Brian Schatz

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, no one asked for this. No one asked for the biggest wealth transfer in American history from the poorest people in the country to the richest people to ever exist. No one asked for the biggest ever cuts to Medicaid, to kick 14 million people off of health insurance, and raise out-of-pocket costs for 20 million people. No one asked for food assistance to be slashed for millions of children and low-income families. No one asked for higher prices at the pump or on their electricity bills. No one asked for students across the country to lose Federal financial aid. No one asked for any of this--and I really mean that. That is not just a rhetorical flourish. I don't think Trump voters asked for this. I know Harris voters did not ask for this. I don't think anybody really wants this. I think the reason that all of these crazy, harmful policies are about to be enacted is for one simple reason, and that is to generate enough revenue to satisfy the insatiable desire for tax cuts for people who make more than $4 million a year. They are literally taking money out of food assistance and Medicaid and Affordable Care Act monthly subsidies. By the way, you don't know if you get a subsidy or not. You just go on the exchange, and you pay the thing. The thing is, that thing is probably $400 or $500 or $600 a month less than it used to be because of the subsidies. It is one thing to say 14 million people are going to get kicked off of Medicaid--and they will. It is another thing to say, because of those Medicaid cuts, a bunch of clinics and hospitals in rural communities are going to shut down--and they will. I think what is a little underrated is many, many more millions of people are going to pay not $50 more a year, not $100 more per month, but many hundreds of dollars more per month. Why? Because when you yank that money out of the system, it is what is called a pay-for. It means it generates a ton of revenue. How does it generate that revenue? By screwing regular people. They are racing to pass a bill that does all of these things and that raises the debt by many trillions of dollars. I think the problem some of us have--and I really appreciate the Presiding Officer. And when we agree, we work really well together, and when we disagree, we are at least able to stay civil. So I am trying to take the edge off of this. But one of the reasons that it sounds like I am frothing at the mouth and saying a bunch of partisan talking points is that it is kind of hard to believe that any political party would actually do this on purpose. It is quite hard to believe that you would cut food assistance and cut healthcare and cut help for regular working people in order to shovel money to people making more than $4 million a year. But that is exactly what they are doing. It is as if they designed this bill in a lab to make the maximum number of people angry. It is unpopular. It is unnecessary. And they are doing it anyway. Hospitals serving rural and low-income communities will be forced to shutter because they won't be adequately compensated for their services--by the way, again, not a talking point. Go and visit any rural clinic or hospital. Ask them what percentage of their payer mix comes from Medicaid and what would happen if they lost a big chunk of that. A lot of them say--the big ones--big is relative. But in the State of Hawaii, our big institutions say: We could stay afloat. We just have to deliver a lot less care. And then everybody would end up in the ER, right? The Queen's Medical Center, the sort of No. 1 trauma center in the middle of Honolulu, is already bursting at the seams. You have multiple people in the hallways. All of the rooms, all of the beds are taken. It was just a couple of months ago that they finally figured out a way not to release the psychiatric emergencies right onto Punchbowl Street in their hospital gowns. That is before they do this to the hospitals. After the ACA passed, you would go on the exchange, select a plan, and pay a fraction of what you used to pay. I think one of the things is that ObamaCare is now so old that people forgot how horrible it was before then--really horrible. So now you just go on, and you are kind of irritated because it is still money, and still feels like too much, and it feels like your HMO or provider nitpicks you and doesn't cover a bunch of care, and copays are too high. But it is way, way, way better than it used to be. So this whole enterprise is for one single purpose, and that is to generate enough money to cut taxes for billionaire corporations and people who make $4 million or more in revenue. It is very, very few people benefiting and tens of millions of people being screwed. There is little in this bill that will help regular people who are already struggling to meet their monthly obligations. But there are plenty of rewards for the ultrawealthy. Millionaires stand to gain roughly $70,000 in tax cuts, while billionaires in the top 1 percent receive close to $300,000 in benefits. And how did they find that money to shovel to the millionaires and billionaires? I don't mind a millionaire or a billionaire. I know, like, two billionaires. We are not close, but I have met them. I am sure I know many millionaires. There are a number of colleagues in the Senate who are in that category. So it is not like--I am not trying to demonize anybody. I am saying: Do they need $300,000? I know people who need $300. I know people who actually won't be able to stay on any healthcare at all if these subsidies go away. This is not the closing of loopholes. This is not fiscal discipline. I want to make this point as clearly as I can. We would be in a harder position to argue against this bill if it were actually deficit-neutral because, traditionally, the accusation against Democrats is they want to bust the budget, and Republicans want to be responsible. But this one is weird because this is under the guise of ``We have got to do austerity; we have got to do tough stuff; we have got to cut.'' Then they come up with a bill that actually increases the deficit over baseline, even when they do their kind of nonsensical accounting where they basically have stopped counting the tax cuts that are in place because, you know, that is the baseline. And so the whole enterprise--and everybody needs to understand this. They are making everything more expensive. That is food. That is medicine. That is groceries. That is gasoline. That is electricity. And the reason they are making it more expensive is because they are either indifferent to the suffering or, more importantly, they just need the money. And they don't need the money to--you know, we raised taxes in the past, as a country, to fight a war, to beat Nazism; or we raised taxes in the past to shrink the deficit; or we raised taxes and raised costs for people to invest in something important. That is not what we are doing here. We are blowing up the budget, and we are harming regular people in order to provide tax cuts for people who literally didn't ask for it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, there is a sort of general rule in politics, which is that if you start your meeting at 1 a.m., you are probably not proud of what you are doing. Now, there are some instances in which you start the meeting at 7 p.m. and it goes long and then you have to vote at whatever hour you finish. But to convene at 1 a.m. is an intentional thing. It is to say: I would very much like if nobody saw what we were up to. And that is exactly what happened at 1 a.m. today, Wednesday morning. Republicans in the House know that the bill that they are considering is super unpopular, but they have been ordered to pass it anyway. That is what is happening on the other side of the Capitol right now. House Republicans have convened the Rules Committee at 1 a.m. to advance their tax bill, and it is because they know this bill stinks. For starters, it is the largest wealth transfer in American history. Think about that. There have been a lot of wealth transfers in American history, but this is the biggest one in terms of the Tax Code. It is not like they were redistributing wealth among the wealthy. They are literally taking from the poor--people who don't have enough money--and shoveling it straight into the pockets of people who already have more than enough. This bill is about making the richest people ever to walk the Earth even richer. How do they plan to do that? By kicking 14 million Americans off of health insurance and denying food assistance to millions more. People will be turned away at hospitals and go to bed hungry, all so that billionaires have a bit more. You do not need fancy polling to tell you that this is super unpopular. And so Republicans have decided to fix that problem by convening the hearing in the middle of the night, hoping that people will not notice. The plain facts of the bill are so egregious. And as I started to write these remarks, I had a problem, which is, How do you describe this thing accurately and not sound like you are frothing at the mouth like a partisan and sort of overstating the case? Because this really is kicking 14 million people off of Medicaid, kicking millions more off of food assistance, and then that is the savings that is generated in order to fund these tax cuts for billionaire corporations and