's Treasury, increasing the debt of this country to gild the richest Americans. They wanted platinum treatment. They wanted more money than anybody else has ever imagined, and they got it from Trump by draining the American Treasury. Well, that failed America's working families. There is nothing about giving several hundred thousand dollars to the richest Americans--that is each one of them--that helped a single working American. These policies are coming to an end in 2025. But now, Trump 2 is coming along, and he says: I campaigned on working Americans, but I want to raid the programs for them and raid the Treasury to enrich them again. I didn't give them enough the first time around. The rich are not rich enough. I campaigned for working families, but I am going to betray them with tax cuts, tax giveaways, a tax raid on programs and the Treasury for the richest Americans. That is the Trump betrayal that we are facing right now. CBO says extending the Trump tax cuts would blow a $4.6 trillion hole in the Federal budget over the next 10 years. As my colleague just pointed out, Republicans are saying they might decrease the size of that hole by raiding healthcare for Americans. What an evil and twisted plot that is, what an assault on working families across our Nation. That $4.6 trillion--no, I did not say ``m'' for million or ``b'' for billion; we are talking trillion, $4.6 trillion--should go to basic services for all Americans or reduce our deficit instead of going into the pockets of the very few. So whom are you for? Are you for the very richest 1 percent and 0.1 percent of Americans who have so much money they don't know what to do with it or are you for working families? Because this Trump budget is the betrayal of working families. If you are for working families, you invest in healthcare, you don't raid it; you invest in housing, you don't raid housing programs; you invest in education, you don't raid education programs. Those are the foundations. Those are the good-paying jobs. Those are the four foundations for families to thrive. If you work an hourly job and make less than $34,000 a year--which is the case for 50 million American taxpayers--you would get back $130 a year--$2.50, roughly, two and a half dollars. All right. Right now, that is less than a cup of coffee. Enjoy that every week because that is what Trump cares about for those families who are working at the bottom of the ladder trying to move up. Instead of helping move up, he wants to take the programs away from them and give them to these folks who are going to get a $280,000 per- person tax break at the very top. Look how skewed this is. Working families on the left get nothing. The richest on the right get everything. That is what we are looking at. That little tiny $130--just a little change in the cost of drugs or your rent, your groceries wipes that out. Two thousand times the help for the richest compared to those who are struggling. That is twisted. That is warped. That is the Trump betrayal of working families. Let's stand for working families. Let's stand for healthcare and housing and education, the foundation for every family to move up the ladder because that is what it means to care about every American family, whether they are in the party of the elite rich like the Trump betrayal presents.

Mr. MERKLEY

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we are all here, getting ready to leave after we fund the government and return home to our families. We get pretty excited about this time of year thinking about the holidays to come. We are heading home to our loved ones. We know there will be extended family gatherings. There will be games with the children. There will be exchanges of presents. There will be food. There will be awesome food--ham, turkey, all kinds of wonderfully crafted vegetable dishes--and there will be so much that we can drink. Oh, yes. There will be wine varieties. There will eggnog; perhaps some of it will be spiked. There will be carbonated apple juice or cranberry juice for the kids. We will put it into glasses, and we will have a toast. We will really celebrate life. We will celebrate life with a roof over our heads, with our loved ones close by, and with our cupboards well- stocked. Also in these holidays, there will be time for reflection in every religious tradition. For those of us who are fortunate to have that roof over our heads and food in the cupboards and our loved ones close by, we will recognize that, for so many, that is not the case. For so many here in the United States, who by virtue of economic conditions or the ravages of disease or mental afflictions, they will not have a roof over their heads; they may not have family members close by; they may not even have a cupboard, let alone one that is well-stocked. We will ponder our responsibility to try to improve those conditions. We will ponder the landscape across the broader globe, knowing that in many places, people have been so ravaged by natural disasters, so affected by conflict and war. I am sure we will see programs and commentary about Sudan, where millions have been displaced by civil war and by drought and by famine; or in Burma, where so many are suffering escalating violence; or in Ukraine, where people are brutalized by Putin's invasion, in the efforts to defend their country. No matter where you look, there is no shortage of suffering, but the place that weighs the heaviest on my heart this season is the Middle East. We have the families of Israel continuing to grieve the losses of 1,200 of their own loved ones on October 7, 2023. We have families in Israel who continue to not know