Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I voted today against final passage of the HALT Fentanyl Act because of the unintended consequences that could have been corrected by amendments that were blocked by the majority. Our Nation and my State of Maryland are experiencing a crisis with synthetic opioids like fentanyl and related drugs, and I strongly support action to combat drug trafficking and prevent overdoses. We need public health solutions that will help American families and our communities, but instead, the bill before us could lead to harmful unintended consequences, including limiting the potential for less addictive pain therapies and treatments like Naloxone that could prevent and reverse overdose. It also expands mandatory minimums, which increase incarceration but do not reduce crime, and applies them to a broad class of drugs regardless of their actual physiological effects, so that someone could be incarcerated for a decade or more for drugs that are effectively harmless. My colleagues Senators Booker and Warnock put forward amendments to correct flaws in the bill, and Senator Hassan filed an amendment to address substance use disorders and prevent overdose. However, because those amendments were blocked, I could not support passage of this legislation. I hope we can take future action to address the public health opioid and fentanyl crisis and that my colleagues who claim to care about this issue do not slash dollars for Medicaid and substance use disorder treatment programs that are a lifeline to so many American families.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I voted today to oppose cloture to end debate on the HALT Fentanyl Act. Our Nation and my State of Maryland are experiencing a crisis with synthetic opioids like fentanyl and related drugs, and I strongly support action to combat drug trafficking and prevent overdoses. We need public health solutions that will help American families and our communities, but instead, the bill before us could lead to harmful unintended consequences, including limiting the potential for less addictive pain therapies and treatments like Naloxone that could prevent and reverse overdose. It also expands mandatory minimums, which increase incarceration but do not reduce crime, and applies them to a broad class of drugs regardless of their actual physiological effects, so that someone could be incarcerated for a decade or more for drugs that are effectively harmless. I continue to hope that we will have the opportunity to amend this legislation, including with amendments put forward by my colleague Senator Booker. However, as we still do not have an agreement to hold amendment votes, I voted against cloture to end debate on the bill today. I urge my colleagues to work to improve the bill in order to address the possible unintended consequences of this legislation so instead the bill focuses on tackling dangerous drugs and allows for lifesaving research and development of potential treatments.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I voted today to oppose cloture on the motion to proceed to the HALT Fentanyl Act. Our Nation and my State of Maryland are experiencing a crisis with synthetic opioids like fentanyl and related drugs, and I strongly support action to combat drug trafficking and prevent overdoses. We need public health solutions that will help American families and our communities, but instead, the bill before us could lead to harmful unintended consequences, including limiting the potential for less addictive pain therapies and treatments like Naloxone that could prevent and reverse overdose. It also expands mandatory minimums, which increase incarceration but do not reduce crime, and applies them to a broad class of drugs regardless of their actual physiological effects, so that someone could be incarcerated for a decade or more for drugs that are effectively harmless. It is my hope that we will have the opportunity to amend this legislation, including with amendments put forward by my colleague Senator Booker. However, as we have no guarantee that amendments will be permitted by the majority despite the urgency of the issue before us, I voted against cloture today. I urge my colleagues to work to improve the bill in the coming days in order to address the possible unintended consequences of this legislation so, instead, the bill focuses on tackling dangerous drugs and allows for lifesaving research and development of potential treatments.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to join this conversation and broaden it a little bit. In my view, we are witnessing the great betrayal during these last 44 days. We have the great betrayal here at home of the American people because the President promised certain things that he was going to deliver on, and we haven't seen those. We see the great betrayal of our Ukrainian friends and our allies around the world and freedom-loving people around the world. Here at home, Candidate Trump, of course, promised that on day one, he was going to cut prices, that he was going to help working families. Last night, we witnessed the longest speech in American history to a joint session of Congress, and no plan was presented for lowering prices. Grocery prices are going up, rent prices are going up, and home prices are going up. We did see Elon Musk in the Gallery--the guy who said he wanted to take a chain saw to important services that benefit every American family. This is all part of a plan to cut taxes for very wealthy people like Elon Musk at the expense of everyone else. So in these 44 days, we have seen that great betrayal, but we have also seen the other betrayal. We have seen President Trump throw the Ukrainian people under the bus. I don't think any of us could have imagined a day when the United States sided with Russia and North Korea on a U.N. General Assembly resolution that condemned Russian aggression, where we voted with them and against our allies--against Ukraine, against all of our European allies, against all of our friends in Asia. Heck, even North Korea abstained. Even China abstained. So here we are throwing our allies under the bus. The folks that are openly cheering are the Russian leadership. I mean, this isn't just rhetoric; we have actually seen them expressing glee over the U.S. position. And of course they were very happy with the terrible spectacle in the Oval Office of the President and Vice President of the United States bullying President Zelenskyy. We have all met with President Zelenskyy. Nobody wants peace more than President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people. They have lost thousands of people. They have sacrificed a lot. But they want a durable peace, and they want a peace that will recognize their sovereignty and their freedom and their independence. That is what they want. We have all heard President Zelenskyy repeatedly thank the American people for our support. In fact, on one occasion, he brought an American flag signed by Ukrainian soldiers expressing gratitude for all our help. And what he has gotten in exchange for that great sacrifice-- a sacrifice that helps support freedom-loving people everywhere--is the back of a hand he received in the Oval Office. So I think this is a moment where we need to speak with moral clarity, and we should do it together as a Senate. We are not directing the negotiations; we are expressing simple truths here on the Senate floor. The simple truth that I want to express here through the resolution that I will ask to be considered is that the Russian armed forces committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ukraine. It is pretty simple, and I would just draw my colleague's attention to a resolution that was considered by this Senate back in 2022. I have it right here in my hand, S. Res. 546, authored by Senator Graham, cosponsored by then-Senator Rubio, now-Secretary of State Rubio. What this resolution that the Senate considered just 3 years ago says--and I am going to read it--is: [The Senate] strongly condemns the ongoing violence, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and systematic human rights abuses carried out by the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies and President Putin's military commanders, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin. That was the resolution we considered just 3 years ago. This resolution passed unanimously. Not a single Senator objected. Now, of course, we have new Members of the Senate, but every single Senator who was here at that time supported this simple statement of moral clarity. Two things have happened since then. In February of 2023, the Department of State determined that members of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and officials of the Government of the Russian Federation have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ukraine. And in September of 2022, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. So the Senate adopted a resolution with the simple truths a number of years ago. Those truths were reaffirmed by the Department of State in 2023 and by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry in September 2022. Regardless of the state of negotiations, I would think that we would be able to reaffirm today the same truth that we expressed unanimously just a few years ago. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 111, which was submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, for his commitment to this issue to working to end the war in Ukraine but to do it in a way that preserves the freedom and sovereignty of the people of Ukraine and as a durable peace. It escapes me how reaffirming truthful statements that the Senate has made in the past can possibly get in the way of a resolution of this crisis. I would argue that it is the President of the United States who has gotten in the way of a resolution of this crisis in the sense that, No. 1, he has clearly embraced Vladimir Putin in so many of his comments. And he went into this discussion by unilaterally giving away important leverage that is needed to result in a resolution that is a just resolution. You don't go into a negotiation by giving up the issue of American participation and security guarantees, however that might look. You don't go into a negotiation by unilaterally giving up on territorial concessions. This is why it is important, in my view, for the Senate simply to reconfirm the truths that we have already stated in the past. This seems to be a simple one--that war crimes have been committed by the Russian Army and that they have committed crimes against humanity. That is all this resolution says. I hope that we can, at some point, come back and revisit this because it is going to be very important to achieve not just a peace but a just peace.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague from across the Potomac River, Senator Kaine of Virginia, and also Senator Heinrich of New Mexico for bringing this resolution before the U.S. Senate. We are now witnessing in realtime two of the most corrupt bargains in American history. One of those corrupt bargains is the one that President Trump made with Elon Musk. Elon Musk spent $280 million to help elect Donald Trump President of the United States--$280 million--and President Trump has handed the keys of Federal Agencies over to Elon Musk. He even appeared at the Cabinet meeting today with other members of the Cabinet that went through the advice-and-consent process of the U.S. Senate. Elon Musk didn't do that, but he did spend $280 million to help elect President Trump. And now the actions that Elon Musk is taking are designed to rig government Agencies to do the bidding of people like Elon Musk and other billionaires. In fact, we have been reading more and more about the billions of dollars of Federal contracts that Elon Musk has gotten and more to come. Just within the last 48 hours, we are talking about an FAA contract for Starlink. This has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it did, you would not start by firing all the inspectors general across the U.S. Government whose job it is to look out for waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, what you would do when you get rid of the inspectors general is open the door to waste, fraud, and abuse. So we should be on full alert here in the U.S. Senate as to what is happening. As others have said, we are also watching them claim to make savings, which actually they have had to change their, sort of, tally board every day because of misrepresentations. But they do want to clear the way to provide tax cuts to very, very wealthy people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else in America. And, of course, the House just passed a budget resolution to set up that process last night. So that is one corrupt bargain that is playing out right now, and thousands of patriotic Federal employees around the country who do the people's work are being fired based on lies. I say ``lies'' because they are claiming they are firing them based on performance, only to find out that these Federal employees are coming forward with glowing performance reports as part of their most recent assessments. So that was a lie because that was the standard that had to be met, even if they had to make it up. All these cases are now finding their way through the courts. We have over 60 court proceedings. Many Federal judges have issued temporary restraining orders to put a halt to this rampage of illegal activity. The other corrupt bargain is the one that brings us to the Senate floor today because it was in May of last year, during the campaign, that Candidate Trump promised the Big Oil executives that he would deliver their wish list if they spent a billion dollars to return him to the White House. So much has happened since then, I think some people forget, but here is the Washington Post headline from May 9, 2024: What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign. The story describes how the CEOs there were stunned--stunned--when he went on to say: You are all wealthy enough . . . that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. [And] he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden's rules and policies. And as the article indicates, among the things he promised to scrap were the efforts to develop more clean vehicles, more electric vehicles, and to develop more wind energy. So he promised to provide more opportunities for the big oil companies while harming their competitors in the clean energy