Peter Welch

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam President, cross-country skiing is a sport enjoyed by tens of thousands of Vermonters, including several Vermont Olympians. Just about every Vermont ski area today has groomed cross- country trails, and most schools and communities have cross-country ski programs. Where I live in Norwich, VT, cross-country skiing is as popular as riding a chair lift and skiing down. From our front door, my wife Margaret and I can put on our skis and head out across a field and into the woods, breaking our own track or following a snowmobile trail. Many Vermont cross-country skiers today are not old enough to know how the sport got its start because, before John Caldwell--often referred to as the ``father'' of cross-country skiing--it was something people did in Scandinavia that hardly anyone in America knew about. That was until Caldwell wrote ``The Cross-Country Ski Book.'' It was published by the Stephen Greene Press in Brattleboro in eight editions from 1964 to 1987 and became one of the most widely distributed skiing books published in the United States. John Caldwell is an Olympian himself, competing in the 1952 Winter Olympics in both cross-country and ski jumping. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he went on to coach U.S. Olympic cross-country ski teams in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1984. Although born in Michigan and currently living in New Hampshire to be close to children and grandchildren, for all intents and purposes Caldwell has been and will always be a Vermonter; his ancestors arrived in the State in the 1740s. He attended the Putney School in Putney, VT, where he met his future wife Hep, and for more than three decades taught mathematics and coached skiing at Putney, finally retiring in 1989. To train for ski racing his students would run cross-country in the fall and split firewood. He was demanding, but he was also a master of dry humor, and his students were devoted to him. Above all, his goal was to show them that learning the technique to be able to glide on skis under one's own power could be great fun. Several of them went on to ski in the Olympics, including Bill Koch and his eldest son Tim who competed in four Olympic games. His granddaughter Sophie won medals in multiple World Cup races, and she and grandson Patrick competed in the Olympics. His son Sverre served for nearly four decades as Nordic director at Stratton Mountain School. His daughter Jennifer was the fastest woman of thousands who competed in the country's largest cross-country ski race in 1983. John Caldwell's contribution to cross-country skiing in Vermont and the United States knows no equal. He brought the sport to Vermont, and from there, it spread across the country. Just a few hundred yards from where he lives today, in the winter, scores of elementary school students can be seen practicing their cross-country technique on trails around the old Dartmouth golf course. Everyone who puts on a pair of cross-country skis today owes a debt of gratitude to John Caldwell. Cross-country skiing isn't just a sport. For those who love it, it is a passion--even a way of life. As Caldwell describes in ``The Cross-Country Ski Book,'' it is a simple, graceful way for just about anyone of any age to have fun gliding almost silently across snow-covered fields and through woods and getting in shape in the process. All Vermonters should be proud that, thanks to John Caldwell, our State was the birthplace of cross-country skiing in America. I ask unanimous consent that an April 11, 2025, article in the Brattleboro Reformer, entitled ``John Caldwell: He wrote the book-- literally--on cross-country skiing,'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I rise today to celebrate the 70th anniversary of one of Vermont's most iconic general stores. Dan & Whit's has been the beating heart of the Norwich community for 70 years. Dan & Whit's is a third-generation Vermont family business, nestled on Main Street in Norwich, VT--my hometown. The store is so integral to the people of Norwich, it is often used as a landmark: ``Turn right at Dan & Whit's.'' The building itself is historic, too, having served as a townhall and post office before being converted into a general store. Dan Fraser and Whit Hicks, longtime friends, bought the store from its previous owners in 1955 and renamed it Dan & Whit's. The store has been run by the Fraser family ever since. Dan & Whit's is known for their huge inventory. The store is deceptively large inside, and endless aisles are lined with a vast selection of goods, rumored to number into the hundreds of thousands. They stock everything from general store necessities, like cold beer and sandwiches; to Vermont necessities, like maple sugaring equipment; to the downright unexpected, like chicken feed and sushi. Their slogan, ``If we don't have it, you don't need it,'' is stamped on their custom merchandise and attested to by anyone who visits. The business is an anchor in the Norwich community. Generations of high schoolers can trace their first job back to Dan & Whit's. Customers stop by for milk and end up chatting with so many familiar faces they forget what they came in for. The store is also a leading participant in charitable giving around town. They were a pioneer of 19 Days of Norwich, an annual holiday drive where businesses donate a portion of their December sales to the local food shelf. During the rest of the year, they put on numerous fundraisers--selling creemees, pizza, and wine tastings, all to benefit local nonprofits. The store prides itself on the Vermont values of respect and acceptance. They have made a point to be inclusive in their hiring, giving second chances to Vermonters who are exiting homelessness or incarceration. A sign hanging outside, surrounded by community notices and posters, proudly reads ``Hate Does Not Grow In the Rocky Soil of Norwich, Vermont.'' When faced with staffing shortages during COVID-19, it seemed likely Dan & Whit's would have to close its doors for the first time in history. The store put out a cry for help, and the call did not go unanswered. Dozens of community members offered to pick up a shift or two. The new workers were often older Vermonters who had been retired for years, but they stocked shelves, checked out customers, and prepared sandwiches with enthusiasm. They pitched in not because they had to--many donated their salaries to charity--but because they felt the store's survival was essential to their community. Despite the challenges they face as a small business--staffing shortages, supply chain issues, competition from online retailers--Dan & Whit's endures. The store represents the best that Vermont has to offer: a place where the person ringing up your groceries knows your name and where those running the store care more about their community than their bottom line. I extend my deepest thanks to the Fraser family and every Dan & Whit's employee for their service to Norwich. I wish Dan & Whit's nothing but success and another 70 years of business.