the fate of their loved ones taken hostage--whether they are alive, whether they are dead, whether they are being cared for, whether they are suffering. Will they be released? And there will be an empty chair at the table. The victims in Israel weigh on my heart, but the Palestinian victims also weigh on my heart, individuals in the West Bank--Palestinians who have suffered from decades of occupation, of the economic constraints and indignity that come from checkpoints, that come from land lost to settlements and to outposts, to olive orchards bulldozed down, to lives lost and injuries suffered from increasing violence by settlers against Palestinian villagers. But, by far, the most devastated communities are the Palestinian communities in Gaza because of the extraordinary level of devastation. And it weighs on my heart because of the connection between the United States and Israel, our close connection with our ally, where we share security strategies, where we provide economic and military assistance. We share intelligence on the issues of the world. We are so closely connected that we are connected to the devastation in Gaza. Since October 7, 2023, more than 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died. More than 100,000 have been severely injured. The vast bulk of those injured and those who have died are women and children and seniors--people who have no connection whatsoever to Hamas, which conducted the raids on October 7 of 2023. The devastation is massive. This same picture, taken in North Gaza, could be almost copied for community after community from north to south of Gaza. Of the 2.1 million people, the Palestinians in Gaza, some 1.9 million--almost everyone, that is--are without a home, either because their home has been blasted into smithereens or because they have been forcibly moved to a different location within Gaza--forced relocation. A year ago, Senator Van Hollen and I went to Rafah gate. We had hoped to get inside Gaza to see with our own eyes and talk to people and understand better the devastation, but what we heard a year ago was that all of the fundamentals for a normal community were devastated. Shelter I have already spoken to--the 1.9 million people relocated either because they were forced to flee or because their homes no longer existed; that the phone networks were down; that the cell networks were down; that the internet networks were down. Even if they were up, people had very little opportunity to recharge their cell phones because there wasn't electricity. So the power was down. The transportation was down because many roads were impassable. Food was in short supply, driving malnutrition a year ago. Clean water was often unavailable a year ago. A year ago, Senator Van Hollen and I could not get into Gaza. Reporters have not been allowed into Gaza except for very carefully monitored, short visits monitored by the Netanyahu government. Humanitarian organizations were having a hard time getting in and often had to do a very careful exchange of an exact number for an exact number coming out. But as we stood there at that gate, a couple of doctors came out, and I spent some time talking to them. One of them was a burn specialist, who described how hard it was to treat many of the massive burns he had witnessed. The other was a bone doctor, and he said: I can treat the broken bones, but I can't necessarily treat the soft tissue damage that comes from the shock waves that emanate from all of the explosions taking down the buildings. The impact, he said, of a blast's radius in terms of the shock waves was even greater than the physical damage. We were able to talk to humanitarian organizations of aid workers who had been in Gaza, and they said: Understand this--that we are seasoned workers who have been in the worst places in the world. We have been in Yemen. We have been on the frontlines of Ukraine. We have been in Sudan. Nothing compares to the devastation in Gaza. That was a year ago. I was particularly affected by hearing about the challenges of mothers. Mothers receive our attention particularly when they are carrying babies because all our efforts go to making sure that delivery--that child will come safely into the world, healthy into the world, and that the mother will be cared for. But what we heard from the humanitarian organizations was that hunger was driving malnutrition and malnutrition made people more susceptible to disease, and for mothers, it meant increases in miscarriages, increases in stillbirths, increases in very low birth weight babies, increases in the difficulty of mothers' breastfeeding their children because they were too malnourished to produce milk, and babies getting sick because when formula was used, if available, the water might be contaminated. Think about the children you have brought into the world or that your wife or your partner has brought into the world and how horrific it would be to see those circumstances. This time of year is a time of year in my spiritual tradition where we think a lot about the challenges Mary went through. She and Joseph were traveling from Galilee to Bethlehem, and they were traveling there at the time that Mary was very pregnant with Jesus, because a census had been ordered by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, and they were required to be there and report to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem. Traveling the roads when one is pregnant is very hard. And then they weren't able to find a room in Bethlehem, and Mary went into labor and delivered in a barn--not ideal circumstances. Because of this time of year and because we think about