industry. He promised he would do all of this on day one. He also made another promise as to what he would do on day one. He promised the American people he was going to lower prices on day one. We all know that that is just not happening. Prices are going up. Grocery prices are going up. Rents are going up. Home prices are going up. The price of eggs is through the roof. So President Trump is not delivering on that day-one promise. He is delivering on his promise to the Big Oil executives to issue that order that has made it even easier for them to produce, when they are already producing close to maximum current levels. In fact, as my colleagues have said, for the past 6 years in a row, the United States has been producing more crude oil than any other nation at any other time ever, ever. In fact, the last administration actually approved more oil and gas leases during those 4 years than Donald Trump did during his first term in the White House. And there is plenty of room to grow. Under existing leases, about half of U.S. oil and gas leases are currently not being used. So here he issues an Executive order to allow even more to move forward, even when a lot of potential is still not being tapped, but doing it in a way that will negatively impact the public health, sacrifice clean air and clean water. That is only half the problem. That is half the problem because what President Trump is doing is not only giving a blank check to the big oil companies, he is also sabotaging clean energy in the United States of America. They, of course, provide competition to the big oil companies. So by throttling and sabotaging efforts when it comes to solar power or wind power or electric vehicles, you are actually producing less overall energy. You are actually giving the big oil companies a competitive advantage. That means prices go up, not down. I can tell you that in my State of Maryland, people are feeling the impacts of higher electricity prices. We need to generate more electricity. We have got data centers coming onboard. AI consumes a lot of energy. So why in the world would President Trump be trying to cripple the clean energy industry? Well, that is what he told the Big Oil executives he would do: He is going to crack down on wind power. I will tell you that solar and wind energy are among the cheapest forms of energy in the country. And at a time when American pocketbooks are tight, renewable energy will help keep energy bills down. In fact, renewable energy is expected to save Americans $38 billion on electricity bills by the year 2030 and produce more than 350,000 jobs in America. So why is President Trump trying to sabotage bringing that additional energy onto the grid and to Americans? In Maryland, we are planning investments in offshore wind that will create 2,600 local jobs and power over 718,000 homes. That is wind power energy. That is what Donald Trump is trying to sabotage. So if you really want to create more energy and you want to reduce energy prices, you wouldn't be doing what Donald Trump is doing when it comes to putting the screws to clean energy production. I do want to mention one other way in which this is really going to harm America's interests, and that is, it is going to open the door even wider to our adversaries who are competing in the space-- principally China. We spent a lot of time trying to improve our supply chains, develop supply chains for minerals that we need to develop electric vehicles, and by sabotaging this sector, we are opening the door to China just to run into this market and leave us behind. That is not ``America First''; that is America in retreat, just as it is America in retreat for us to vote with Russia and North Korea at the U.N. General Assembly the other day, against the people of Ukraine and freedom-loving people around the world. So, Mr. President, I hope we will support this resolution. I hope we will ensure that we can develop our clean energy sources that will produce more energy supply for the American people and help lower prices. I know, back in May of last year, Candidate Trump told the big CEOs that not only was he going to help them develop more but he was going to help them by hurting their competitors in the renewable energy industry. That is no way to conduct an energy policy for the United States of America. I urge my colleagues to support the resolution.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, this morning I attended the funeral of former Maryland Congresswoman Beverly Byron, an extraordinary public servant who represented the people of western Maryland and expanded the rights of women in the military as the first woman to chair a subcommittee on the Armed Services Committee and author of the Byron amendment that allowed women to fly combat missions. She was a mentor and friend, and I was grateful to pay my respects to her this morning among her many friends and family. Due to this conflict, I missed rollcall vote No. 90, confirmation of the nomination of Daniel Driscoll to be Secretary of the Army. Had I been present, I would have voted no. Due to this conflict, I also missed rollcall vote No. 91, the motion to proceed to S.J. Res. 11, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management relating to ``Protection of Marine Archaeological Resources.'' Had I been present, I would have voted no.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and service of the late Congresswoman Beverly Byron. For over a decade, Congresswoman Byron served western Maryland. She fought to advance the interests of her constituents and was a strong advocate for our national security. Congresswoman Byron has left a lasting legacy for the people of Maryland and our Nation. When Congresswoman Byron was elected in 1978, she was one of only 16 women elected to the House of Representatives that year. She became a trailblazer, especially for women in the national security arena. A strong supporter of a robust national defense, she became the first woman to chair a subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. Congresswoman Byron also advanced opportunities for women serving in our armed forces. She sponsored legislation to reorganize the military child care system, open combat roles, and fight against gender-based restrictions. Through the 1991 Byron amendment to the Defense Authorization Act, women gained the right to fly combat missions in the Marines, Navy, Air Force, and the Army. After serving in Congress, Congresswoman Byron continued to work to protect our Nation. She served on the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission and continued to offer her guidance on women in the armed forces. Throughout her distinguished career, Congresswoman Byron has been a role model for many. When I sought public office and served in the House and Senate, I always valued her unvarnished advice. I ask my colleagues to join me in expressing our appreciation and gratitude to the late Congresswoman Beverly Byron and her family for all she has done for the people of Maryland and our Nation.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 233 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I offer this amendment with my colleague Senator Hirono. It is very straightforward. It creates a point of order against any legislation that would cut funding from the National School Lunch Program or the School Breakfast Program. I think our colleagues know that nearly 14 million American children were hungry last year. One in five kids doesn't know where their next meal will come from or what it will be. So let's ensure that those kids get healthy meals and can focus on their education and their studies instead of their stomachs. Madam President, 91 percent of public schools participate in the USDA meals programs. Over half of our kids are eligible for free and reduced lunch programs. They provide breakfast programs for over 2 billion of them a year. So colleagues, let's not abandon those kids in order to provide tax cuts for Elon Musk and very rich people. I urge the adoption of our amendment.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act, I move to waive, and I ask for the yeas and nays and urge its adoption.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, you know, it was just 30 days ago that President Trump took the oath of office just down the hall here in the Rotunda. Thirty days later, he continues to betray the promises that he made to the American people when he was on the campaign trail. He promised he would focus on reducing prices and costs that the American people have to bear. In fact, costs are going up. He promised to fight for working Americans, the forgotten Americans, but with the help of the richest man in the world Elon Musk, he is actually going about cutting very important public services to the American people in order to make way for and pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest in this country--people like Elon Musk. I come to the Senate floor today because we are in the process of setting up the framework in which that is going to happen. Republicans are bringing to the floor--probably tomorrow--a budget resolution that will set in motion that process of providing tax cuts for the very wealthy at the expense of other Americans. That is a great betrayal by the Trump administration. But before I talk about that great betrayal by Donald Trump, I want to talk about another betrayal that is going on as we speak, and that is his betrayal of the Ukrainian people and everybody who yearns for and fights for freedom and democracy around the world. What we are witnessing is not ``America first''; we are witnessing ``America in retreat.'' The Ukrainian people, for over 3 years now, have been fighting against the brutal onslaught by Vladimir Putin. They are fighting to protect their sovereignty, their way of life. President Trump is throwing the Ukrainian people under the bus and at the same time betraying people who fight for freedom around the world. You know, Donald Trump likes to pick on people he perceives as weaker. We all know that he made fun of people with disabilities. He likes to pick on people who have differences. But when it comes to other bullies, he is a weak, weak person. He backs down. And that is what we are witnessing with respect to Vladimir Putin--Donald Trump is backing down. In fact, he just today blamed the Ukrainians and President Zelenskyy for Putin's attack on the Ukrainian people. In fact, he called Zelenskyy, President Zelenskyy, a dictator, when it is Vladimir Putin that is the dictator and launched the assault on the Ukrainian people. We should all be ashamed--ashamed, Mr. President. I met with President Zelenskyy at the Munich Conference over the weekend, along with many of my Senate colleagues, a bipartisan delegation. All of us, Republicans and Democrats, said to President Zelenskyy: You have our continued support. The Ukrainian people have our continued support. But at that same conference, we saw Vice President Vance not even talk about the threat from Putin and our support for the Ukrainian people. In fact, we heard him lecture the people from Europe and others around the world gathered at that conference about their ``weak democracy'' and say that really what they needed to do was kowtow to the farthest right parties in Germany, neo-fascist parties in Germany, and then, after saying that, he went out and met with them. That is now the U.S. foreign policy in action, and all of us on a bipartisan basis should be standing up and saying that is wrong. Yet the Secretary of Treasury arrived to extort Zelenskyy, saying: Unless you give us half of your rare mineral reserves to pay for past support, you don't get any additional support from the American people. Imagine if during World War II, FDR had said to Churchill and our other allies: Hey, we are no longer going to support you in the fight against fascism, Nazis, and Hitler unless you sign over now half of your natural resources. This is a shameful moment for the United States. We have stood up for freedom, we have stood up for democracy, we have stood up for the rule of law, and now, President Trump is throwing Ukraine and freedom-loving people around the world under the bus. So I say to our NATO allies and other allies around the world and partners who believe in the rule of law and believe in democracy: You are going to have to carry this mantle for now. A lot of people say: Oh, that is just President Trump saying these things. Watch what he does, not what he says. What an American President says matters, and when President Trump talks about abandoning Ukraine and how President Zelenskyy is the dictator and how Ukraine started the war, not Putin, that is throwing Ukraine and our NATO allies under the bus. So our European allies, our European NATO friends--they are going to have to step up and clearly carry that mantle, and I really urge my Senate Republican colleagues to do so at this moment. You know, it was Donald Trump who, in speaking about Americans who lost their lives in combat, said, ``They are losers and suckers.'' That is what the now President of the United States said about Americans who sacrificed their lives for our country. Folks may also recall that is what he said about our former colleague Senator McCain because he was taken prisoner. So I really hope that those in this Senate, in both parties, will stand up and stand up for the principles the United States has stood up for--not perfectly, far from perfectly, but what we have stood up for since World War II and in that postwar period where we helped construct many of the institutions that helped set the rules of the road in the globe today. Now, here at home, we are also experiencing a betrayal. You know, I just was earlier today at a rally in front of the Department of Health and Human Services. It was a rally to protect the public health and specifically to help protect medical research that is conducted at the National Institutes of Health and at institutions around our country, colleges and universities and other places where they do the research that leads to treatments and cures that save lives in America. It is pretty simple: When you start slashing funds for the NIH and its programs and when you start slashing the research team at NIH, it means more Americans will die prematurely of disease; it means more Americans will suffer for lack of treatments. Yet, that is what we saw the Trump administration do recently. Fortunately, a Federal court has put a stay on those illegal actions, these actions to just unilaterally try to cut