the wealthiest people in the United States. And what happens if something is both true and sounds like a partisan accusation? But that is where we are at. This is actually what they are trying to do. Here is the thing, even the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history are still not enough to cover the cost of these enormous giveaways. So the Republicans have turned to one of their favorite punching bags: solving the climate crisis. Never mind that hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in clean energy across the country, mostly in Republican States and districts; never mind that those investments are creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs; never mind that even if you don't care about any of that, there is a basic principle in running a smart economy and running an investable economy--and that is that when the private sector makes an investment on the basis of the Tax Code and they are in the middle of that investment, you can't pull the rug out from under them. The reason is very simple. Besides fairness and besides the fact that we are undermining progress towards actually addressing an existential crisis for the planet, it also makes the United States very hard to invest in because if you were a business and you are looking at the Federal Tax Code and you are saying: I am going to make a 5-, maybe 10- year investment--capital investment--in chips, manufacturing, climate, agriculture, hospitality, real estate, transportation, infrastructure, whatever it may be--you are doing it on the basis of what the Federal Tax Code says. And then your investment committee, board of directors, whomever it may be, will say: How do we know these things are going to stay on the books? The normal answer is: Come on, the Federal Government is not going to pull out a tax incentive structure in the middle of your investment and construction cycle. And the truth is, yes, they are. So this doesn't have just climate implications or economic implications in terms of the specific projects. It actually has to do with how stable of an investment climate we establish in the United States of America. We are no longer doing ``all of the above.'' The argument that we used to have between the political parties was Democrats would say we have to transition to clean energy; Republicans would say, no, let's do clean energy, but let's also do these other things. But now the Republican position is picking winners and losers and, basically, riding the losers into the ground. Here is the very tough truth: Coal is on the way out, whether you like it or not. But Trump and Republicans would rather revive it for a few more years just to squeeze a couple more years of profitability out of it because, after all, their capital investments are fully amortized. So a couple more years of profitability means no more investment, but a couple more years of revenue. So that is what they are doing. This is going to raise costs for Americans. Let's be clear. This is going to raise costs for Americans. There was a time--and I was part of these debates in the State of Hawaii--there was a time when there was a tradeoff between how much consumers had to pay and our climate objectives. But those trends have changed. Now wind is the cheapest form of energy. Nuclear is among the cheapest forms of energy. Solar is among the cheapest forms of energy. For me, in the State of Hawaii, to bring in low sulfur fuel oil on a fuel tanker and then light it on fire for electron is the dumbest thing to do, even if you don't care about climate. It is simply cheaper. It is simply cheaper for consumers and businesses and for the climate crisis and, therefore, our ability to fiscally manage the climate crisis as we see increasing disasters, both in their severity and how often they happen. And then every--what?-- year, year and a half we do $150 million emergency supplemental because there are now wildfires where there have never been wildfires, floods where there have never been floods, tornadoes where there have never been tornadoes? This is not made up. Nobody gets to deny this anymore. So there is a reason they convened at 1 a.m., and it is not because that is prime time in Hawaii. They didn't convene at 1 a.m. because they like to see each other past midnight. They convened at 1 a.m. because they are about to pass one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation that has ever been passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives. I just wonder why--if I am a House Member and I am being told ``We are going to make all these changes. All these things that you are voting for are going to be excised from the Senate version. Don't worry,'' well, my view would be ``If you are going to fix all that stuff, why are you making me vote on it now? Why are you making me vote on it now?'' The answer is very simple: Donald Trump showed up in the caucus and used a couple of expletives. They implied that voting no is a betrayal, that standing up for your constituents is a betrayal, and I think they are all going to fall in line. So it is up to the U.S. Senate to fix this bill or kill this bill. That is the task in front of us. I am hoping that cooler heads prevail. I know there are a number of Republicans who hate these Medicaid cuts. I know there are a number of Republicans who have a ton of clean energy investment in their States. There is plenty of political room to criticize the Biden administration or say ``I am against the Green New Deal'' and still be for wind and solar and nuclear and geothermal and agriculture that is done in a more climate-friendly way. All of that is available to us. We don't have to do things in the maximally unpopular way, but the Speaker apparently wants to do it that way. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 2:15 vote start now.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would like to explain what I am doing here. I have a hold on nominees coming out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because it has been almost 4 months since Donald Trump and Marco Rubio illegally and unilaterally shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development under the guise of a so-called review, which should be done by now. This is in violation of the appropriations law, the Foreign Assistance Act, and probably the Impoundment Control Act. Here is the thing: As a direct result--and it is not so common that you can say ``as a direct result''--of something that was done by the Secretary of State and the Administrator of USAID, people are dying. Children are dying. Mothers are passing HIV-AIDS to their children. Disaster survivors are being stranded with nowhere to turn. All of this suffering is because of what the United States is doing, in contravention of their own laws. So I will not expedite confirmation of State Department nominees until and unless this administration starts complying with the law and being accountable to Congress. I want to make two other points here. I will stipulate that it would be a very nice time to send our Ambassador to the Holy See. It would be an auspicious time to do so. But let's understand how hard it would be to do this in the normal course of business. You file cloture. It is a cloture petition. The majority leader is in charge of it. You put it at the desk. You wait a day. You take a procedural vote. Two hours later, you take the final passage vote. You have your Ambassador. Why do I know this? Because we are doing this on nine other nominees this week. So it was the choice of the Senate majority to prioritize the Chief of Protocol; the Legal Adviser for the Department of State; the Secretary of the Air Force; the Deputy Secretary of Energy; the Deputy Secretary of the Interior; the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources; the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; the Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget; and the Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. If this is a very important and time-sensitive confirmation, all we need to do is have the majority leader file a cloture petition, we wait 1 day, and then we vote. It is perfectly available to us, if that is an urgent matter, to just do this in the normal course of business. As I was talking to the Senator from Missouri, with whom I have a pretty solid working relationship, I was explaining that when I was in the majority and we were trying to get confirmations through, I spent a fair amount of time talking to people who had holds. I would always go to their offices, sometimes catch them on the floor, sometimes go to the cloakroom, and say: Hey, what would it take to release this hold? To this moment, not a single Member has walked up to me and said: What would it take to release the hold? Not the majority leader, not the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, not the Senator from Missouri, not anybody. The normal way that the minority flexes its authority is to slow things down, even if it is slightly. And this is all this is--like a day, plus 2 hours. So if this is important, we can get it done this week. If it is important for me to release those holds, then somebody should come and talk to me. I remain ready and willing to talk to Leader Thune or any Republican colleague as we continue consideration of these nominees going forward. Therefore, I object.