that story so much, the mothers in Gaza--their conditions are so much worse. It is something we can connect with. And now the children in Gaza are entering their second year in this devastation. Some have some format of school, but many do not. Now, we here in America know--we know--what COVID did to interrupt the education of our children. Some did well with tutors. Many suffered isolation. Many suffered setbacks in what they learned. Many are still carrying that challenge forward as they seek education. So we can also connect to the children of Gaza who have had their education, their lives so disrupted--lives disrupted by a lack of food and water, instability, a lack of safety. Two weeks ago, an ambassador from the Middle East drew attention to a part of Gaza in worse shape than the rest of Gaza, and he referred to this area. Specifically, it is North Gaza. And where is North Gaza? You have northern Gaza and southern Gaza separated by the Netzarim Corridor that travels from Israel to the Mediterranean Sea. But then within northern Gaza, you have Gaza City and then communities: Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia. In those communities, he said, there are 65,000 people who are starving to death because food cannot get in-- 65,000 people starving. We know food conditions have been horrific in Gaza for a year; but in this case, it is sustained prevention of food getting in, and people are starving. He asserted this, so I asked a visiting official from another Middle Eastern country about this. And he emphasized, yes. Yes, he said, there are, in fact, 65,000 people or more starving in northern Gaza, isolated from the rest of the world. OK. Well, that is two officials. But that is a big thing to say. But then this came out, ``Gaza Humanitarian Access Snapshot #8.'' It is cosigned by 30 organizations, organizations like Save the Children, like CARE, like Mercy Corps, and 27 others. What do they say in this report? They say. . . . leaving 65,000-75,000 people trapped without food, water, electricity or reliable healthcare. That is a direct quote from the report of these 30 humanitarian organizations. It goes on to say: Humanitarian aid has been almost entirely blocked for 60 days. It goes on to say that ``only three hospitals remain partially operational with restricted access.'' Very little healthcare. It says: The population faces imminent risks of disease, starvation, and violence without urgent relief. Without urgent relief. I called up Cindy McCain. We know Cindy well here. Cindy McCain is executive director of the World Food Programme. She is the spouse of our former deceased colleague John McCain. I said to her: Is this right? Are 65,000 people isolated in north Gaza for week after week after week, no deliveries of food or virtually none? She said, ``Yes.'' She said, yes, that is the case. She didn't just say it to me. She also talked about Gaza more broadly. She said we can no longer sit by and just allow these people to starve to death. Children, especially, she said, are starving to death. The height of malnutrition, the height of hunger in that region is unbelievably horrible. In November, the United Nations made 41 attempts to deliver aid to this section of north Gaza, to the besieged people trapped in north Gaza. But 37 of the 41 attempts were blocked by the Netanyahu government; four other deliveries were not blocked but were troubled. Here is the situation. A year ago, we heard that if there isn't sufficient food, chaos will ensue because starving people will storm whatever truck there is that has food because they are desperate. The trucks won't be able to make it to the warehouse. Or if they do make it to the warehouse, the warehouse will be sacked. We are now in the very condition that the humanitarian organizations told us would happen. So very little food is being allowed in; and what is being allowed in can't be distributed in any significant, organized fashion, and people are starving. Even if those four truckloads could have been at the warehouse and distributed, there is too little food--a microscopic amount of food--for the 65,000 people who are there. So here we are now. Gaza's destruction--this destruction that we saw in the previous chart, this destruction--this is carried out by American bombs. This is how we are complicit in this situation. It is our munitions that are being used by the Israel Defense Forces to produce this result. We are connected; and, therefore, we are morally connected to the situation in Gaza. Our weapon packages have included 50,000 120-mm high explosive mortar rounds. Our provisions have included more than 32,000 120-mm tank rounds, more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, and 6,500 500-pound bombs, and hundreds of 250-pound bombs. Think about a 2,000-pound bomb. This is like the biggest bomb. The New York Times described how, when it is dropped, it is designed to break fortified military bunkers. It will create a massive crater 40 to 50 feet wide. And when it explodes, it will shatter ``into razor-sharp fragments that can kill or incapacitate people over several hundred feet.'' You kind of get the feeling how any bomb like that is indiscriminate. Whether it is dropped on the intended building or it falls somewhere further afield, it kills a tremendous number of civilians. We are providing those bombs. The Biden administration suspended the delivery of 200-pound bombs to the Netanyahu government because of that and also suspended the 500- pound bombs. But the Wall Street Journal reported in July that the delivery of the 500-pound bombs had been restored. The point here is we continue to be deeply