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I rise today to celebrate the 100th anniversary of an iconic Vermont institution, Henry's Diner. Henry's Diner has provided delicious food, welcoming ambience, and classic consistency to the Burlington, VT, community since 1925. Henry's Diner was founded in 1925 by Henry Couture, a beloved Burlingtonian and entrepreneur. At the time, diners were perceived as lower-class, and women hardly ever ate at them. But Mr. Couture dedicated himself to building an institution that was welcoming to everyone. He included special touches to attract female patrons, and the diner grew into a place frequented by all. Today, you can find anyone from day laborers to college students to politicians enjoying a meal under the original railroad cart ceiling. Henry's 100-year tenure has not been without its challenges. A fire in 1969 necessitated a months-long closure and heavy renovations to the business. Still, care was taken to preserve as much of the original diner as possible, and Henry's successfully reopened the following year. In the early 90s, a McDonald's opened directly across the street from Henry's. Some feared this signaled a cultural shift and could spell the end of the historic diner. However, the McDonald's closed years ago while Henry's remains standing proudly on Bank Street. During COVID-19, like many other Vermont businesses, the diner weathered staffing shortages and temporary closures. In the face of all these difficulties, Henry's has persevered. For a century now, Henry's has remained a place where people from all walks of life can gather over hearty food and a hot cup of coffee. The values that characterize Henry's--community, kindness, and acceptance--are Vermont values, and our state would not be the same without Henry's sitting in the heart of Burlington. Henry's has changed ownership multiple times across its history and was most recently bought by Patricio Ortiz in 2024. Despite changing hands, each owner has carried on the quality service that has made Henry's so beloved. I wish the Ortiz family nothing but success in continuing Henry's legacy and look forward to another 100 years of good food and great company. Thank you, Henry's Diner, for feeding the hearts and souls of so many Vermonters.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I oppose the appointment of Emil Bove to serve on the Federal court. You know, there are two issues. One for any judge is temperament-- absolutely essential--where that judge has to step back and not be partisan, has to be fair to all litigants. Emil Bove totally lacks the temperament to serve on the Federal judiciary under any President, under any administration. In 2018, the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of New York sent a letter to the Southern District leadership detailing incredibly detailed complaints from fellow defense attorneys about Bove. These are people that worked with him in a professional capacity. This was before Bove was the political figure that he has become. They described him gratuitously as a person who was vindictive, a prosecutor version of a drunk driver, and needing adult supervision. It was because of his conduct towards the people he was working with in the judicial system. The reality that we all know is that in the judicial system, fierce as you may be as a prosecutor, determined as you may be as a defense attorney, impartial as you want to be as a judge, everyone has to cooperate to do their job, not interfere with others, and to be supportive of those who are doing the work with you--your fellow prosecutors, your fellow defense attorneys. Bove couldn't do that. He does not have the temperament to serve in a high judicial position. Second and really most importantly, Bove does not have respect for the rule of law. If you are in a litigation situation, as prosecutors are, as trial attorneys are, as public defense attorneys are, you have an obligation to serve your client fiercely, energetically. But what you have as a shared responsibility, no matter which role you have in the litigation process, the judicial process, is a respect for the rule of law and an obligation to act in accordance with the ethics that apply to you in your service. On June 24, Erez Reuveni, who was a well-respected supervisor--and this is about the Bove character--who had defended Trump's policies in his first administration--this is a person who was supportive of many of the policies that then-President Trump was advocating. He came forward with a very credible whistleblower claim that Bove advocated for violating court orders. Bove reportedly said that the Department of Justice should be prepared to tell courts whose decisions they did not like to ``f off.'' He said that, and he meant it. That is the truth. And that was gratuitous but very reflective of the orientation that Mr. Bove has towards the law, and it is that the law is incidental. His goals and the goals of his now-client President Trump are the only things that matter. That also happened subsequently, just very recently, with the transfer of individuals to El Salvador in violation of Chief Judge Boasberg's oral order in J.G.G. v. Trump. That is the case where the judge gave an order stopping the deportation, and Bove was complicit in having that plane fly and actually do what was directly in conflict with the order. He also, as we know, instructed prosecutors to drop the criminal case against the New York City mayor Mr. Adams. It was a blatant quid pro quo. Bove has been an active participant in political payback against the January 6 prosecutors and FBI agents who were simply doing their jobs. By the way, this is