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I am just a little bit taken aback by the personal--the tone here. But I do enjoy working with the Senator on the Commerce Committee, so I am not going to respond in kind, except to say something very simple, which is: It is Tuesday. If we file a cloture petition--which is not my authority--tonight, there will be one intervening day, and then we vote on Thursday. So if this is important to the majority leader, all he has to do is file a cloture petition.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, on another matter, it really should go without saying, but no President should be accepting a $400 million gift from a foreign country. It is gross; it is reckless; it is corrupt; and the outrage and condemnation, especially on the Republican side, should be universal. There is no excuse or justification for this. It is wrong. That is the end of the story. There is no legal justification. There is no commonsense justification. Let's unpack this a little bit. Trump is planning to accept a $400 million luxury plane from Qatar, which he just so happens to be visiting this week on his first foreign trip of his term. The stated purpose of that trip is to cut business deals, but it is very hard to drive a hard bargain when the people that you are negotiating with just gave you a $400 million gift. And it means that the other side will have a much easier time getting what it wants, even if American interests are harmed. A law enforcement official called the gift a ``security nightmare'' because it would require basically the whole thing to be busted up, taken apart, and reconstituted. If that all sounds blatantly corrupt and incredibly wasteful, it is because it is. I just want everyone to go through the thought experiment. Imagine if it were a President of the other party, imagine if this happened 25 years ago and you were reading about something in history, do you think that an American President should accept a $400 million gift? Do you think that Air Force One--this icon, this symbol of American power abroad that has carried John F. Kennedy's body; where LBJ was sworn in; where George W. Bush was whisked away when the Twin Towers fell; where multiple Presidents of both parties and multiple generations have done extraordinary work around the world making sure that we are the indispensable Nation; that we are the leader of the free world--now sponsored by Qatar. I remain flabbergasted that this thing is not going to pass. I remain completely aghast. This is the most blatant, obvious, ridiculous, gross corruption that I have ever seen in my entire life by dollar amount, by symbolism, by violating constitutional and statutory law, and also just violating like--I am not a lawyer. You don't have to be all fancy pants to understand how ridiculous it is that a foreign government is going to say: Hey, we will take care of Air Force One for you. And so we have a simple resolution--and it is simple. I was going read it, but you know what, I will just summarize it. It basically says--and the way these things are structured, it is bunch of whereases: Whereas Air Force One is a symbol of the United States; Whereas Air Force One is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Office of the Presidency; and so on and so forth; therefore, be it resolved that we shouldn't do this, that the American President should not accept a $400 million gift from anybody. And so, as if in legislative session, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 218, submitted earlier today; that there be up to 2 hours for debate on the resolution and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the adoption of the resolution; finally, that if the resolution is adopted, the preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I cannot believe I have to say this, but a President should not take a $400 million gift from a foreign country. It doesn't matter which President or what party. It doesn't matter which foreign country. It doesn't matter if there is or is not a legal justification. No President should take a $400 million gift from a foreign country. I shouldn't have to explain why, but it is a high principle, literally enshrined in the Constitution because people whom we represent should know--not think but know--that their representatives are focused on them and this country only; that our loyalties are not divided; that our minds are not wandering elsewhere. The emoluments clause in the Constitution--it is a fancy phrase but a simple idea: no foreign gifts. If a foreign government offers you anything but especially something worth close to half a billion dollars, the answer is, no, thank you. End of story. Very simple. End of story. I cannot take that. First of all, I cannot take that because I can't have divided loyalties. I am going into the region; I can't take a $400 million gift before I begin negotiations with you. But it is also explicitly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. And the gift in question is that the country of Qatar is going to literally provide a luxury aircraft--not just any luxury aircraft to the President of the United States but Air Force One. And why does this matter? Air Force One is not just a random luxury airplane. It is a symbol of and a projection of American power. It has flown 15 different Presidents. It carried President John F. Kennedy's body after his assassination and saw President Johnson be sworn in under unprecedented circumstances. It rushed George W. Bush back to Washington after the Twin Towers were struck. And just 2 years ago, it flew President Joe Biden to Europe for a secret trip to Ukraine during the war. When people see Air Force One on TV, when they see it land in other countries--whether in London or Tokyo or Brazil--they immediately know that America has arrived. It represents not just the weight of the Presidency but America itself, generations of history and international leadership. But in one fell swoop, Trump is selling out one of the most iconic symbols of American power that we have, and what people will now see is the most powerful man on Earth flying around in a plane paid for by a foreign government. It is disgusting. It is wildly corrupt. And just because they are doing the corruption in plain sight not does make it any less damning or sad or gross. This week, several of my colleagues and I will be asking the Senate to vote to condemn this action. There should be 100 of us that agree on this fundamental principle: No President should take free stuff from a foreign government and certainly nothing worth $400 million. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, this week is Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Awareness Week, and it is a sobering reminder of both the breathtaking scale of this tragedy that has plagued Native communities for generations and how far we still have to go to bring justice and healing to the victims and families affected by it. This crisis is likely out of view for most Americans, but it stares us in the face. Murder is the third leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, which is 10 times the national average--10 times the national average. American Indians and Alaska Natives are more than twice as likely to experience violent crimes, including rape and sexual assault, than any other group of people in the United States. In Hawaii, 64 percent of human trafficking survivors are Native Hawaiian. Even so, we still don't know the true extent of the crisis because for so long, the Federal Government failed to take it seriously. It was more convenient to pretend as if it didn't exist than to dedicate Federal resources to investigating the crimes and prosecuting those responsible. As a result, in far too many instances, justice has not been served and families have not been able to begin