connected and tied to this devastation in Gaza. It is not just the devastation of civilians, it is also American lives, and it is also international law. National Security Memorandum 20--a process that was created because of the work of my colleague Senator Van Hollen, says this: It is reasonable to assess that defense articles covered . . . have been used by Israeli security forces . . . inconsistent with its International Humanitarian Law [and the] obligations for mitigating civilian harm. So what have we done? It was last February--now 10 months ago--that a group of us called on the United States for ``Operation Gaza Relief.'' We must at least provide massive amounts of humanitarian aid so people are not starving in Gaza. We have that responsibility. If we are urging Israel to provide the aid, which is the best strategy, but they do not do it, we have the obligation to provide it. And we did so little. We have the most massive sealift capability in the world, and we didn't use a single bit of it to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We have two hospital ships that have a thousand beds each, and we did not move them into the Mediterranean to help out. We did not encourage other nations to provide their hospital ships. We did do one modest thing. We did a floating pier that operated intermittently from May to July that had all kinds of problems breaking up in the waves. It provided, ultimately--at the best estimate--enough food for people of Gaza for a week, not at all addressing the magnitude of the challenge. We had a responsibility to provide help, independent of any other cessation of hostilities, and we failed. Yes, we pressed for a cessation of hostilities. We pressed for a ceasefire. And I applaud the administration for doing so. But while that failed, we also failed. We, America, failed in our responsibility to provide relief to the humanitarian suffering, on which we are so closely connected. Our own law says that if our aid is impeded--as it has been by the Netanyahu government--that we cannot provide arms. But we have been violating our own law. 620I says: No assistance shall be furnished under this Act or the Arms Export Control Act to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or other otherwise redirects, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance. We have a moral responsibility, and we have a legal responsibility. So we must--must--do more. We must do more in the remaining weeks of this administration. We must do more in the opening year of the next administration, because these issues of moral responsibility, these issues of international law, do not depend on who sits in the Oval Office. So as we stand here about to go home and celebrate with our big plates of food and our full pitchers of wine, as we read our cards calling for peace in the world, as we offer our prayers, let us not forget those who suffer in the Middle East. Let us not forget the families who lost their family members on October 7 in Israel. Let us not forget the families in Israel whose family members are still held hostage. Let us not forget those on the West Bank suffering the inflictions of local violence. But most of all, let us not forget the victims in Gaza and do all we can, under our moral responsibility, under our legal responsibility, to come to their aid.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this week, the Senate passed important legislation to Oregon's ports and waterways, the backbone of our regional economy. This legislation includes key provisions that I fought for to ensure the safe navigation of the Lower Columbia River's deep draft channel, which connects the Pacific Northwest and much of the country to the world. According to the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, the channel supports more than 49 million metric tons of international trade cargo, accounting for over $31 billion in value and supporting at least 40,000 local jobs. The benefits of ensuring clear passage along the channel reach well beyond the region. The channel is the country's top wheat export gateway, the second largest U.S. soy export gateway, and the third largest grain export gateway in the world, as well as the top West Coast exporter for cars. Since 1891, through authorizations in a patchwork of Federal laws and agreements, the Port of Portland--and later along with the Ports of Vancouver, Woodland, Kalama, and Longview, WA--has assisted in dredging and maintaining the channel. For the last 60 years, this work has been done by the Dredge Oregon, on behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a dredge owned by the Port of Portland and used exclusively for Columbia River channel maintenance. While the dredge has performed extremely well on demand and often under difficult circumstances, the vessel is now nearly 60 years old and in desperate need of replacement. I am pleased that section 1325 of this year's Water Resources Development Act will clearly authorize the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to replace Dredge Oregon with a more modern vessel. This language makes it clear that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can reimburse the Port of Portland for financial costs incurred to replace Dredge Oregon, which exclusively works to fulfil the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsibilities in the Lower Columbia Channel. This authorization is critical toward ensuring that the Lower Columbia River will continue to be dredged and maintained with the same reliability as it has been for decades. I once again thank my colleagues and staff for their hard work on this legislation.