so appalling to me. You are a prosecutor. You know that if a prosecutor is assigned a case in a large office like the Southern District of New York or in the Washington district, the prosecutor's job is to prosecute that case. Well, there were a number of prosecutors who were assigned to prosecute the January 6 cases, and, as you know, Mr. President, that included people who came in here and started beating up on cops. That is what they did. And those prosecutors did their job and were then fired by Bove--no loyalty to people who had the same job and the same responsibility as he did. He also--Mr. Bove--sought the names of all FBI employees who worked on investigations into January 6. You know, he stated that was part of an investigation about the weaponization of the FBI against the January 6 rioters. So he is part of the rewriting, the whitewashing, of the history of January 6 that is the favored narrative of President Trump. But bottom line, Bove has made it clear that he works for his political boss, and that is the President. And the question is not just about Bove. The question is for us in the Senate who have this real responsibility. We have our partisan differences. We have our honest policy differences. But we have a shared responsibility when it comes to the nomination of a person for a Federal judicial position to evaluate their qualifications for the job. And first and foremost among the qualifications is that that individual has to be someone who sees as his or her client the Constitution of the United States and the statutory rights and obligations that citizens and companies in this country have. And what President Trump has made very clear--uncomfortable as this may be to acknowledge for many of us, many of my colleagues on the Republican side who have to deal with the wrath of a President who doesn't get everything he wants when he wants it--the reality is that President Trump himself has made it clear that the people he wants appointed, that he will appoint to the court, are people who will put him first, not the Constitution; to put his political whims, his political desires first. He has got the right person in Bove, but that is the wrong person for us to confirm. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 423, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, of all the uninformed, ill-conceived, and self-inflicted errors of this administration, the just-announced decision to withdraw from UNESCO stands out. The justification given by the State Department spokeswoman was a recitation of outdated, vague, and inaccurate criticisms of an organization that has seen dramatic reforms over the past 7 years under the outstanding leadership of Director General Audrey Azoulay. Since her initial appointment in 2017, Director General Azoulay has made numerous trips to Washington to meet with leaders in the Congress and the administration. I have heard consistently positive reactions to her leadership of UNESCO by Republicans and Democrats alike, including regarding UNESCO's efforts to address anti-semitism. Given Director General Azoulay's success in focusing UNESCO on its mission of promoting international cooperation and peace in a manner consistent with democratic values and human rights and dignity, one can only conclude that the administration officials behind this short- sighted decision never bothered to do their homework--or they were guided purely by Project 2025's mindless opposition to multilateralism, regardless of the facts. As far as I am aware, they did not bother to consult anyone in Congress, including those who have regularly engaged with Director General Azoulay and her professional staff. Most Republicans and Democrats have long recognized that it is far better for the United States to be in the room, rather than remain outside and cede our influence to those who don't share our interests or values. The Chinese Government is looking for any opportunity to expand its influence in the United Nations, and UNESCO is no exception. We rejoined UNESCO in 2023 after a 5-year absence, and now, we are withdrawing again. It sends a terrible message that the United States can no longer be counted on. It is a message the Chinese will applaud.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, on February 13, President Trump said something that few expected to hear. He said: There's no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons. We're all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive. I could not agree more with what President Trump said. It is why I want to speak today about the soon-to-expire New START treaty and the very real possibility of a new nuclear arms race, something that neither the President, the Vice President, nor any other senior official has even mentioned, but it is looming. It is important to step back a moment and understand how we got to this point. There is no better way to begin than with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the team of physicists and engineers who built the first atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, as you know, directed the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in a way that--it was widely believed then and is to this day--no one else could have done. The use of the atomic bomb against Japan marked the end of the Second World War. It also demonstrated to the world that a war between two nuclear powers would be cataclysmic for both and potentially apocalyptic for the entire world. After the war ended, Oppenheimer and many of the scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project, knowing the dangers, spent much of the remainder of their lives warning the world of the danger of a nuclear arms race, and they advocated for international controls on nuclear weapons. In 1954, unfortunately, at the height of the McCarthy era, Oppenheimer himself was targeted for his advocacy by the Atomic Energy Commission. No evidence was ever produced that Oppenheimer was a security risk or that he was anything other than a loyal American, and the Commissioners acknowledged as much. Nevertheless, the physicist who just 9 years before had been heralded as a hero for his role in ending the war in the Pacific had his security clearance revoked, and it effectively ended his brilliant scientific career. The flawed AEC decision remained in effect for 68 years until my