important public investments in medical research. So let's not sugarcoat it. The consequence of doing that is very serious. They do important research in cancer, in Alzheimer's, heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases, diseases that plague probably every American family, and rare diseases. Firing NIH employees and canceling important grants and reducing support for medical research will mean more Americans will die early. So what is going on? Well, it is the great betrayal because the reason we are seeing these efforts to slash important public investments across the board and to cut important positions in Federal Agencies is because they want to make room for a big tax cut for wealthy people. You can see that the person that Donald Trump, President Trump, has chosen to do his dirty work is Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who is in the process of conducting illegal raids on various government Agencies. And I say ``illegal raids''--I have never seen the courts so busy. I mean, courts are issuing temporary restraining orders because there is a lot of lawbreaking going on. We have to fight this in the courts, and we have to fight it here, and the American people are fighting it around the country. This is the most corrupt bargain in American history. Elon Musk paid $280 million--$280 million--to help elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has now turned the keys to the Federal Government over to Elon Musk. And make no mistake, this has nothing--nothing--to do with government efficiency. We all welcome any effort to make the Federal Government more efficient. But this has nothing to do with that, and this has everything to do with helping the Federal Government serve the already powerful at the expense of working Americans and to clear that way--make cuts to pay for tax cuts for the very, very wealthy. You know, during the Presidential campaign, Candidate Trump talked about reducing prices, lowering costs for American families. When he was asked about Project 2025, he said: I don't know what that is. I don't know who those people are. But as soon as he was sworn in down the hall here, he went about implementing Project 2025. Now, why, on the campaign trail, would he say he knows nothing about it? He knew it was very unpopular. That, however, is exactly what he is implementing right now. In fact, the person he installed in the White House as the head of Office of Management and Budget was Russ Vought. He is the author of Project 2025. And just a reminder to our colleagues, OMB is like the command and control center for the entire U.S. Federal budget. So President Trump put the author of Project 2025 in the cockpit for the Federal budget and has Elon Musk running and doing the dirty work at Federal Agencies around the country. If this were about government efficiency, you wouldn't start out by firing all the inspectors general. The inspectors general job is to be independent watchdogs. Their job is to look out for waste, fraud, and abuse. So if you want to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, you don't start by firing the inspectors general. In fact, that is what you would do if you wanted to have people look the other way or not see when people were committing waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, that is exactly what is happening now because if you look at what Elon Musk and his cronies are doing, they are going into Federal Agencies and taking and reviewing and have access to the most sensitive personal information of the American people. They did it at the Department of Treasury--Social Security numbers, bank accounts. The acting head of the Social Security Administration, a career official, just quit because she said it was inappropriate to turn over sensitive Social Security Administration information to Elon Musk and the DOGE boys. We have seen that in other Agencies, too, where career Federal civil servants whose loyalty is to the country are resigning rather than follow illegal orders. I commend them for not following illegal orders. If this were about efficiency, why would the Trump administration tell the employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stay home and not work? They continue to get paid, but they don't do their jobs. That is what they have been ordered. Why? The CFPB is a Bureau that helps protect American consumers against people who are engaged in fraud and con artists and cheats. They have gone after a lot of powerful people, a lot of powerful organizations. And they have returned over $1 billion to the American people--dollars that hard-working Americans were cheated out of. They went and got them back for them. Yet here comes Trump in the name of ``efficiency,'' telling people to no longer do their work, even though they are being paid for it. And their work is to go after fraudsters and cheats. I think we know what is going on here. What is going on here is we have Elon Musk trying to create a government that helps the already powerful and cuts services that benefit every American--like what happened to the Veterans' Administration, the Social Security Administration, and, yes, NIH when it comes to medical research, to help clear the way for tax cuts for very wealthy people. That is what is going on here.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I want to start by commending my colleague, the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Welch, for his strong argument as to why we should all vote no on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I come to the floor tonight to voice my strong opposition to this nomination. You know, Mr. Kennedy says that he will always follow the evidence no matter where it leads. Well, if you look at his record, he hasn't done that. But let's apply that guidance and see where it leads when it comes to his own nomination. First, is he qualified to do the job? That should be the basic threshold question for any nominee to a position such as this. And the short answer is no, but let's now look at the evidence and understand why. We know that the Department of Health and Human Services manages some of our most critical health programs, like Medicaid, like Medicare. It does health research that delivers treatments and cures at the National Institutes of Health and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. At the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, it determines whether or not the drugs we consume are safe and whether they are efficacious-- whether they will actually do what the manufacturers say they will do. At the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, they disseminate information about pandemics and health risks, and they monitor the risk of outbreaks of disease around the world, especially those diseases that can travel across boundaries and hit the United States. It helps treat our Nation's substance use crisis at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, known as SAMHSA. It ensures patient safety in our healthcare systems at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It runs lifesaving programs like the community health centers, Healthy Start, and the HIV/AIDS care at the Health Resources and Services Administration. It does all that and more. HHS also provides quality control for reproductive health services. It ensures that contraceptives are covered under the Affordable Care Act, and it makes sure that Americans can have access to over-the- counter options. HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, also includes early childhood development programs like Head Start and childcare, programs to help the elderly age in their communities and individuals with disabilities live independently. But when you look at that wide range of important subjects that HHS covers, Mr. Kennedy has no experience, no qualifications, in the vast majority of that work. Now, I don't think any of us expect that one Secretary of HHS can know everything. But if you monitored the hearings and listened to Mr. Kennedy's answers, you can see that Mr. Kennedy knows virtually nothing about all those important subjects. In fact, he was stunningly unprepared to discuss even the most basic programs at his confirmation hearing. Most of us, even those of us who are not on Medicare, have some understanding of the program from our parents or grandparents. We have a sense of the basic components of Medicare. Medicare, of course, provides healthcare coverage to 68 million Americans--seniors and people with disabilities. But when Senator Hassan of New Hampshire questioned Mr. Kennedy about those basics, he pretty much got everything wrong. He could not explain the simple components of Medicare, like what covers hospital care and what covers doctor visits? These are not gotcha questions. These are not tough questions. These are questions that anybody who wants to be Secretary of HHS should understand, because Medicare is one of the biggest and most consequential programs within the jurisdiction of that Department. Knowing the basics, just the basics, should be easy. So he didn't understand the basics of Medicare. How about Medicaid? Medicaid is another very important health program in our country. It covers nearly 80 million of our fellow Americans, including 37 million children. In my State of Maryland, Medicaid covers 20 percent of our residents--children and families, nursing home residents, pregnant women, and people with disabilities. At his confirmation hearing, RFK, Jr., complained about Medicaid's ``high premiums and high deductibles,'' even though, as we know, the majority of enrollees in Medicaid don't have any premiums. Medicaid doesn't have high premiums, but what it does have is very high approval ratings. Mr. Kennedy also erroneously said the Federal Government covers the full cost, when we know that it has been a shared responsibility between the Federal Government and the States. In fact, that has been the matter and subject of lots of debates in the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court. He didn't know that. So what we see in RFK, Jr., is a demonstration over and over and over again, even when our Republican colleagues on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions tried to coach him along, he still simply did not get it, did not get the basics. Now, perhaps, some of our Republican colleagues--some of them--don't care so much about his lack of understanding of Medicaid. I have seen a lot of reports in the last couple weeks that House Republicans are planning to make deep cuts to Medicaid as part of a plan to cut taxes for the very, very rich and ask other Americans to pay for them, including Americans on Medicaid. So maybe for some, the fact that Mr. Kennedy is ignorant about Medicaid just doesn't get in the way. You know, we are debating a budget reconciliation bill here in the U.S. Senate. I serve on the Budget Committee, and today in the Budget Committee, I offered a very simple proposal. I said that as part of this budget reconciliation process, the Senate should not consider--in fact, I made it a point of order--subject to point of order if we did consider--should not consider cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, simple amendment. Let's lay down some guardrails before we debate this reconciliation bill. Unfortunately, not a single one of my Republican colleagues voted for that bill to make sure that we protect Medicare and Medicaid as we go through this reconciliation process. All of my Democratic colleagues voted for it. Now, it is bad enough that Mr. Kennedy is not qualified for this position--and clearly he is not qualified--but it is worse than that. I mean, there are lots of unqualified people that we might just pick out randomly and say: Let's nominate that person to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and we could just have an unqualified person there. But with Mr. Kennedy, it is worse than that. He is not only unqualified, putting him in that position will put the public health of Americans at risk. And so that takes this to a whole different and more dangerous level. And we have heard a lot about this vaccine question, but it really does go to the heart of why he poses a threat to the public health. Now, he says he will believe us on vaccines ``if you show me the science.'' Well, he should look at the science, and he should talk to the scientists in this country, because in the past 50 years alone, vaccines have saved 154 million lives around the world, including the lives of 100 million infants. Vaccines eradicated polio and eradicated smallpox. They have prevented outbreaks of measles, where they are used, across the majority--great majority--of the population. They have kept recent generations from getting chicken pox, and, yes, they helped lift the world out of the lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic. So for generations--for generations--America and our Federal health Agencies have helped fuel this progress. More than 60 years ago, an American said: I hope that the renewed drive . . . to provide vaccinations for all Americans, and particularly those who are young, will have the wholehearted support of every parent in America. Colleagues, that person was President John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, his nephew, RFK, Jr., has spent decades unraveling that hard-won legacy by spreading lies and conspiracy theories about vaccines. It wasn't that long ago that he spread vaccine conspiracy theories in Samoa, where his misinformation contributed to a measles outbreak that got 83 people killed, mostly infants and children. We cannot let that happen to children here or others around the world. But, unfortunately, we are already seeing the cost of that misinformation and those conspiracy theories right here in America. Because that misinformation, the kind of misinformation spread by RFK, Jr., has contributed to lower vaccination rates. And, right now, there is a measles outbreak in West Texas that is threatening our children. And it is not the first one we have seen in recent months, and it will not be the last if these conspiracy theories continue to spread. And we know that it doesn't take much misinformation to make us all vulnerable. Because if vaccination rates drop below 95 percent, in the cases of some diseases, those diseases can spread very rapidly through the population. In fact, for a disease like measles that infects just about everyone exposed, it is disastrous when those vaccination rates fall below 95 percent. And yet these lies spread by