the process of healing. To experience the tragedy of a loved one gone or a neighbor suddenly found dead is horrific in and of itself. But worse, these communities often have to shoulder the burden of finding answers all by themselves while they are grieving. For that to happen anywhere else or to anyone else, we would be rightly outraged. The fact that it is happening to Native Americans in cities like Anchorage or Albuquerque, on remote reservations, and on Hawaiian homelands should not change our outrage. After decades of underinvestment, Congress finally took steps to address this crisis when we reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act in 2022. As chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs at the time, I was proud to work with Native leaders and advocates and especially my good friend the vice chair at the time, Lisa Murkowski, to restore Tribal jurisdiction for certain violent crimes and increase Federal resources to keep Native families safe. No one bill or action is going to remedy generations of neglect and injustice, but it was an important step forward, along with other laws, in turning the tide on this shameful and longstanding problem. There remains a lot of work to be done to ensure that Native people feel safe in their homes and in their communities. And it is a priority that we continue to advance on the Indian Affairs Committee with the chairman, Lisa Murkowski, and many others. But today we remember the many victims lost to this devastating epidemic of violence and recommit ourselves to helping to find justice and healing for all of those affected. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I would like to recognize and celebrate the Merrie Monarch Festival, an annual event held in Hilo, HI, that honors the legacy of King David Kalakaua, known as the ``Merrie Monarch.'' The festival continues to be a beacon of cultural preservation and a showcase of the rich heritage and traditions of the Native Hawaiian culture. Since its inception in 1963, the Merrie Monarch Festival has embraced and perpetuated the art of hula--a cornerstone of Hawaiian culture that communicates history, spirituality, and identity through movement, song, and chant. The festival provides a platform for kumu hula, or hula teachers, and their halau, or hula schools, to share their knowledge and artistry, ensuring that these traditions continue to thrive for generations to come. Through the tireless commitment of several dedicated families and individuals, the Merrie Monarch Festival has not just endured but grown to be a global event, fostering a deeper appreciation and understanding of Hawaiian culture with the thousands who watch in person, on TV, and online. The competition, craft fairs, parade, and other associated events are special opportunities for local artisans, businessowners, musicians, and more to share their talents with the world. The Merrie Monarch Festival both honors the past and traditional knowledge and celebrates how the Hawaiian culture continues to live on. I commend the organizers, participants, and supporters of the Merrie Monarch Festival for their steadfast dedication to perpetuating Hawaiian cultural practices. Their efforts honor the legacy of King Kalakaua and emphasize the significance of sustaining Native Hawaiian traditions in our contemporary world.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, yesterday, the Health Secretary, RFK, Jr., announced that the Department would subject all new vaccines--including vaccines for children and vaccines for well-researched diseases like measles and polio--to placebo testing. So what does that mean? It means that they would take a bunch of kids, divide them into two groups and give some of the kids the vaccine for rubella and mumps or polio; and then they would take the other half and give them a placebo--a dummy vaccine that doesn't work; it is not supposed to work; and then they would study how the kids fare, to let the disease process continue. Let me tell you something about my father. My father was the only doctor on the record for the first couple of years after the Tuskegee experiments on African-American men in which they withheld lifesaving medicine from hundreds of African-American men, believing that they were expendable, to ``observe the disease process.'' What they are contemplating--and I don't know how serious this is, but what they are contemplating is that at scale with children. I am hoping that the Department clarifies today that is not what they meant; that is fake news. But as of now, they are contemplating populationwide experiments on children to see how the disease process progresses. There should be 100 U.S. Senators opposed to that, and I pray that they back off of this by the end of the day. H.J. Res. 75 Mr. President, the Trump environmental agenda revolves around one thing and one thing only: How do we make fossil fuel companies even richer while raising costs for everybody else? You know, people voted for Trump for all kinds of reasons, but I don't know anybody who voted for Trump hoping that their kids and their neighbors would be more exposed to the most toxic pollutants like mercury and lead that cause cancer, cause brain damage, and cause birth defects. But through their continued rollback of fundamental environmental protections, that is what we are about to do in 10 minutes. For decades, these regulations have made our communities safer and healthier. You can step outside or have your kids play at the park without worrying about the air being polluted by harmful toxins. There is no reason that we should trust polluters chasing profits to responsibly self-regulate. There are lots of problems in the government and there are even some regulations that don't make any sense, but the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, it has been very, very successful over the many, many decades. And what the Republicans are moving forward with today is a rollback of the thing that has protected our kids, our family members, and our community members just to make sure--this isn't even a climate thing--that you are not breathing in the kinds of toxic chemicals that cause brain damage and cause cancer. Protecting our communities is one of the most basic jobs of a U.S. Senator, and this resolution does the opposite. For that very simple reason, I urge my colleagues to vote against it. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we start the vote now.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, we are 100 days into Donald Trump's term, and it is time that we ask the most important question, the most obvious question, but it is a question, actually, that has not been asked enough--not ``How is he doing?'' not even ``What is he doing?'' That is important too. The most important question is ``How are we doing under Donald Trump?'' The answer is ``Terrible.'' It is going very badly. In 3 months, we have become less safe, less secure, and less prosperous, and it comes down to Donald Trump. People voted for him for all kinds of reasons, but as my friend Senator Chris Murphy said, people took him seriously when he said he would lower costs and didn't take him seriously when he said he would act like a dictator. It turns out that the opposite is true. We are paying more for everything. We are paying more for everything. People's life savings and college plans for their kids are being gutted. Tens of thousands of jobs are getting cut. Investors are looking for more stable places to invest their money. The hallmark of the U.S. financial system and economy is that we are the most stable place, the most predictable place, the best place for rule of law, to park your money, for infrastructure, for higher education, and all of that has been lit on fire in 100 days. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. Trump's approach to tariffs--one day they are on, and the next day they are gone--is starting to make everything from groceries, to clothes, to cars and homes more expensive. And people are understandably worried about a recession. Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in 5 years. You will recall that there was a global pandemic that caused people to have a low level of consumer confidence. But this is not a global pandemic; this is a self-imposed recession by one person who has a very weird idea about economic policy and nobody willing to stand up to the mad King. This is not what people voted for. And if you voted for Donald Trump--look, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump. Most people voted for Donald Trump. I am not here to scold anybody. But people thought that whatever his other faults, Trump was going to be good for the money side of things--he was going to be good for your money; he was going to be good for entrepreneurship; he was going to be good for your 401(k); he was going to be good for the stock market; he was going to be good for investments. Here we are, and the American economy is in a free fall, threatening to drag the entire world down with it. But it is not just the economy that is hurting. Trump, aided by his band of rogue advisers, including Elon Musk and Russ Vought, has broken basically everything, forcing seniors and disabled people to wait for hours just to get help with the benefits they have already earned. Veterans are being laid off by the thousands and facing even longer delays in getting the care they need. Trash is piling up at national parks with fewer park rangers to look after them. Drastic cuts to medical research and staff mean fewer discoveries and potentially lifesaving treatments for conditions like cancer and Alzheimer's. The national parks, the VA, the NIH, the CDC--these are the kinds of American institutions that have made us strong for generations, and they are being trashed on purpose. A proposed downsizing at the Postal Service will keep people waiting longer to get their packages and their mail and their prescriptions and their bills, especially in rural and remote areas. And none of this is saving any money. It is absolutely making people's everyday lives harder. OK, so the economy is not doing great, support services are being cut left and right, but are we at least safer and stronger and more respected globally? The answer is no. Since his first hours in office when he froze all foreign assistance, Trump has undermined our safety and national security at every single turn. He has picked fights with neighbors and allies, weakening longstanding partnerships and forcing the rest of the world to work against us rather than with us. I was in Europe a couple of months ago, and it was kind of jarring when our allies--and I mean our allies, our closest allies, who have always been there with us, who have defense treaties with us, who have economic partnerships with us, who have people-to-people ties--came to us and said that the biggest destabilizing force on the planet is the President of the United States. We used to be the good guys that would respond to disasters and treat diseases around the world, but Trump has decimated one of the most successful global health programs in history--PEPFAR--leaving an estimated 1 million newborns to contract HIV from their mothers--1 million newborns contracting HIV from their mothers. What possible purpose could there be behind that? One note to my former colleague Secretary Rubio: There is not a waiver program in place that allows lifesaving aid to flow. These organizations that provide aid are absolutely shutting down. I was just talking to a colleague who was in Africa over the recess period, and he said kids are on half rations. Kids are half the size they are supposed to be because of what America is doing--because of what America is doing. An earthquake hit Myanmar, and the United States sent three aid workers to assist with the disaster response, who were then fired while they were on the ground. We have three people there to help people in Myanmar, where there was a catastrophic earthquake. The ``United States'' logo is on their armbands, and they are fired and told to come home. Guess what happened next. China sent 600 workers and has committed to delivering close to $14 million in supplies. I think that is catastrophic for humanitarian reasons. I think that is catastrophic for moral reasons. I think it is bad that the United States is causing death on purpose. But even if you don't care about that, we can at least see the geopolitical downside to vacating the scene when another country is in trouble and letting China go into the breach. I have a friend of a friend who just texted me. They were doing good work in Fiji, and they were sent home. China came in within 2 weeks and is performing the same work. I cannot imagine anybody making the argument that that is good for the United States. You do not counter China's growing regional influence or outcompete its economy by walking away from the world and insulting all of your friends. You don't bring peace to Gaza and Ukraine by making false promises and empty threats, nor do you win the future on issues like AI and clean energy by pretending that America, as strong and powerful as we are--and we are strong and powerful--that we can solve any of these global challenges alone. A lot of Trump's failures, whether in domestic or foreign policy, boil down to the simple fact that he and his people honestly don't know what they are doing. There is no grand strategy that we are all somehow missing. There is no brilliant, new way of looking at things. They are just kind of messing around in the most powerful positions on the planet--the Signal group chat, the forged DOGE savings receipts, the frantic firing and rehiring of nuclear weapons workers and disease detectives. The people currently in charge of the most powerful Nation in human history, moving trillions of dollars around, are just winging it, and their response to the frequent mistakes, no matter how serious or costly, is ``oops'' or sometimes they pretend it was their plan all along. Trump's ineptitude is matched only by his corruption. Just days before his inauguration, he launched his own meme coin, which he encouraged supporters to buy. For those of you who are not super up on all the crypto stuff, this is the equivalent of basically saying: I have a Swiss bank account in case anybody wants to deposit money into the President of the United States' pocket. That is what this meme coin does. After he made close to $100 million from it, the coin quickly lost most of its value. And then just last week, after Trump announced a dinner with the coin's top holders, complete with a ``VIP White House tour''--let's be very clear. There are some things you absolutely can't do. One of them is to monetize the Presidency. The other thing is to use a government building, to use the White House as an inducement to pay the U.S. President is out-of-this-world corrupt. It is the kind of thing that if you are on the Foreign Relations Committee or the Defense Committee or whatever it is and you are traveling abroad, you will have in your talking points to scold some counterpart of yours about corruption. This is the kind of thing that, up until about 100 days ago, we went around the world trying to prevent, but now our leader is doing it. While regular people are losing money every day because of Trump, he and his family continue to get richer--and worse, if Trump has his way with the tax bill, billionaires will get the biggest tax break in history while children, seniors, and families find it even harder to make ends meet because they can no longer get healthy meals or because they have been kicked off of Medicaid. One final point: Whether it is withholding funds that were