predecessor, Senator Patrick Leahy, along with 42 of his Senate colleagues--Democrats and Republicans--petitioned then-Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to vacate the AEC's flawed decision. And they were supported by distinguished members of the U.S. scientific community, including the Director and former Directors of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. On December 16, 2022, Secretary Granholm vacated the AEC's decision, thanks to Senator Leahy's multiyear effort. Her thoughtful decision recognized that the abuse of power used to discredit Oppenheimer should not remain a historical precedent. In doing so, Secretary Granholm reaffirmed the government's responsibility to encourage unrestrained, unthreatened scientific discourse. So, Mr. President, today, unfortunately, Robert Oppenheimer's worst fear is becoming a reality. Hundreds of our nuclear warheads are literally ready to launch on missiles that can obliterate targets that are thousands of miles away in a mere 30 minutes. And we also, as the Presiding Officer knows, have hundreds of nuclear bombs in this country and others. Now Vladimir Putin is recklessly threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. That is the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb. That is what we would call it today. China is expanding its arsenal of more than 600 nuclear weapons. North Korea is expanding its arsenal of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. And it may be only a matter of time before terrorists obtain the enriched uranium to build a crude nuclear bomb. Unlike the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, many of today's thousands of nuclear weapons are many more times powerful. And that decision to start a nuclear war can be made by a single individual--the President--with no requirement that he first consult with anyone. A single use of a tactical nuclear weapon, either by accident or design, could trigger a flurry of escalating responses with far more powerful strategic weapons that would cause incalculable loss of life, widespread radiation poisoning, and destruction on a scale unlike anything seen in human history. The number of people killed immediately is estimated to be in the tens or even hundreds of millions, and many more would later die from famine. There is little doubt that a nuclear war would pose an existential threat to civilization as we know it. So I believe we must all, regardless of political affiliation, reaffirm what both Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev said 39 years ago: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Yet here in Congress, despite the warnings of organizations like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Arms Control Association, one rarely hears a word spoken among us about this existential threat. We have become far too complacent because for 80 years, as Robert Oppenheimer and others hoped after revealing to the world the immense destructive power of an atomic bomb, the inevitability of mutually assured destruction itself has deterred the use of those nuclear weapons. It is different today. With mercurial leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, we cannot rely on deterrence alone. Existing nuclear arms control treaties are either no longer adhered to by Russia or the United States or they are close to expiring, and there are no negotiations currently underway or even envisioned on a new generation of international limits on nuclear weapons. My colleague from Massachusetts Senator Markey and several others here have sought to counter this complacency, and I want to commend Senator Markey for the bill he introduced on January 20, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, of which I am an original cosponsor. And last week, I also cosponsored Senator Markey's resolution marking the 80th anniversary of the Trinity Test and urging the United States to lead the world in reversing the nuclear arms race. But the danger of a new nuclear arms race has received far too little attention from Congress and from the administration. This complacency cannot continue. The use of a single nuclear weapon, whether tactical or strategic, accidental or intentional, and the likely response would dwarf all the other crises that we are preoccupied with by many orders of magnitude, and by then focusing on it would be too late. Despite our sharp differences with the Governments of Russia and China, they have as much interest in preventing an unwinnable nuclear war as we do. We and our allies must urgently seek to reinvigorate negotiations on more effective mechanisms to prevent the development, proliferation, and use of nuclear weapons. The New START Treaty, which entered into force in 2011, limits Russia's arsenal of nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia extended the treaty in 2021, but only for a period of 5 years, and that expires in February 2026. Ideally, we and the Russians would agree to continue to abide by the limits of the New START while we negotiate yet another treaty to further reduce the number of nuclear weapons. But, unfortunately, last February, Putin announced the Russian Federation's suspension of New START, and there has been minimal discussion between our two countries about any further agreements. When New START does expire, unless a new agreement is in place, there will be absolutely no limits on the number of strategic nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia can deploy. The number of nuclear weapons could skyrocket to levels not seen since the 1980s, incidentally, at huge cost to the American taxpayer. The result would be a world far more dangerous than the one we now occupy. The United States has its share of responsibility for the collapse of nuclear arms control. During the first Trump administration, the United States withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. And during President Trump's first term, he withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, after which Iran, as we know, accelerated its uranium enrichment program. Today, some of President Trump's advisers have even proposed that we resume nuclear testing. We cannot do that. It would be an unmitigated disaster, subjecting countless Americans to cancer-causing radioactive fallout once again. We cannot repeat that mistake. We cannot repeat and cause that