RFK, Jr., are now burrowing themselves into the American consciousness like brain worms. And it will be bad enough if he doesn't become Secretary of HHS, given the damage he has already done, but if he becomes Secretary of HHS, he will have a bully pulpit on which those conspiracy theories can spread even further and even farther and put even more Americans at risk. Now, once he was confronted with some of these statements that he had made previously, RFK, Jr., started to flip, and he started to flop. In fact, at his confirmation hearings, he insisted that he never meant much of what he said. In fact, he denied having made some statements altogether. He denied making statements that are on tape for everyone to hear them. As we have heard already, in 2013, he compared the CDC's childhood vaccine program to Nazi death camps, saying: To me this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids. In 2019, he compared the CDC vaccine program to the pedophile scandal in the Catholic church. In 2023, he said that COVID-19 ``is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are [most] immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.'' He denied saying that at the hearing. And this and that and flip and flop, he tried to backtrack the confirmation day conversion, nomination day conversion. He also, nevertheless, could not prevent himself, could not help himself from citing a discredited study on vaccines and autism and repeatedly refused to tell the truth that peer-reviewed studies have shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. So he is not qualified. Worse than that, he poses a danger to the public health, given his conspiracy theories about vaccines. But let's do what he says he does and let's continue to follow the evidence, because this Nation conducts the best biomedical research in the world. A lot of it comes out of the National Institutes of Health, and I am proud that they have their home in the State of Maryland. Just last year, the NIH research helped develop an accurate blood test for Alzheimer's, a brain-computer interface to help a man with ALS communicate, and a drug to reduce reactions to peanut allergies, all those things last year at NIH. NIH clinical trials give people hope with novel and hard-to-treat illnesses, including childhood cancer. And yet what we are witnessing in the first 22 days of this Trump administration is an attack on much of that medical research. Right now, at the National Institutes of Health, the Trump administration is wreaking havoc. They have frozen internal meetings. They have pulled down information from data sets from HHS websites. They have denied resources to the public and clinicians. Thankfully, a Federal court had to step in and stop their refusal to provide the public with important health information, NIH and CDC. The administration also, early on, took this illegal action in violation of the Impoundment Control Act to stop a lot of Federal grants that had already been appropriated. That also put in jeopardy a lot of NIH research. Again, fortunately a Federal court has intervened and issued a temporary restraining order. But just in the last 3 or 4 days, we had NIH decide to change entirely the formula for reimbursing institutions that study diseases around the country, and the overwhelming evidence and testimony from the experts said that, by changing those formulas, they will do great damage to important health research in this country. Again, a Federal judge had to intervene to stop this. We shouldn't have to rely on the courts in order to get the job done for the American people. We certainly aren't going to be able to rely on RFK, Jr., were he to be confirmed. He poses a threat to that important research that is going on at NIH. In fact, just this past November, he said: We need to act fast . . . 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave. That is RFK, Jr., back in November. And if he doesn't fire you, he still doesn't want to let you do your job. He is on record saying that his plan for NIH is ``giving infectious disease a break for about eight years.'' Madam President, infectious diseases have no plans to give us a break, and we should not be giving them a break. I can say right now that we are seeing avian flu outbreaks across the United States. I am hearing a lot about it, of course, from my farmers on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and it is contributing to a huge spike in the price of eggs around the country. Yet, as this headline indicates, the ``Trump administration's communication freeze restricted access to critical bird flu information.'' That is just one story about the effort to shut down information important to our health. And it is our health because if avian flu mutates, it is not just the higher egg prices we have seen; it could start jumping from person to person, and we could see another pandemic. We should never give infectious diseases a break. They will never give us one. Finally, I want to look at one last dimension of all of this because Mr. Kennedy says to follow the evidence, and the evidence shows that he is unqualified. The evidence shows that he would be actually worse than unqualified; he would pose a risk to the public health of our country. So it does beg the question of whether he believes all these lies and all this disinformation. Sometimes it is hard to tell because he seems to believe whatever gets him a lot of money and a lot of attention. Here is the evidence for that. His cousin Caroline Kennedy told the Senate that he ``vaccinates his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.'' So what is good for his family he discourages other families from doing. During his time at the misnamed Children's Health Defense, which is an anti-vaccine lobbying organization, he made millions of dollars from anti-vax lawsuits. At his hearings, when he was asked to forgo any profits he might gain from those lawsuits even as Secretary of Health and Human Services, at first he said he wouldn't, and then he said, OK, he won't take that profit for himself; he will assign it to his son. He seems to flip and flop with the winds. When he was working to be a Democrat, he said he was ardently pro- choice. Now he says he believes whatever Donald Trump believes. He wrote entire books about climate change, but now, with Donald Trump in the White House, he is willing to ``agree to disagree.'' What the evidence shows is that he will not stand up for our public health. We have seen this pattern, of course, with other nominees who get nominated for the positions not because of their qualifications but because of the fact that they bow down to everything that Donald Trump says. We have seen that in nominee after nominee. While, of course, the President wants people in his Cabinet who are going to follow his guidance, we would also hope that these are people who are qualified and people who don't pose a danger to the country and people who are not just doing this to make money for themselves. And when it comes to that test, again, let's do what Mr. Kennedy says: Let's follow the evidence. Strike 1, he is not qualified. Strike 2, he is actually a danger to the public health. No. 3, he says things, according to his own cousin, that we are not sure he believes because he doesn't apply the same standard to his own family. He says things to enrich himself even when it puts others at risk. So I would say strike 1, strike 2, strike 3, he is out, applying his own test of following the evidence. Mr. Kennedy is simply not fit to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. I urge my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, you know, we are just 17 days into the Trump-Vance and, yes, Elon Musk administration, and we are already witnessing the great betrayal of what candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail. For the last 17 days, the Trump-Musk administration has been engaged in a reckless abuse of power that is already harming people in communities throughout our country, and one of the principle architects of this chaos is the man who is nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. But before I get into that nomination, let's just start with day one, day one of the Trump administration; because on day one, President Trump pardoned individuals convicted in a court of law of beating up police officers here on Capitol Hill on January 6. They bludgeoned them, they beat them, assaulted them. As the National Fraternal Order of Police said, that pardon sent a terrible message to law enforcement all over the country. It sent the message that political violence is OK as long as it is done in the name of Donald Trump. And since then, we have seen the Trump administration carry out retribution against FBI agents and Department of Justice officials who were part of the investigations and prosecutions of the people who beat up police officers on January 6. So if you are part of the effort to hold people accountable for assaulting police officers, they went after you. It sends a terrible message. And then, of course, President Trump unleashed Elon Musk on the American people. I have said it before and I will say it again: We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history. (Mr. BUDD assumed the Chair.) Elon Musk spent over $280 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has handed the keys to the U.S. Government over to Elon Musk. They seized access to the Treasury's payment system. This is a $6 trillion payment system. Elon Musk's DOGE boys have gotten access to Social Security numbers of the American people, bank account numbers, and other very sensitive personal information. Judges are trying to rein him in, but who knows what information they have already accessed and what kind of damage has already been done, not to mention what could still be done in the days ahead. And Elon Musk has gotten into the Department of Education, the State Department, AID, Health and Human Services, NOAA, and the National Institutes of Health, just to name a few. No matter what name he gives it, Elon Musk's takeover of these Federal Agencies has nothing to do with government efficiency. If it was about government efficiency, Trump would not have illegally fired the inspectors general whose job it is to provide oversight at these Agencies and blow the whistle on corruption. In fact, when you fire the inspectors general who are the watchdogs at these Agencies, whose job it is to look out for waste or fraud or abuse, when you fire them as one of your first acts, what you are doing is clearing the way for the kind of illegal actions we are seeing from Elon Musk and his team. So what they are really doing here is seizing control of the government, taking over a lot of these Agencies, in the long run, to empower further the very powerful and the very wealthiest in this country. And we will be seeing more of that in the months ahead when we begin to see the Trump tax plan, the trickle-down tax plan that is being worked on, as we speak. Because we know that although Candidate Trump campaigned on the idea that he was going to be on the lookout for working people, that he was going to shine a light on the forgotten Americans, everything he has done since then is a betrayal of that promise. Just down the hall here, during the inauguration, the folks who were sitting behind President Trump as he gave his remarks were certainly not the forgotten Americans. They included Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, and all the billionaire tech titans. So when President Trump in that inaugural address promised a new golden age for America, he was looking at the cameras, but he was talking to those tech titans sitting right behind him. And to provide that golden age for the billionaires and powerful in America, they are following a manual and an instruction book called Project 2025. Now, people might remember that during the last Presidential campaign, Candidate Trump was asked repeatedly about Project 2025. People said: Is this your plan that is being put forward? And his response was: I have nothing to do with it. You know why he said that on the campaign trail? Because he knew it was unpopular. If you look at the contents of Project 2025, the American people would recoil at what is in there, and Candidate Trump knew that. And so when he was asked, he said: I see nothing; I have nothing to do with that. So, surprise, surprise, surprise, when one of the key architects--key authors--of Project 2025 Russell Vought is nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House. So before I speak to why it will be so dangerous to put Russell Vought in that critical position, I want to say a few words about what OMB is all about because it is not a well-known Agency. People hear about the Department of Justice; they hear about other important Federal Agencies, Department of Health and Human Services. But what is OMB? OMB is the office over at the White House. It is in the executive office of the President. And it is the command and control center for the budget of the U.S. Government. It oversees the budgets of every Federal Agency of the Federal Government. They feed their information, they feed their budget requests up to the Office of Management and Budget. And it is the Office of Management and Budget that makes the final decisions and sign-off on all of those Federal Agency budgets, across the government. So as I say, Russell Vought will be in the cockpit of this decision- making, overseeing every Federal Agency in our government. So let's learn a little bit more about Russell Vought because we will be voting on that nomination later today. So what does he think about the Federal employees in all of those Agencies that OMB will oversee with respect to their budgets? Here is what he said about government employees, and I am quoting him. He wants them to ``be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma.'' Again, referring to hard-working Federal employees who do good work on behalf of the American people every day. ``We want to put them in trauma,'' he said. And if anybody doubts this quote, you just have to go online because it is on videotape. It is on videotape for the whole world to see. In fact, he didn't try and deny those words, and at the confirmation hearing we had at the Budget Committee that I serve on, we asked if he wanted to apologize for those statements, and his answer was no. He refused to apologize. That is what the person who is nominated to be the head of OMB thinks about the Federal employees throughout the Federal Government