enacted by Congress and made into law or deporting people without due process, including a 2-year-old--a 2-year-old--American citizen with cancer last week, Trump is breaking the law on a daily basis. Everyone is afforded due process in our system, and with good reason--because the moment some people are not provided due process, there is no telling who is entitled to it and who is not and, crucially, who decides who gets due process. It sure shouldn't be any individual elected official to determine whether you get due process. This has been the worst start to a Presidency in the history of the United States. People had their own reasons for voting for Trump last fall. I have got friends who voted for Trump. I understand, for some, it was COVID. For some, it was Gaza. For some, it was the price of everything. For some, it was Biden's being too old. A lot of people had a lot of reasons, and I am not here to judge. A good buddy of mine, a former Governor of Hawaii, used to say: You know, people vote for you for their reasons, not yours. So I am not here to try to be vindicated. I am saying, for even those people who voted for him, all of the reasons that you voted for him, unless you were enthused about corruption, unless you were enthused about lawbreaking, unless you really hated Medicaid, unless you really wanted veterans to be laid off, unless you really wanted our standing in the world to be diminished by massive proportions in a super short period of time--unless you love that stuff, it is OK to say: This guy is not working out. He doesn't own your vote. He doesn't own your support. You cast a ballot, and he becomes the President of the United States. It went very badly. This is the worst 100 days of a Presidency in American history. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, everyone enters public service hoping that they can make a difference, but few have the ability or the fortune to do as much good as Senator Dick Durbin has over his long and storied career. Since stepping into these Halls of Congress more than 40 year ago, Senator Durbin has fought passionately for his constituents back home in his beloved Illinois and Americans all across the country. And while so many of us have already benefited from his extraordinary work, both knowingly and unknowingly, his legacy will continue to improve the lives of Americans for many years to come. To know Senator Durbin is to understand he is as decent and as principled as leaders come. He is dogged in his fight for fairness and justice but humble in sharing the credit for all of his successes. He is willing to work with everyone but will never compromise his values for anyone. Over the years, he has picked some very difficult but worthy fights. And he has won time after time, paving the way for cleaner air on airplane flights, leading the fight against torture, lifting up the voices that are too often left behind in Washington. A trial attorney by training, Senator Durbin can never look away from injustice, no matter how pervasive or how entrenched. No challenge was too daunting. He felt an obligation to try to fix it. Outraged by the conduct of the war on drugs that had imprisoned generations of Black and Brown men without a meaningful path to rehabilitation, he worked for years to pass the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act. Those laws have since helped to reduce overcrowding in prisons, lower criminal recidivism, and revitalize communities across the country. Shocked by the plight of Dreamers who spent their lives calling America home but without the papers to prove it, Senator Durbin has been on the frontlines of the push to put them on a path to citizenship. It is a fight that still continues and one that I know Senator Durbin will keep at for as long as it takes. Anyone who has served in this body long enough knows that there are those votes that test your resolve and weigh heavily on your conscience. And for so long, Senator Durbin has been a uniquely consistent voice of moral clarity and conscience, not just when it is easy or when it is obvious but especially when it is hard and even when it is lonely. In 2002, he was among a small group of Senators who voted against the invasion of Iraq, cautioning against the dangers of acting hastily on fear rather than fact. Years later, in the throes of the war on terror, Senator Durbin became an outspoken critic of the U.S. Government's use of torture in foreign prisons. In both instances, he was criticized and condemned at the time. In both instances, history has rendered his judgment as the right and patriotic one. It has been one of the true privileges of my career to serve as his chief deputy whip and to watch him work his magic during floor debates and in the Judiciary Committee. He is a gentleman of the Senate through and through. I will never forget the time he took to talk about my dad's legacy on this very floor. I know that he has shown that kind of thoughtfulness and care to so many, even when facing his own loss. I am lucky to call him a mentor and friend, someone who I have learned as much from and rely on for counsel and perspective over many years. The good news for the country, for me, and for all of us colleagues is Senator Durbin's work here in the Senate is far from over. We are lucky to be able to count on his leadership and example, as always, in the 2 years ahead. But for now, I want to thank Senator Durbin, his family--especially his wife Loretta--and his excellent staff for their decades of extraordinary service to the State and to the Nation. We are all better for him. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. SCHATZ. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, Donald Trump is ruining the economy on purpose. He is ruining the economy on purpose. I am not sure if there has ever been an American President, let alone a Chief Executive of any country, that has ruined the economy on purpose. The stock market had its worst day in 5 years yesterday. I just checked before I delivered these remarks--just before, 5 minutes ago: 1,600 down on the Dow Jones, S&P down 5 percent, NASDAQ 4 percent, the Russell 5 percent. What does that mean as a practical matter? It means if you spent all your life working and saving and investing and you are on the edge of retirement--let's say you have $312,000 plus your Social Security income, you just lost $30,000 in 2 days because of Donald Trump. Because of Donald Trump, you lost 10 percent of what you earned over a lifetime. Now, for Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk and Donald Trump and everybody that surrounds him at Mar-a-Lago, they can ride this out. They can short it. They can buy crypto. They can do all kinds of wonderful things to make sure they can ride this out. Regular people cannot ride this out. The dollar hit a 6-month low. Layoffs have already started. Consumers are cutting back on spending. By the way, the data is there--but also just talk to anybody, just talk to anybody about how they feel about spending right now--and the likelihood of a recession went up 20 percent in a day. JPMorgan now says it is more than 60 percent likely. So what is this even for? Why are people so freaked out? Why is the entire world, from friends and partners to adversaries and enemies, scrambling to retaliate against the United States, the indispensable Nation? It is so that Donald Trump can raise trillions of dollars in revenue to pay for the biggest tax cuts for billionaires in the history of the planet. Starting tomorrow, we will be paying more for everything--groceries, food, cars, homes, toys, electronics, everything you buy. Estimates have home prices ballooning by almost $20,000 per unit. Cars will cost $6,000 more, an iPhone, $250 more. Clothing prices will go up by roughly 20 percent. Also, what, we are going to be a textile manufacturer? That