harm. Under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States, Russia, and China have an obligation to ``pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.'' In the past, even when relations have fallen to their lowest points, the United States and Russia had decades of cooperation on this issue. Today, with Vladimir Putin firmly in control, it is hard to see a way forward. President Trump's comments in February offer me a ray of hope. We should continue to denounce Putin's nuclear saber-rattling and Russia's suspension of its participation in New START. But the Trump administration should also do everything possible to breathe new life into talks with Russia to achieve new binding limits on Russia's arsenal. The security of both countries and our allies depends on this. If Putin refuses to replace New START, despite it being in Russia's own national interest, there are other concrete steps that we, Russia, and China could take short of negotiating an entirely new treaty that would help reduce the risk of nuclear war, one that could be caused by false alarm, by error, or by misperceptions. These include improving lines of communication to reduce that risk of miscommunication or misperception; creating joint early-warning centers to monitor missile launches; detargeting so that any accidental launch of a nuclear-armed missile lands in the ocean; removing all nuclear weapons from high-alert status; reducing incentives to respond quickly to a possible nuclear attack; reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons; and renouncing first use of nuclear weapons and restricting or eliminating a President's authority to launch a nuclear weapon without congressional approval. Mr. President, since the 1980s, thanks to negotiators in both countries, the United States and Russia curtailed an unrestrained nuclear arms race that led to the deployment of staggering numbers of increasingly destructive weapons that could not rationally be justified for deterrence or any other purpose. The START Treaty and New START were historic achievements--bipartisan achievements. I would like to think that President Trump was serious when he spoke of the need for the United States, Russia, and China to stop building more nuclear weapons. But even modest steps to reduce the chance of a catastrophic mistake or miscalculation resulting in the use of nuclear weapons should be among our highest national priorities. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to Reginald Adams Berry, a native of Washington, DC, who died unexpectedly on June 28. Mr. Berry was, by all accounts, an exceptionally kind, thoughtful, and intellectually curious person who was also the beloved husband of my friend--and the friend of many of my colleagues--Ann Berry, who served as Secretary of the Senate from March 2021 until January 2025. Ann rose from extremely humble beginnings in Alabama to her lofty position on the third floor of the Capitol Building, but I think she would agree that being married to Reginald and mother to their daughter Elizabeth was more important than any of her many professional achievements. As his obituary describes, Reginald was an accomplished architect who had a lifelong love of learning. He traveled the world, and his breadth and depth of knowledge rubbed off on all who knew him. Above all, he was devoted to his family and many friends. I was shocked and saddened to learn of Reginald's passing at the age of 68, and I extend my deepest condolences to Ann and Elizabeth. I ask unanimous consent that the obituary of Reginald Berry be printed in the Record.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, the Department of Homeland Security has an extremely important mission: to keep Americans safe. Under that mission, the Department is tasked with two critical jobs: border security and disaster response. Our current Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has failed both. In her short tenure, Secretary Noem has overstepped, underperformed, and endangered the lives of countless Americans. I believe it is time for Secretary Noem to resign or for her to be fired. Secretary Noem has undermined FEMA's work and, in so doing, endangered disaster victims. Just a few months ago, Secretary Noem said in a Cabinet meeting: We are eliminating FEMA. And she meant it. She meant it. We saw evidence of that in what happened not just in Texas but in North Carolina, New Mexico, California, Kentucky, Hawaii, and Vermont, where FEMA is absolutely crucial to helping people in communities and businesses recover from disaster. We need FEMA. It is only the resources of the Federal Government that can surge resources into affected communities. We can't lose that function and that capacity. When you need safety from a flood, when you need to start the long road to recovery, you need the support of the Federal Government. No State, no community can do this alone. I have seen from our experience in Vermont that FEMA, in fact, must be reformed. It must not be destroyed, as Secretary Noem has suggested. In my view, we cannot have a leader in charge of FEMA who is committed to its destruction. We must have one who is energetically committed to its reform. We have seen the result of Secretary Noem's indifference to FEMA as the catastrophe in Texas unfolded. As the waters rose along the Guadalupe River in Hill Country, it was the people of Hill Country, as my colleague Representative Chip Roy of Texas said, who responded heroically. They were saving lives; they were rescuing stranded children; they were comforting those who lost loved ones; and they provided material assistance and constant support. As for FEMA, it didn't answer the phone. Secretary Noem had instituted a policy to micromanage FEMA to death. Under Secretary Noem's watch, FEMA instituted a new policy that required the Secretary's signature on any expense more than $100,000, which, at the time of a major catastrophe, is a very small amount. Secretary Noem had an ``eyes wide open'' awareness that this policy would mean it would take ``a minimum of five days for front office review.'' In a disaster, you do not have 5 days. Contractors for FEMA answered the vast majority of calls--about 3,000--from flood victims on July 5. But according to news reports, after contracts with those companies were allowed to lapse, that response rate fell to 36 percent on July 6 