that are going to be under that OMB budget process. Now, at that budget hearing, the Senate Budget Committee hearing, there was another very revealing moment because I and Senator Murray asked whether or not he would commit to complying with American law, specifically whether he would comply with what is known as the Impoundment Control Act. Now, again, this is a law that many people are not familiar with, but it is essential to the framework of our Constitution, the implementation of that framework, and checks and balances within the government, and the power of the purse that is designated for Congress under article I of the Constitution. And what the Impoundment Control Act says is that once Congress has duly enacted a law, passed the House, passed the Senate, been signed into law by the Executive, by the President, the Presidents don't get to cherry-pick that law. Presidents don't get to decide, you know, I like that provision in the law, and so I am going to implement that, but I don't like that provision, so I am going to ignore it or discard it. It is not a la carte. Our laws are not a la carte. They are not for Presidents to decide what parts they want to follow and what parts they won't. This came to a head back in the 1970s when President Nixon started exercising what are called line-item vetoes. So Congress would pass a piece of legislation that would require that certain amounts of funds be spent on certain projects, and President Nixon took a pen and said: Look, I don't like that particular program. I am going to cross it out. And I don't like this one, I am going to cross it out--even though it had been part of the law passed by Congress and signed by the President. And so that was challenged, and it went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court struck down President Nixon's action. And the Congress then passed the Impoundment Control Act to create a Federal statute essentially codifying that requirement that Presidents follow the law with respect to budget implementation. So when we asked Russ Vought at the hearing whether or not he would follow the Impoundment Control Act, you would think all of our colleagues would care about what answer he gave because, at that hearing, he refused to say that he would comply with the Impoundment Control Act. Again, you can go see the C-SPAN tape and get the transcript. He weaved and dodged and never said he would comply with the law. And maybe that shouldn't surprise us because he has done this before. You see this will be Russ Vought's second tour as the head of the Office of Management and Budget if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. And on his first go-round in the first Trump administration, this issue came up. That was when President Trump in his first term withheld critical funds appropriated by Congress, on a bipartisan basis, for the people of Ukraine, to help the people of Ukraine. That was done through the duly authorized processes of government. But President Trump wanted to hold on to those moneys. He did not want to obey the law. He didn't want to disperse those funds to Ukraine. That created a huge issue, crisis in governance. So at that time, I wrote to the GAO, which is the congressional watchdog. They are designated to look out to see whether or not these laws are actually implemented and followed. And I got back a response. I wrote them in December of 2019 about this withholding of funds for Ukraine, and I got back a letter on January 16, 2020, with their answer. And in this letter, GAO says: Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those Congress has enacted into law. Pretty standard definition of what everybody would normally understand to be the requirements of the Constitution. And since the Trump administration and Russ Vought violated that, the GAO concluded-- and I will just read the operative sentence: Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the Impoundment Control Act. Simple declarative sentence saying that they violated the law. And the person who was the head of OMB when they violated that law was? Russ Vought, the person who is nominated for another tour of duty as the head of

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. For all the patriotic Federal employees serving our country, I vote no.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, as we gather here on the Senate floor, over at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Elon Musk--the richest person in the world, not elected by a single American--has gained access to the U.S. payment system--payments that go to about $2 trillion worth a year. He has gained access to the personal information of millions and millions of Americans--Social Security numbers, bank accounts, and all sorts of sensitive information that we do not want to be shared. It compromises people's privacy. That kind of scenario is playing out across the Federal Government. Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE boys are in many other Departments, and every day that we wake up, we hear about another one. One Department that we know they are in is the Department of State and, specifically, USAID. What we are witnessing here is the result of the most corrupt bargain in American history because Elon Musk spent over $280 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has handed the keys of the U.S. Government over to Elon Musk. Damage is being done every day, and it is hurting the American people and the interests of the American people. I want to focus for now on the situation at the Agency for International Development, which has been a critical piece of our overall national security and foreign policy strategy. AID has enjoyed bipartisan support in this body for its work for decades, and I want to thank the great patriots--the men and women who work for AID--for the important work they are doing for our country as we speak. But when President Trump turned the keys to the government over to Elon Musk, Elon Musk began dismantling the Agency for International Development. Here is what he said in recent tweets about his plan to destroy USAID: We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead. He said--this is Elon Musk: USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die. I think my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would be surprised to know that they have been supporting a criminal organization all of these years by voting to support the Agency for International Development. Let's make no mistake that his effort to dismantle AID is a gift to our adversaries. It is a gift to China. It is a gift to Russia and others who want to do us harm around the world. In fact, one of Putin's cronies immediately posted on X, ``Smart move by Elon Musk,'' referring to dismantling AID. So this is not ``America First.'' This is ``America in Retreat,'' and it has nothing to do with government efficiency and everything to do with aiding and abetting our adversaries. In fact--and I think the Presiding Officer knows this--when you talk to our military leaders, they will tell you that our investment in AID is an important component of our overall foreign policy and national security strategy. We spend about 50 percent of our discretionary budget on defense-- actually, a little more than half of our discretionary budget on defense. We spend about 2 percent on AID. In fact, if you look at our overall budget, it is 0.6 percent for AID. Now, having a strong military is important. We all agree. But in addition to demonstrating the power of our military, we have always worked to also demonstrate the power of our example, trying to work with people around the world, to provide a little bit more opportunity, a little bit more stability, and, yes, help stop diseases from spreading around the world. Poverty and violence and disease--they spread like fire. And if your neighbor's house is on fire, you don't build a wall; you go for water. When you have an outbreak of disease in one part of the world, like we saw with Ebola in Africa, by helping stop the spread of disease--of course, we help people in other parts of the world, but we also save American lives when we prevent diseases from spreading elsewhere. If the world doesn't trust America to help--and, believe me, at this moment, they are doubting us--they will turn to China and Russia, and those adversaries will be itching to fill the vacuum. Elon Musk's crusade against USAID is not only a security risk; it is also a purge of dedicated public servants who have committed their lives in service to the values our country holds dear. Thousands of AID employees have now been furloughed, many fired, and direct hires are being put on administrative leave. There is absolutely chaos in the AID system. As Elon Musk said, he wants it to die, and that is what he is trying to accomplish. Those men and women who serve our country as part of AID are being ordered to come home immediately. Thousands of our AID staff overseas were called back with just a few days' notice. Their kids are being pulled out of school in countries overseas. Many of them don't have homes to come back to at this moment. They could be homeless upon their return. They are being ripped out of their lives where they are doing that important work for our country. USAID has more than 13,000 total employees worldwide. On Monday night, the email was sent out to all staff and then subsequently posted on USAID's website--you can go and look at it right now--telling all of them that they will be ``placed on administrative leave globally''-- ``placed on administrative leave globally.'' This is absolutely cruel and an unnecessary infliction of punishment on Americans and others who have been our partners in this effort, in supporting humanitarian causes and advancing U.S. priorities around the world. I am hearing from many of these USAID employees. What is really inspiring at the same time that it is heartbreaking is that they are not worried about themselves, but they are worried about the impact and cost and harm that will be done to the people they are trying to help in places around the world. What is happening here is just plain illegal. Secretary Rubio said he wanted to give a waiver for all essential lifesaving treatment. He said that on Wednesday, but the New York Times uncovered that no money has actually gone out. Money is still missing, and people are still in danger of imminent death. Even if the money got out the door, who is going to service it when everybody has been put on administrative leave, fired, or otherwise told not to show up to work? I went down to the AID building on Monday when I heard what was happening, when I heard that Elon Musk told everybody not to come in to work. I literally went up to the doors and asked if we could come in to talk to employees who might still be there. We were denied access. The folks there were told and instructed not to allow Members of Congress to get into the building. Presidents are not kings, and you don't get to pick and choose what part of the law you decide to apply. And Elon Musk doesn't get to shut down the USAID operation legally. He may be a dictator at Tesla, and he may be playing one here in Washington, DC, but he doesn't get to shred the law of the land. That is why I am expecting that in the coming days, just like we saw judges in Rhode Island and here in the District of Columbia issue temporary restraining orders on President Trump's efforts to freeze important Federal funds going to communities all over our country, that that same argument will be used with respect to this illegal action and takeover of USAID. I want to close with this, because you would think that all of us, regardless of party, would want to stand up for the law; that we wouldn't want Elon Musk to be able to shred it unilaterally. We got this letter from Secretary Rubio a few days ago. Clearly, he is playing catchup here. Clearly, he is not in control of AID even though it says that he is now taking control of the operations at USAID. Here is what the letter says: This letter provides notice and advises you of our intent to initiate consultations with you regarding the manner in which foreign aid is distributed around the world through the United States Agency for International Development. ``Consultations.'' He really should talk to Elon Musk, who is tweeting out that he is putting AID in the wood chipper and that he is killing AID. All of us are prepared to sit down for a conversation about how we can reform AID, if we want to better integrate it into our overall foreign policy operations. That is a matter for Congress to deliberate on in consultation with the State Department. But Secretary Rubio sent this down after the doors had been closed on AID. This is just a coverup for the fact that he wasn't controlling what was going on. I think as Members of the Senate we have an obligation, if we care at all about our lawmaking duties and care at all about whether or not, when we appropriate funds for AID, they are actually spent as we indicated--we all have an interest in making sure that this process operates in a legal way. What Elon Musk is doing is flat-out illegal, and if our colleagues won't join together on a bipartisan basis to do it, the courts are stepping in. But the courts shouldn't have to do our job. So I appeal to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, if you care about the Constitution and if you care about article I, you should be rising up when Elon Musk is talking about putting AID through the wood chipper and saying it should die. I will be back a little later on the floor to talk about Russ Vought's place and the role he plays in this operation, but for now, I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think that Americans following what is happening over the last 48 hours recognize that we are seeing a great deal of chaos and turmoil around the country, and it is having a harmful impact across communities, across my State of Maryland, across the country. On Monday night, the Trump administration issued an order to all Federal Agencies to freeze the disbursement of Federal funds until there was a review period, with the threat that much of those funds would be withheld. And what that did was trigger a lot of understandable panic across the country. In my office, we heard from firefighters in many different parts of our State. These are firefighters who receive grants to help purchase equipment that they need to run into burning buildings to help save people in emergency circumstances and to hire more staff. We have heard