is our goal as a country is to make T-shirts and socks? Workers will be laid off. But I guess it will all be worth it in the end because this is a pay-for. What does that mean? It means that in their big budget plan, they need to cut taxes for billionaires, but they don't have enough money to finance that. And so they are using tariff revenue to balance out the money that they are going to shovel to a bunch of billionaires. Trump is very famous for having few firm, fixed political beliefs. He has changed his mind about just about everything but not on tariffs. He is a self-proclaimed tariff man. He has repeatedly said that the word ``tariff is the most beautiful word'' in the English language. For years, he lavished praise on 20th century tariffs, which, by the way, helped deepen the Great Depression. So he is very happy about all of this. There should be no mistaking this is what he intends to do. This is one of the differences between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. He is doing all the things--he is actually going through with it. This is not mean tweets and like normal behavior. This is all of the crazy stuff he is saying is now being effectuated as public policy, as economic policy, as fiscal policy. He is going through with it. You can no longer be dismissive of these resistance types, these Democrats, these shrills, these partisans, these people who can't keep their head on straight, these people who just want to punish Donald Trump for saying, ``Man, that guy is kind of crazy. He is going to crash the economy.'' He is literally crashing the economy on purpose. The idea that other countries will just graciously pay the tariffs is a fantasy, much like Trump's claim that Mexico would pay for the wall. In reality, it is American importers who pay the tariffs, and then they pass it on to consumers, which is exactly what happened the last time Trump tried to do this. Economists who studied the tariffs that Trump imposed during the first term on certain goods from China found it was consumers--it was consumers--it was you that paid the price. So here is roughly how it will work this time around. There is going to be math involved here. If these tariffs are expected to raise $6 trillion, as Trump says, that would mean collecting something like $600 billion every year over the next 10 years. Broken out by household, people are looking at $5,000 a year in added costs. I bet you Donald Trump doesn't know anyone personally--maybe he has met people, but in terms of the people he hangs out with, that he spends time with, that he likes, that he works with, he probably doesn't know anyone for whom $5,000 is an unmanageable increased cost. But I know a lot of people like that. In fact, a lot of people in my home State are like that. They cannot absorb a $5,000 increase in the cost of everything. And that is before you consider the hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and the devastation of small businesses and farmers and others. One small business owner in Iowa put it this way: Trump's calling it Liberation Day. Maybe something like, Liberation Day: Liberated From Reality. A farmer in Kansas agreed: These tariffs are just absolutely bad news. They cause the prices for everything that we buy to go up, and the price for everything that we sell to go down. Everything that we buy is more expensive. Everything we sell is cheaper. Does that sound like a smart economic plan? It is bad news any way you cut it, but even worse, more confusing, more idiotic, more infuriating when you look at how they arrived at these rates. These are not actually reciprocal tariffs, reciprocal being essentially country X assesses tariffs in the amount of 15 percent, so we reciprocate, we do 15 percent back. This is how they did it. They used a ``one size fits all'' formula to remake the global trading system. They took our trade surplus with any given country. The way you do it--to do reciprocal tariffs--is country X says 10 percent, we go back at 10 percent. What they did is say: Let's take our trade surplus--which means what we export minus what we import--divided by total exports and then cut it in half. Cut it in half. Why didn't they cut it in a third, why didn't they do some coefficient other than 50 percent is like they wanted to keep it simple. I don't know. It is purely arbitrary. We have an $18-billion trade deficit with Indonesia. We import $28 billion worth of goods from them--17.9 divided by 28 is 64. Divide that by 2 and you get 34, which is--surprise, surprise--exactly the rate that Trump set for Indonesia. Half of the differential between exports and imports literally makes no sense. You have a bunch of economists right, left, and center going, ``WTF.'' I cannot believe--this is bad policy--but also childish, childish math. The White House formula is so bonkers that the same economists that it pointed to as the basis for the rationale immediately were critical. ``They pulled two numbers out of thin air that perfectly canceled each other out. This type of reduction analysis is very troubling and scares me,'' said economics professor Anson Soderbery, whose paper the White House cited. Even their sources are saying, ``Don't use my name to justify this nonsense.'' Another economist said that the White House had misunderstood his research which specifically cautioned against excessively high tariff rates like Trump's. Making [rates] higher is a bad idea for the United States. . . . We use supercomputers to find optimal tariffs. The Trump administration seems to have taken a bit of a shortcut there. Also, our results suggest that the EU should not be tariffed, and yet they set high tariffs against them. Finally, our range of optimal tariffs is substantially lower than the ones the administration announced. If you can believe it, we are in a situation where economists are using supercomputers to find optimal tariff rates while the President of the United States is using a formula--and I am not exaggerating-- that a fifth grader could solve. Whether it is the Signal chat or this formula, this administration's incompetence is on display every day. It is why we now have tariffs in places like Heard Island and McDonald Islands where there are no living human beings, only penguins. Or, as the New York Times noted, ``Trump's decision to put a 32 percent tariff on Switzerland stunned politicians and business leaders in the Alpine country. Switzerland has an open trade policy and recently abolished all industrial tariffs.'' It is not reciprocal if they are not tariffing us. For countries like Brazil where we have a trade surplus, they still slapped 10 percent. Israel reduced their tariffs to zero. They still got the 10 percent. This is not a case of a bunch of Democrats crying wolf just to wound the Republicans. The markets are speaking. They are terrified. And this isn't about a bunch of billionaire corporations and their profitability. This is about the ability for people to pay for college. This is about the ability for people to retire with dignity and comfort. Trillions of dollars of wealth are being demolished. These are everyday people panicked about how much more expensive their next trip to Walmart or to Costco will be or when they will lose their job. People are already stockpiling supplies. Shortly after Trump's announcement, JPMorgan described the impact of the tariffs over the next few months like this: On a static basis, today's announcement would raise just under $400 billion in revenue, or about 1.3 percent GDP, which would be the largest tax increase since [the Revenue Act of] 1968. . . . The resulting hit to purchasing power could take real disposable personal income in the [second and third quarters] into negative territory, and with it the risk that real consumer spending could also contract in these quarters. This impact alone could take the