and then only 16 percent on July 7. When people needed someone to answer the phone, FEMA left 13,793 calls unanswered. In the aftermath of disaster, people cannot wait for help. Many are homeless or living in very dangerous conditions. Search and rescue teams were waiting to be deployed. Disaster recovery centers were slow to open. Current and former FEMA employees have raised the alarm about how slow the Federal Government was to respond and support Texas. We can reform FEMA in very commonsense ways--and we must--but we cannot risk the lives of countless Americans under the mismanagement of a Secretary who has called for its elimination. There is a second reason Secretary Noem must resign. She is failing our country on immigration. We have three fundamental issues on immigration: border security, the deportation of criminals, and the status of people who are here without legal status but are working, are paying taxes, in many cases have families, and have no criminal record. I want to step back for a minute and acknowledge something that too many Democrats have been too slow to state: The United States does need a secure border, and President Trump has largely accomplished that. In December 2023, there were 249,740 illegal crossing arrests between official ports of entry. That was an alltime high. Last month, that number dwindled to 6,070 illegal border crossing arrests. I give President Trump credit for that change. The second issue is that undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes should be held accountable. They should be prosecuted, punished, and deported. There is widespread consensus on that. Yet on the third issue, those who are here without committing crimes, who in many cases were brought here as young people, we are seeing under the leadership of Secretary Noem that her response is an across- the-board embarkation on a massive and far-reaching deportation plan. There is no distinction in her policy among those who were brought here as children, who have families, who have jobs, who pay taxes, and who serve their communities. But there is a big difference between deporting known criminals and rounding up immigrants--some of whom have status to be here, in fact, are here legally--from work sites, from schools, and from churches. This mass deportation policy is not about serving America and doing what our country needs to be strong and safe. It is, instead, about Secretary Noem accumulating the highest possible head count of deportees. It is hurting those folks, their families, and their communities, of course, but it is also hurting America and, particularly, rural America. Our farmers depend on labor to milk their cows and to pick their crops. It is weakening our construction industry, where workplace raids are shutting down construction sites, including for low-income housing, which we so desperately need. It is decimating our healthcare workforce, in the hospitality industry in every State of the Union. We need a Homeland Security Secretary who will help us develop a sensible policy for folks who are here without status but have no criminal record, who work, who have families, and are taxpayers. There is no restraint. There is no nuance. There is no judgment being applied by the Department leader, the Secretary of Homeland Security, to develop a policy that makes sense, a policy that balances security and our economy, a policy that makes a distinction between law-abiding people who know no country other than the United States of America versus criminals who should not be allowed to remain in the country. And finally, I have significant concerns about Secretary Noem's fiscal mismanagement and self-aggrandizement as DHS Secretary. This fiscal issue is particularly important in light of the billions of dollars that were allocated to that Department in the recent legislation. Secretary Noem awarded as much as $200 million for an ad campaign that she started, thanking President Trump for his immigration policy and warning migrants in the United States to leave, a campaign that was reportedly awarded to a Republican campaign consultant. Secretary Noem spent $21 million to transport 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay--$55,500 per person. Do we really need to spend that much? And several of those migrants were quickly transferred out of the facility. There are also too many instances of Secretary Noem putting her personal ambition ahead of her mission responsibility. She has posed for photos and videos using detained people as props. She has joined television interviews in various uniforms--as a Border Patrol agent. She has treated ICE raids as political theater. And while in Vermont at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House--it is a library that sits directly on the Vermont-Canadian border--the Secretary jumped from one side of the line in the middle of the library and parroted terrible things about Canada; ``51st State''--and then she jumped back, ``United States''; ``51st State, United States.'' That was deeply offensive to Vermonters who have an enormous amount of affection for our Canadian neighbors, and we have suffered the consequences of dramatic downsizing of our tourism industry--totally unnecessary, totally provocative and wrong. We have an obligation to protect the safety of the families that all of us represent, and I urge every one of my colleagues to demand better for our constituents and for every American. We need a Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who puts public safety and preparedness before her personal image or political aspirations. Secretary Noem must resign. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, a June 25 article in the New York Times captured, in a single headline, the disaster that the misguided policies of this White House are inflicting on the world's most vulnerable people. It also illustrates the immense damage this White House is causing to years of hard-won goodwill for the United States around the world. The title of the article, ``Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support,'' says it all. The headline goes on to describe how, ``a new drug that gives almost complete protection against the virus was to be administered across Africa this year. Now, much of the funding for that effort is gone.'' I remember vividly, as do many of my colleagues, when President George W. Bush announced the PEPFAR program, a program that for the past 22 years has received enthusiastic bipartisan support, a program that has saved countless lives, a program that people and governments around the world have thanked the American people for. Each year in our appropriations bills we have always, without disagreement, provided the funds to sustain PEPFAR and to fulfill our pledges to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria. The Global Fund works in close collaboration with PEPFAR, as well as in countries where PEPFAR does not, because HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases do not pick and choose who they infect. No country is immune, and no person is safe. Millions of Americans travel, work, and serve overseas, and then they return home. Everyone is at risk if the virus is not contained everywhere. Now, the Trump administration is proposing drastic cuts to PEPFAR and our contribution to the Global Fund, two programs that by any measure have been wildly successful. This week the Senate will consider President Trump's request to cut $400 million from PEPFAR and another $500 million in other global health programs. If Congress goes along with that, we will share responsibility for sabotaging one of the great public health achievements of this century. President Trump is pushing these cuts at the cusp of a potential breakthrough in our fight against the HIV epidemic. There is a new preventative therapy for HIV; it is called lenacapavir, and it is a twice-yearly injection that protects against infection. This drug was supposed to be getting rolled out in eastern and southern Africa. Not many years ago, preventing HIV infection altogether would have seemed impossible. Now it is real--and it is being derailed by these reckless cuts. Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund, put it this way: If you want countries to take on the responsibility for their H.I.V. responses, in terms of both leadership and funding, it's a very different thing to take on a problem that is still growing than a problem where you have made a significant dent in the numbers of new infections. . . And lenacapavir gives that opportunity to dramatically reduce new infections. We don't even know what the full impact of these cuts will be because funding for collecting the data needed to track infection rates is on the chopping block. So I can't help but wonder why? Why is the White House walking away from these lifesaving programs that everyone agrees have been a huge success story? It would be one thing if HIV/AIDS had been eradicated. But we are a very long way from that. There are an estimated 1.3 million new HIV infections every year. We cannot let down our guard. We cannot be so shortsighted to think that we would save money by cutting funding for PEPFAR and the Global Fund. Prevention is far less expensive than treatment. If Congress does not reject these funding cuts there will almost immediately be more infections, not fewer. More Americans will get sick. Mother to child transmission will exponentially increase. Many more people will die needlessly. A drug developed by an American biopharmaceutical company that can prevent HIV/AIDS finally exists. Let's do again what President Bush did nearly a quarter century ago and show the world that the United States can be the world's leader in saving lives from a deadly disease.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, exactly 2 years ago today, Vermont was struck with devastating floods. Those floods occurred not only a year ago today, but 2 years ago today. We had back-to-back floods in 2023 and 2024, doing about a billion dollars' worth of damage. And by the end of last year, every county in Vermont, all 14 counties, were hit by flooding. That billion dollars in damages affected homes; it affected businesses; it affected farms. We had 6,000 tons of debris that was removed, 77 State bridges and 63 State roads were closed; 704 miles of rail was closed, and 159 miles of rail trail was closed. We are far from alone in Vermont in having suffered enormous damage from wild weather events. And I see my colleague from Texas, to whom all of us extend our heartfelt sorrow and condolences at the flooding in Texas and the loss of lives of those wonderful Texans and those kids. This type of wild weather event can hit any one of our States at any time of its own choosing. And all of our States have been affected at one time or another. Now, I want to talk about FEMA. Our experience in Vermont with FEMA is that it is absolutely essential and actually quite helpful in the immediate aftermath of the weather event. FEMA can preposition resources. It has the capacity to surge resources and personnel, including people with real experience, and can coordinate with the local response, which is always very intense, from State resources and also from incredible outpouring of help from volunteers. But acknowledging the importance of FEMA in the immediate aftermath of a wild weather event in any of our States cannot disregard the fact that we need to reform FEMA. We need significant reform in FEMA. In the aftermath of the floods of 2023 and 2024, I visited all of our communities that were affected, and I followed up after that to talk to our local officials, our local volunteers, our local regional planning commissions: What worked and what didn't in the long-term response? And what I heard from officials--regardless of what their political orientation was but local officials who had a real sense of urgency about getting the community back on its feet--was that FEMA was too slow; it was too bureaucratic; it was conflicting in the advice and information that it gave. And the ability to respond quickly and timely was really inhibited because of the centralization of the decision- making authority in FEMA in Washington or in one of the regional locations where FEMA has administrative structures. For Vermont that, ironically, is Puerto Rico, which is not only not close to Vermont but doesn't have anything close to the weather in Vermont. So the aftermath of repairing, getting the community back on its feet--that is where FEMA has failed us. It is because of the centralization, in my view--actually, less important than my view--in the view of the local officials who have ongoing responsibility to get the community back on its feet. They just couldn't