from people who work in Head Start programs to try to make sure that kids get an early help and lift up in life. We heard from folks in law enforcement, including people who were involved in preventing human trafficking and sex trafficking of minors. We heard from small businesses worried about their grants. We heard from people in all different walks of life and different communities who were very worried that the important Federal initiatives that they rely on to help provide support for people in their communities were being turned off. And I want to make something crystal clear: This was avoidable. This did not happen by accident. I did see comments by the President's deputy policy director, Steve Miller, saying: This was a very clear directive, and there has been a lot of fake news about it. I would just urge people to take a look at that directive. It is extremely broad, and it is very ambiguous. And it was very foreseeable that Federal Agencies would essentially put an immediate halt to funds going to everybody from firefighters to those who are fighting sex trafficking. So how did this happen? It happened because this is an administration--this Trump administration--that believes that it has the power to cherry-pick the law, to decide what parts of the laws that have been duly enacted by this Congress they like and want to implement and which ones they want to reject. That is an unconstitutional power grab--pure and simple--because under article I, the Congress has the power of the purse, and when we pass a law, including an appropriations bill, to provide funding for important national and local priorities, and that is signed into law, that becomes the law of the land. And Presidents can't treat that like it is an ``a la carte'' menu. They can't say: Well, I am going to implement this priority because I like that one, and I am going to reject this provision of the law because I don't like it. That is not how it works. The Framers created checks and balances in our system to prevent Presidents from acting like Kings and ignoring laws that they don't like and only implementing the ones that they do. This all came to a head many, many decades ago, when President Nixon exercised what was called the line item veto. So Congress passes legislation, the product of back and forth and negotiation and compromise, signed by the President of the United States. That makes it law. That is the law of the land. So what President Nixon said was: Well, I am going to sign this, but there are certain provisions here that I don't like. I don't want to be spending any money on Head Start, for example, or I don't want to spend money on law enforcement and police, for example. And so I am going to veto those provisions, but I am going to accept the rest of the law, even though Congress passed all of it in totality. And the Supreme Court said: You can't do that. Presidents are not Kings. They don't have the power to selectively implement parts of the law they like and reject the others. And then Congress passed what is known as the Impoundment Control Act. This is legislation that says Presidents cannot impound. In other words, they can't withdraw or put aside funds that have been duly enacted by Congress, just because they don't like the purposes for which Congress passed those provisions. But this President and this administration believe that the Impoundment Control Act doesn't apply to them. And we don't have to guess at this question. All we have to do is look at the testimony of somebody called Russ Vought. So who is Russ Vought? Russ Vought is President Trump's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. What is the Office of Management and Budget? It is an office within the White House that directs the budget control over all the other Federal Agencies. They are like the central command center for all of the other Agencies, whether it is Health and Human Services or EPA. Whatever Federal Agency it is, they all feed their budget requests up to the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President. And Russ Vought was nominated to head that position. In fact, tomorrow, in the Senate Budget Committee, we will have a vote on Russ Vought. We had his hearing a little while ago. At that hearing, I asked him point-blank, as did Senator Murray, whether he and the Trump administration would comply with the Impoundment Control Act. You have to look at the videotape. He refused to confirm that he would apply the law. He wouldn't say yes. In fact, what he said was that President Trump has issues with the Impoundment Control Act; he doesn't think it is constitutional. So he refused to commit to applying the law here. He said that they may want to change that. The obvious answer is: OK, President Trump, if you want to change the Impoundment Control Act, let's seek an amendment to it. It will go through the congressional process, and you can try to amend the law. But for now, the law is as it is written, and you can't ignore it. Yet Russ Vought said: We refuse to commit to comply to this thing. We have actually seen this movie before in the first Trump administration because Russ Vought was in charge of OMB for part of that first Trump term. People may recall that we had quite a discussion when President Trump, in his first term, wanted to withhold military assistance from Ukraine, even though Congress--the House and the Senate--had passed that into law and it had been signed into law. But President Trump just decided he didn't want to implement that policy, so they withheld funds. I wrote to the GAO--that is Congress's watchdog--and I asked them a very simple question. I asked them whether this withholding of military assistance to Ukraine constituted an illegal withholding. In other words, could President Trump hold onto and not disburse those funds that had been enacted by Congress to help the people of Ukraine? GAO looked into it, and they sent me back a letter, crystal clear, that the Trump administration had violated the Impoundment Control Act and Russ Vought, as the head of OMB at the time, violated the Impoundment Control Act. Now we are here today. Russ Vought is up again, nominated to be in charge of OMB. At the hearing the other day, as I said, he refused to commit to complying with the Impoundment Control Act. That is what we are seeing here in this freeze on the funds and the claim that they can look at these and decide: Congress may have passed this, it may have been signed into law, but we are not going to disburse them because we disagree with the purposes. You can't do that. Now, the President is going to submit the President's budget to Congress, and we will have an opportunity to look at his proposals, and we will act on it. But the President can't take a law that has already been put into effect and decide: I am only going to help the people I want and not the other people that I don't want to help. The real concern just--what--10 days into this administration is this is part and parcel of a much larger effort and strategy. I can tell you for certain this is not about making the Federal Government more efficient. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to sit down and seriously find ways to make the Federal Government more efficient, I am all in. But that is not what this DOGE committee headed by Elon Musk is all about, at least none of the early indications suggest that is what it is about. And the reason we know that is because one of the main initiatives being taken on by this new administration is something called Schedule F. Schedule F, that is sort of an innocuous-sounding thing. What could that mean? Schedule F is a concerted effort to throw out the merit- based civil service structure that we have in this country, the merit- based system where people are hired based on their qualifications and their experience and their knowledge, and replace it with a political cronyism-based system. I want to pause here for a moment just to make sure everybody understands the way things work now. Obviously, when you have a new President elected, the President can bring in lots of new people. We are debating right now advice and consent on some Cabinet officials. The President also can hire the top echelon of people in Agencies across the Federal Government. In fact, there are about 4,000 political appointees today, people that the President puts into these positions. That is fine. But what Schedule F would do and what President Trump and his nominee to be head of OMB want to do is to take about 50,000 to 60,000 additional Federal positions and convert them from merit-based systems to political cronyism systems. So instead of being hired on the merits instead of being hired based on your qualifications and your experience and what you know, they want you to be hired based on who you know--a political test. And you can see, if you place about 50,000 to 60,000 political cronies across the Federal Government in these positions, you can get them to overlook the law, like the Impoundment Control Act; you can get them to overlook the Constitution. And I dare say, the American people don't want political hacks to be the people who are doing food safety inspections or are responsible for the air traffic control system or, really, any other part of our government where we rely on experience and qualifications, not a political test. So this is a really important moment because the Trump administration is claiming this power, not only to violate the Impoundment Control Act and withhold funds from whatever they don't like and reward those who do, but they want to create a whole structure within the Federal Government to replace these merit-based civil servants with political cronies. And what is another thing you would do if you were President to try to make sure you knocked down all the provisions we have for accountability? Hey, you would fire all the inspectors general. What are inspectors general? They are people in various Federal Departments whose job it is to root out fraud, waste, and abuse. Their job is to make sure that people in these Agencies don't ignore the law, don't waste taxpayer money. Yet President Trump fired the inspectors general in these Agencies. In other words, he fired the people who are supposed to provide accountability to protect the public against waste, fraud, and abuse. So don't tell me you are for more government efficiency when you are firing the people whose job it is to keep a look out for fraud, waste, and abuse. What is really happening is you are firing the people who would be responsible for calling out any wrongdoing by these 60,000 additional political cronies that the President wants to put in place in these Departments to do his bidding. I would hope colleagues on both sides of the aisle would see that this is really fraught with danger because when you open the door to this kind of political cronyism, you also open the door to corruption. And when you get rid of the inspectors general, that means more people think that they can get away with that kind of corruption. Schedule F is not the only ongoing effort, apparently, the President has to get rid of merit-based Federal employees. They just sent out this note within the last couple of days offering ``early retirement to Federal employees.'' I think the idea is if you agree to retire in the next couple of weeks that you can continue to get your paycheck through September or something without working. I have no idea if that is even legal. What we do know is the memo that was sent out to these Federal employees was remarkably similar to something that Elon Musk sent out to employees in his company at one point. In fact, the title of the memo, ``Fork in the Road,'' was exactly what was on Elon Musk's memo. And, in fact, apparently, Elon Musk is bringing in some computer systems and other things to the executive office buildings over there at the White House. I would caution Federal employees that we don't even know if this is legal, and don't count on you getting the benefit of whatever bargain the President is, apparently, promising you because what this really is is an effort just to clear out more people from the merit-based system to create vacancies to bring in political cronies. That is what this is all about. You implement a hiring freeze, which is what they have done. Then you get current Federal employees to retire early through something that could end up being a scam. I don't know. And then you implement Schedule F and bring in 50,000 to 60,000 people. This is a really important consequential moment for all of us who care about a merit-based civil service. And by the way, we have had a merit-based system since the late 1800s. We adopted this merit-based system after President James Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed job seeker--someone who had worked on his campaign and didn't get a job. At that point, the American people said: This spoil system where people are getting jobs just based on who they know, not what they know, this isn't delivering quality services for the American people. So they passed the Pendleton Act. What is happening now is a direct attack on that merit-based civil service. What is the ultimate goal here? The ultimate goal is for President Trump to put in place these political loyalists who will do his bidding. Bidding for who? In the last campaign, I think, many people who supported Candidate Trump believed that he was there to look out for working people, to look out for the forgotten Americans. That was sort of what he said on the campaign. But on Inauguration Day, just down the hall here a little bit, I think we got a better idea of exactly who it was and who it is that President Trump is looking out for, because he gave a speech talking about the ``new golden age'' for America. And the people who had the best seats in the House, better than his Cabinet nominees, were the billionaire tech titans--Elon Musk and others. They were right there, right behind the President. We also know that one of the President's major goals is to put in place another big tax cut. Tax cut for who? A tax cut for the very wealthiest people in the country who will get a disproportionate share of any proposed tax cuts. We can expect to see that in round 2 because we saw that in Trump administration round 1. And big tax breaks for corporations who promised they would use the proceeds, by the way, to expand plant and equipment, to raise wages of their employees--that is not what happened. They used the extra money for stock buybacks that benefited very wealthy stockholders disproportionately. And the CEOs got bonuses. We didn't see wages for other employees. So it is not just that the tax plan will benefit the very wealthy; it is that it will do that at the expense of working Americans. Just take a peek at some of the proposals that are being put forward in the House Budget Committee by Republican leaders on that committee. They are going after very important programs that benefit the American people, whether in healthcare or nutrition. We will have to see when it finally comes out of there, but we know that most of the cuts they are proposing are going to be harmful to working Americans, to the people Candidate Trump claimed he wanted to help. So this is a moment when everybody needs to focus very clearly on what their expectations were because it is shaping up to be a great betrayal. It is shaping up to be a situation where this new administration wants to get rid of merit-based civil servants, bring in a lot of political cronies, and then implement these huge tax cuts for very wealthy Americans and the biggest corporations at the expense of everybody else in America. I don't think that is what the people bargained for in this last election. So I come to the floor today because we are seeing the Trump administration put in place some of these pieces that would be necessary in achieving these big tax breaks and benefits to the very wealthy. Whenever a President decides that he gets to cherry-pick the law and just provide resources to his political benefactors and ignore the rest of the law, that is a big danger signal. When the nominee to be the head of OMB refuses to commit to following the law, that is a big danger signal. So I would just ask all of our colleagues to do our jobs as Members of Congress in the article I branch and make sure that we don't see this flagrant attack on the Constitution be successful. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, yesterday afternoon I voted to advance Sean Duffy's nomination to be Secretary of Transportation. I support qualified Cabinet nominees even when I have deep policy and political differences, unless they are so extreme as to pose a threat to the mission of their Agency. I have voted for qualified nominees from both parties for this position, and, while I have deep political and policy difference with Mr. Duffy, I believe that his experience in the House of Representatives has prepared him to do this job and support the overall mission of the Department of Transportation. I also appreciated his commitment in his hearings to funding Federal transportation projects without partisan influence. However, last night, the administration put out an unprecedented and illegal directive to Agencies to hold vast amounts of Federal funding, including grants and loans to states and organizations working in our communities. My office is hearing from counties and community groups across Maryland who are losing access to funds to support firefighters, prevent homelessness, and keep transportation projects on track. Mr. Duffy, and every nominee, will be responsible for executing this unlawful withholding of funding as passed by Congress. We cannot continue with business as usual when the administration abuses its power and ignores spending laws as passed by Congress, so I voted against Mr. Duffy's nomination today.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the memory of the late Elwynda Kowan Patterson Chapman of Mitchellville, MD. Mrs. Chapman was born in Kinston, NC, to loving parents Courtney L. Patterson and Bernice I. White Patterson. After attending local schools, Mrs. Chapman continued her education at North Carolina Central University and later received her masters in library science from the Catholic University of America in 1980. Mrs. Chapman pursued her passion with a tremendous career as a library scientist, serving the Federal Government over countless years at the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Agricultural Library, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Her commitment to her career culminated in her participation in the founding of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Library and Information Network, which has been instrumental to the organization and sharing of relevant security data between agencies. In addition to her robust career, Mrs. Chapman was a pillar of her community. From 1988, Elwynda and her husband ``Mayor'' David Chapman were deeply involved in the Lake Arbor Community. Above all, Mrs. Chapman had a paramount devotion to the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, where she is best remembered for her love of worship and praise songs, involvement within the Sunday school, and faith community outreach efforts. Mrs. Chapman's memory is cherished by all those who knew her, but especially by her family. She is survived by her husband David, with whom she was childhood sweethearts and married for 62 years, and her children and grandchildren, who will miss her dearly. I ask my colleagues to join me in offering heartfelt gratitude to Mrs. Chapman's family for her service. She will be sorely missed by all, but her lasting legacy will be forever etched into our community.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

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

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak to some of the actions that President Trump has taken just in his first 3 to 4 days and speak to the nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. President Trump was sworn in at noon on Monday just down the hall a bit. As a candidate, he ran promising to help working men and women throughout the country. He talked about addressing their kitchen table issues. So let's take a quick look at some of the big actions that have been taken just in the last 4 days. One very serious action taken was pardoning the men and women who were convicted of bludgeoning and assaulting police officers in this Capitol on January 6, 2021. For those of us who were here that day, we will never forget, because after losing that election, Donald Trump unleashed rioters on Capitol Hill, rampaging throughout the ``citadel of democracy,'' clubbing police officers with baseball bats, and crushing them between doors. Mr. President, 140 law enforcement officers from the Capitol Police and the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police were injured that day. I remember their heroism, and I remember those who died in the days following those attacks. To pardon people who were convicted of assaulting and bloodying and bludgeoning police officers demonstrates contempt for the men and women who help protect us every day--not just here in the Capitol but men and women in law enforcement throughout the country. As the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Police Chiefs have said, ``Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.'' They go on to say that this leniency ``sends a dangerous message that the consequences of attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence.'' The simple result of this is to send a terrible message that if you assault police officers in the name of Donald Trump, he will be there to pardon you. Let's look at some of the other actions he has taken just in these first days back in the White House. He issued an Executive order that rolls back initiatives to help reduce the costs of prescription drugs for more Americans. He has been laying the groundwork here on Capitol Hill for a huge new tax cut that will disproportionately benefit the superwealthy and the biggest corporations at the expense of other Americans. We heard him speak at that podium during his swearing-in of the golden age, and sitting right behind him were the billionaire titans from the tech industry. He is going to deliver a golden age--an even more golden age for those who are already very wealthy and for the biggest corporations, but it is not going to trickle down and help others. We know that because we have seen this movie before. We saw Trump tax cuts 1.0. They promised that investments in businesses would go up, the idea being that if you provide tax cuts to big corporations, they will take the additional savings and they will invest it in their businesses. Well, that has been looked at, and that didn't happen. What did go up were stock buybacks engaged in by the corporations to further benefit their shareholders, many of them already very wealthy people. They promised that those savings would be used by corporations to increase wages. In fact, they said that on average, it would be $4,000 a worker. It just didn't happen. What went up were CEO bonuses. What else went up was the deficit and the debt. The claim that these would somehow pay for themselves was just once again a pure falsehood disproved by reality. So here we are embarking on 2.0, Trump tax cuts 2.0--same story unfolding, although now we already hear our colleagues talking about how everybody else in America and many other millions of Americans are going to have to pay for the tax cuts for the folks at the very top. Just take a look at some of the proposals made by the chairman of the House Budget Committee, a Republican Member of Congress, talking about trillions of cuts in things like Medicaid--a very important health program that helps kids with disabilities, helps lower income individuals, helps seniors in nursing homes; talking about cutting programs in--food and nutrition programs. So everyone seems to be all in with President Trump on the idea of another round of tax cuts for the very rich, but they are going to ask everybody else in the country to pay for it. Let's look at something else the President did in his first 3 or 4 days. He issued an executive order called schedule F. What is schedule F? In a nutshell, schedule F is an attempt to convert our merit-based civil service into a political cronyism-based civil service. Since the late 1800s and the Pendleton Act, we have had a civil service based on merit. Civil servants--people who work for the Federal Government in regular, ongoing positions--have to pass a test, show that they are qualified, that they are experienced, that they have the know-how. It is what you know, not who you know. What President Trump and his team are proposing in schedule F is to convert that merit-based system into a politics-based system where you have a political litmus test not for competence but for your politics. I should point out that of course Presidents are entitled to lots of people in their administration as political appointments. In fact, there are about 4,000 political appointments in our current system. Obviously, you have the Secretaries of various Departments--I am going to talk about one of those in a minute--but you have the Deputy Secretaries, and you have many Assistant Secretaries. So you have 4,000 political appointments already available to be made by President Trump, but that is not enough, apparently. They are talking about converting approximately another about 16,000 additional positions that are currently merit-based systems, based on your qualifications, to political cronyism-based systems. That is a recipe for corruption. It is a recipe for reducing the quality of services to the American people from coast to coast. You do not want somebody who is chosen just because of who they know and what their politics are to be the people doing your food inspection or working on policy on all sorts of important things that impact the American people. A lot of those positions will be at the Department of Defense, so I want to turn now to the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I appreciate that we are beginning an amendment process on S. 5 in the Senate. I hope we continue with that process, as there are still significant improvements to be made to this bill. We must keep our communities safe and prioritize detention of violent offenders, and our focus must be on the most effective path to achieve that goal. I have introduced, along with Senator Kaine, an amendment that directly addresses the circumstances that led to the tragic murder of Laken Riley without creating a system that diverts resources away from the detention and deportation of violent offenders. I have also offered an amendment that makes clear that the apprehension and deportation of convicted violent offenders should be our highest enforcement priority. Yesterday, I voted against the Cornyn amendment, which would expand the category of offenses under which individuals are detained following an arrest only, not a conviction or even an indictment. While I appreciate the seriousness of those crimes, this would continue to take resources from detention and deportation of those who pose the greatest threat to our communities and who are actually convicted. I also voted for an amendment proposed by Senator Coons that would strike the section of the underlying bill that allows States attorneys general to sue the Federal Government when they disagree with any of the thousands of complex immigration enforcement decisions ICE and CBP make every day. Conflicting lawsuits in State courts around the country would paralyze our immigration enforcement system, ultimately jeopardizing public safety. I am disappointed that this amendment failed to pass. I urge my colleagues to work in a bipartisan way to improve this bill to keep our communities safe while ensuring that our immigration enforcement officials can focus on the greatest public safety risks.