economy perilously close to slipping into recession. Countries are already responding. It is not like this is a static situation which can't get worse because the retaliations are going on. This idea that this is just a leverage play--there are 200 countries out there with whom we have some sort of--roughly, 200 countries that we have some sort of trading arrangement with. And Donald Trump is very unpopular. So asking a leader of a country or a Parliament of a country to waive their tariffs at the end of an economic gun because Trump is bullying them, it is like not good domestic politics for them. The best domestic politics for them is to stand up to Donald Trump's bullying, and that is bad for all of us. We are not going to waive our way through 194 trading partners. China just imposed a 34-percent reciprocal tariff for our 54-percent tariff on Chinese goods. In a truly bizarre turn of events, we forced our allies and adversaries to try to find ways to work together. Earlier this week, for the first time in years, China and Japan and South Korea discussed the possibility of working together on free trade as a response to Donald John Trump. The most shocking image is this red line continuing to go down precipitously. Among the other most shocking images, there is a picture of high leaders from Korea--first of all, Korea and Japan are in a better place now, but there have been diplomatic challenges over the decades and the generations. But they are in a reasonably good place. Just to see them shaking hands is a big deal, but to see them shaking hands--literally holding hands--with a high official from China to indicate they are in this together against us. So it is true that Donald Trump is uniting the world. The problem is, he is uniting the world against us. Look, there is a real objective here that we have been working on for the last 4, 8 years. And whether it is chips or it is cars or it is clean energy, we have actually increased the amount of domestic manufacturing in the United States of America with good industrial policy and targeted trade policy. But this is mayhem. This is mayhem. John Kennedy, the current Senator for Louisiana, said it exactly right. Tariffs, like whiskey, can be refreshing, can be useful. Too much--I am paraphrasing--and very bad things happen. Very bad things are happening. In the time I took to deliver these remarks, probably some number of tens of billions of dollars of additional wealth from working people was just wiped out. I want to make one final point, and this is the most important point: Republicans can and should stop this. With the exception of maybe three or four Members, almost every Republican Senator hates tariffs. The question is whether they will stand up to Donald Trump, who has taken this deadly protectionist, anti-market, superharmful direction. All we need--Republicans are in charge of the Senate--is for them to exert their constitutionally given authority over the assessing of tariffs. There is bipartisan momentum in that space, but we are not there because what I am reading and what I am hearing is they are willing to give this a couple of months. Let me give a bunch of free advice to my Republican friends: If you are going to stand up to him in 2 months, do it now. Your people are suffering. People are being laid off. By the way, most of what is happening in terms of Trump's plummeting popularity is what they are seeing on their screens. But in the next week or so, it will not be what they are seeing on their screens; it will be what they are seeing when they try to buy something. It is what they are seeing amongst their friends who are being laid off. This is about to get very real, and I advise you against my own political interests but in the country's interest: If you are going to stand up to him in June, my God, do it now. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, leave Social Security alone. Leave Social Security alone. Donald Trump wants to gut the most successful antipoverty program in American history. Over the past 3 months, his administration has made sweeping cuts to Social Security in ways that are already being felt across the country. Wait times have doubled to as many as 4 or 5 hours. Local field offices are closing. Websites are crashing, and people are understandably panicked about getting checks or missing payments altogether. But according to Commerce Secretary Lutnick, there is nothing to worry about: Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law who is 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She'd think something got messed up, and she'd get it next month. ``She wouldn't complain.'' Well, when your son-in-law is a billionaire, a missed check is not a very big deal, but when you are a senior on the island of Oahu, where the average rent far exceeds the average benefit--I want you to understand that the average benefit is about $1,900. The average rent is more than $2,000. Three hundred thousand people in the State of Hawaii depend on Social Security, and the vast majority of them, Social Security is either all of their income or most of their income. The idea that we are going to balance the budget on the backs of seniors who have paid into an earned benefit is immoral. It is wrong. I speak on behalf of all of my constituents who depend on it. It is not just the 300,000, it is all of the family members. It is all of the family members. I speak on behalf of my mother- and father-in-law, George and Ping Kwok. George Kwok worked all his life in a kitchen. Sometimes he was an employee. He eventually ended up owning a place called ``Kwok's Chop Suey.'' He sold it, and bought a home for his mom and helped to send his daughter to college. Then he started to get blind, and he burned his hand in a fryer. So he was unable to work, and he took Social Security disability. He deserves that money. Leave Social Security alone. Social Security cuts were always the third rail in American politics, even anyone on any side of the aisle with any sense of how to get elected knew not to touch that third rail, but they are grabbing this third rail with both hands. I want to quote a couple of my constituents. One constituent wrote to me: We are elderly and [we] are concerned about the potential of cutting Social Security checks. We paid into the system our entire working lives and fear we can't afford food, water bills, and medical care. What will happen with these cuts and the cost-of-living going up? What will be our safety net? We are afraid of what is to come. Another wrote: I worked for 36 years for the Federal Government, including 4 years as active duty Air Force in Vietnam. I contributed to Social Security with explicit understanding that I would get Social Security as a portion of my retirement. Cutting Social Security means I lose about a third of my retirement with no recourse. I am 77 [years old] with health issues and [haven't] planned on getting another job. My wife was a flight attendant for Hawaiian Airlines for 50 years and also depends on Social Security for her retirement. It is completely unfair when she paid into Social Security for more than 50 years just to be abandoned when she is . . . [70 years old]. Another constituent: I am a 73-year-old woman who, unlike Billionaire Commerce Secretary Lutnik's mother-in-law, cannot afford to miss or reduce my Social Security . . . payment. It is my sole income and I need it to pay rent and [to] buy food. I worked hard all my life and contributed my fair share of taxes toward social security. I'm not asking for a free ride--I earned my Social Security. ``I'm not asking for a free ride--I earned my Social Security.'' Leave Social Security alone. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHATZ

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

Mr. SCHATZ

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