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) on its 40th anniversary. Since its founding four decades ago by members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, EESI has steadfastly pursued its vision of a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world--a vision I share. EESI's work is a reminder that there is considerable common ground if we work together to find it. For the sake of our planet, our economy, our health, and our children's future, I hope we have the strength to do just that. EESI plays a key role as it informs Congress of developments in the energy, environmental, and climate space. Every year, EESI convenes dozens of congressional briefings, publishes white papers, releases newsletters, and hosts a podcast. All of this science-based, nonpartisan information--clearly explained and synthesized--helps us develop good policy. EESI has also been one of the driving forces behind the annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency EXPO and Policy Forum. I have the privilege of serving as a deputy cochair of the Senate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, which showcases, on a bipartisan basis, the many benefits of clean energy and helps cohost the EXPO. I am very proud to have participated in almost every EXPO since 2003. At these EXPOs, clean energy leaders convene and share what their organizations are doing to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency. They describe how clean energy and energy efficiency are creating good-paying jobs in their communities, expanding economic development in rural areas, helping families and businesses become more resilient to extreme weather and climate impacts, contributing to national security, and ensuring that all communities have access to clean air and water. I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the many accomplishments of former Representative Richard L. ``Dick'' Ottinger. He cofounded the Environmental and Energy Study Conference when he represented New York in Congress in the 1970s. Under Mr. Ottinger's leadership, the conference later evolved into the independent nonprofit we are celebrating today, EESI. We are in the middle of a decisive decade for climate action. What we choose to do now--or fatefully, choose not to do--will affect future generations in profound ways. As we seek bipartisan agreement to achieve our climate goals, I know we can count on EESI and its remarkable resources to help guide the way. Congratulations again to EESI and its 40 years of advancing climate solutions on Capitol Hill. I look forward to working with EESI for many years to come as we strive together to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I was scheduled a couple days ago to come here to the Senate floor to talk about what measures the United States could be taking now to help relieve the suffering in Sudan, and I plan to get to that topic. But since I planned to come talk about that, we have seen this disaster unfolding on Capitol Hill, where an agreement that had been reached in a bipartisan manner between Democrats and Republicans, between the House and the Senate, to prevent a government shutdown and to support critical priorities around the country, how that bipartisan agreement got blown up because of a tweet from Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. And we don't know if he has just decided that he is going to be sort of the kingmaker on Capitol Hill. All I do know is that that was shortly followed by tweets from the President-elect and other members of the Trump family. Who is leading whom here, we don't know. All we know is that the end result is very bad for the American people because Federal employees provide all sorts of vital services, from air traffic controllers to nurses and doctors in veterans hospitals, to the people who look out for the safety of our food. Some of them will be prevented from coming to work. Others will be asked to go to work without their salary during that period of time. All of that will disrupt the country, and all of that was avoidable. In fact, if the Speaker of the House had just stuck to the agreement that he had reached over a period of weeks, we would not be in this situation, sort of heading toward a government shutdown, with last-minute demands made by tweet. In my State of Maryland, we had a provision to deal with the disaster of the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore City. We all know the story there: A big ship hit the pylon and brought down the bridge. We lost a number of souls who had been working on that bridge. We worked to get the debris out of the bottom of the river so that we could reopen the port, but the next step is to replace the Key Bridge. And just as the country came together to support the people in Minnesota after the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge, the Maryland delegation is asking the same of our colleagues. And we were heartened by the fact that Republicans and Democrats did come together in the spirit of ``all for one and one for all'' to help Maryland, just as we are helping other States--red States, blue States, purple States. And the bottom line--the important thing--is they are red, white, and blue States, and we are helping the people in all those States in their hour of hurt after disasters hit their States. I heard our colleague from North Carolina, Senator Tillis, who has worked very hard to get relief for the people of North Carolina, talking about how he doesn't plan to support any continuing resolution that doesn't include relief for the people of North Carolina. And that is the sentiment we should all share, not only because it is the right thing to do but because we recognized it was the right thing to do when we negotiated that bipartisan agreement. So this moment should be a wake-up call to everybody as we look to the next 4 years because this Republic will be on very shaky grounds if one or two tweets can throw the whole place into disarray and lead us toward a government shutdown. I will also point out that the fact that the President-elect asked for an early increase in the Nation's debt ceiling sent a very clear signal as to what his priority is. His priority is to cut taxes for very rich people and very big corporations. And to make that easier, they want to raise the debt ceiling now, rather than take responsibility for it themselves down the road. So this is a preview of what the priorities of the incoming administration are and the lengths that they are prepared to go to bring this place to a halt to achieve their goals. And, by the way, I am sure that the richest guy in the world will just get even richer with those tax cuts that will be coming down the line. So I really urge our Republican colleagues in the House to keep their word and stick with the agreement that we reached. It is a compromise agreement. It has things in it that I would not have put in it, if I were to draft this myself, and it leaves things out that I would like to see included. That is the nature of compromise in divided government, which we have right now. So I really hope that smarter, cooler heads will prevail and not, when they get a tweet that says, ``Jump,'' say, ``How high should I jump?'' but to really think about whether that is the way to govern in the years ahead. Sudan Mr. President, now I do want to turn to the matter that I had planned to talk about before this latest disruption, and that is the terrible, ongoing killings, starvation, and humanitarian disaster in Sudan. Two weeks ago, I came to this Senate floor to discuss this same issue and to explain why I had filed what is known as a joint resolution of disapproval, or a JRD, to block the Biden administration's request to send offensive weapons, including advanced rockets and missiles worth $1.2 billion, to the United Arab Emirates. I was joined in filing the joint resolution of disapproval by my House colleague Congresswoman Sara Jacobs. She filed that on the House side. And as I said when I introduced that joint resolution of disapproval, it was based on credible reports and investigations, including by the United Nations, that found that the UAE has been transferring arms to a group called the Rapid Support Forces, in Sudan, further fueling this terrible conflict that has already claimed thousands and thousands of lives and created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. And it is my view that the United States should use all of our leverage to help bring peace and stability to the people of Sudan. It is the right thing to do from a humanitarian point of view. It is also in America's interest to stop the fighting. And, certainly, the United States should not be rewarding any country--any country--that is fueling the conflict. That is why Congresswoman Jacobs and I filed that JRD, because we want to use our influence to prevent the United Arab Emirates from sending weapons to the murderous RSF. And after we filed the joint resolution of disapproval, we wrote a letter to President Biden, dated December 2, 2024, outlining our goals--and, again, stressing the fact that the objective was not to end arms transfers forever to the UAE. The objective was to use our leverage to get the UAE to stop sending weapons to the RSF, which the United States has charged with war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Sudan. So I am here on the floor, 2 weeks later, to say that, yesterday, we received a letter from the Biden administration--specifically, from the White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, Brett McGurk--stating--and I am going to quote here from the letter: [T]he UAE has informed the Administration that it is not now transferring any weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward. The letter goes on to say: The administration will work with relevant departments and agencies to monitor for indicators of the credibility and reliability of these assurances provided by the UAE. By January 17, I commit to providing you with the executive branch's up-to-date assessment in that regard. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to put this letter in the Record.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, because we have achieved our objective, which is to get the UAE to provide those assurances to the Biden administration and to get the Biden administration to assure us that they will monitor compliance with those assurances, we will not be insisting on a vote on the JRD at this time, which is our right, because it is a privilege motion that can be brought up at any time. But I want to thank the Biden administration, I want to thank the White House, and the National Security Council for working with us to achieve what I know are our mutual objectives, which is to prevent the RSD from getting arms from any party. If you look at what is happening there, you will find the situation getting worse and worse. Since the brutal conflict in Sudan began between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces back in April 2023, a staggering 11.8 million people have been displaced within Sudan or fled to neighboring countries. More than half the population--that is 25 million people--face acute food insecurity. And while the total casualty numbers have been difficult to determine, a study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Sudan Research Group estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in the Khartoum region alone between April 2023 and June 2024. And in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--a committee on which I serve--the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, suggested that the total death toll could be as high as 150,000 people. Both the RSF and the SAF have worsened this crisis, with both parties credibly accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by intentionally blocking humanitarian aid by reaching those most in need. The United States has determined that both the RSF and the SAF have committed war crimes. The State Department has also concluded that the Rapid Support Forces have committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. I want to remind my colleagues that this organization--the Rapid Support Forces--traces its roots to the Janjaweed militias and is led by a man known as Hemedti, who, along with others in the RSF, participated in the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s. So these are bad people, and we should not be helping any country or sending arms to any country that is aiding and abetting their actions in Sudan. And yet, that is what credible reports have shown. In January, a U.N. Panel of Experts documented credible allegations that the UAE was violating a Darfur arms embargo, which was first established back in 2005 to stop the genocide in Darfur. These findings have been corroborated by credible human rights organizations and an independent investigation by the New York Times, which found that the UAE smuggled weapons to the RSF under the guise of humanitarian aid. That is why it was important that we act. The United States is trying to reach an end to the conflict. We should not be sending any weapons to any country that is helping fuel that conflict. So I appreciate the administration's willingness to work with us to obtain such assurances from the UAE and to create an accountability mechanism to monitor its compliance with those commitments. And I want to thank and remember my colleagues here, Senator Cardin, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, my colleague from Maryland; Senator Schumer, the leader, and their teams for working with us and the administration to get those assurances from the UAE and to create that accountability structure to monitor compliance with those assurances. And while I will not be seeking a vote on the JRD today, if, in January, the administration determines that the UAE has not been compliant with those promises, commitments, and assurances, then, of course, we retain the right to refile the joint resolution of disapproval in the new Congress to block arms sales from the United States to the UAE--that $1.3 billion sale. As President Biden said in September of this year, ``The United States will not abandon our commitment to the people of Sudan, who deserve freedom, peace, and justice. We call on all parties to this conflict to end the violence and refrain from fueling it, for the future of Sudan and for all the Sudanese people.'' And that is why our message has been that any country that is supplying any actor in this brutal civil war must stop doing so. That is why Congressman Jacobs and I filed the joint resolution of disapproval against the proposed arms sales to the UAE because they have, based on credible allegations, been sending weapons to the murderous RSF. That is also why we will not seek a vote now on that JRD--because the Biden administration received those assurances that I just read out loud on the Senate floor from the UAE and has committed to monitoring them. So let's hope this puts an end to the chapter of the UAE sending weapons to this murderous organization, where so many were responsible for the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago and who, today, according to the U.S. Government, are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. We should do everything in our power as a country to end that suffering. That is why we took the measure we did. That is why I am grateful that the administration worked with us to reach this point, and it is why we will continue to monitor this situation--to make sure that those arms shipments do not happen in the future. I yield the floor.