get answers. Let me just give some examples. When there is a culvert out, there is a road out, there is a bridge down, the people whose bridge is affected, the people who are threatened if we have a culvert replaced that is too small for what now we know will be the required carrying capacity of a culvert, the best people to make that are right there in that community. They have a sense of urgency. They have a commitment to the well-being of the people they represent in that community. They have the pressure of local community people watching to see if they are making progress on that recovery. But what has happened with FEMA, where everything is centralized, is you don't get an answer. Can we replace an 18-inch culvert with a 36- inch culvert? Can we do the bridge over Hartland Road? Or can we make a change because the bridge over Route 5 is more important to get fixed and that is the priority? One of the problems that our communities had is that the program managers--those are the people assigned by FEMA to serve communities as the bridge between the local community and FEMA--they are changed constantly. So we have had in some of our small towns--and I am talking towns with a population of like 300--they have one program manager after another and over the course of a year and a half might have seven or eight program managers. When that program manager is doing good work and asking questions and they are getting answers from the town clerk, the new program manager comes in, and it is as though nothing ever happened, and they have to start all over again. So it creates an enormous amount of frustration. We have a situation with the town of Stannard where the town clerk-- this is the town of 300--the town had to make a decision about repaving a road. It is a gravel surface. In order to get repaved more than a year after the road had been repaired, with the town borrowing money it really couldn't afford for a project that clearly was ultimately going to be covered by FEMA, the town clerk was getting questions about, what is the size of the gravel stones in that roadbed 12 inches down? That makes no sense. And what happens, of course, is it creates an immense amount of frustration. A community that goes through a major weather event, in the shock of it, in the immediate aftermath, everyone rushes in to help. But if it is your farm, if it is your business, if it is your home, you have to live with the effects of a slow-moving, nonresponsive, centralized bureaucracy rather than get on with life and get an answer. Yes or no? Can you do this or not? So as a result of my discussions with the communities that have been affected in Vermont, today, I have introduced a bill that is called the Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization, AID, Act. Quite simply, what this bill does is it recognizes that if you are going to get as quick a recovery as possible, as efficient a recovery as possible, as cost-effective a recovery as possible, you actually have to delegate responsibility and authority to the local community that has to live with the consequences of the damage that has been done. There has to be a partnership. There has to be accountability. But where FEMA's role is going to be better on this is on oversight to make sure that there is the proper use of taxpayer, FEMA-authorized money. But it is not going to micromanage local folks to death in the name of oversight; it is going to empower the local folks to make those decisions that have to be made right now about getting that community back on its feet. Every single one of us is horrified when the people we represent suffer the result of a wild and catastrophic weather event. The loss of life is horrifying. The destruction to the well-being of the community is inconsolable. But we can help by making that long-term recovery process work better, and the only way it is really going to work better is by having much more authority in local hands--the decisions that they can make about the culvert, about the bridge, about the grade of gravel that goes into the repairs. So my hope is that we can come together as a Congress to fix FEMA so that its capacity to help our communities when they have been hurt so hard through no fault of their own--that they will be able to get the capacity to make decisions, act, and get their community back on its feet. Now, I do oppose this discussion that we are had hearing to some extent from President Trump and Secretary Noem about abolishing FEMA. You know, we can abolish FEMA when we can get an Executive order abolishing and banning wild weather events, but that day is not going to come. But another storm in one of our communities inevitably will come. What I want us to do, for your State and mine, is to have a FEMA that can be on hand, prepositioned, and help in the immediate aftermath and then be a partner but where we put the decision making and the capacity to act and the flexibility that is necessary for the wise recovery of our communities in the hands of our local officials. I think this will make a much better recovery process for the folks all of us represent in the great United States of America.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, exactly 2 years ago today, Vermont was struck with devastating floods. Those floods occurred not only a year ago today, but 2 years ago today. We had back-to-back floods in 2023 and 2024, doing about a billion dollars' worth of damage. And by the end of last year, every county in Vermont, all 14 counties, were hit by flooding. That billion dollars in damages affected homes; it affected businesses; it affected farms. We had 6,000 tons of debris that was removed, 77 State bridges and 63 State roads were closed; 704 miles of rail was closed, and 159 miles of rail trail was closed. We are far from alone in Vermont in having suffered enormous damage from wild weather events. And I see my colleague from Texas, to whom all of us extend our heartfelt sorrow and condolences at the flooding in Texas and the loss of lives of those wonderful Texans and those kids. This type of wild weather event can hit any one of our States at any time of its own choosing. And all of our States have been affected at one time or another. Now, I want to talk about FEMA. Our experience in Vermont with FEMA is that it is absolutely essential and actually quite helpful in the immediate aftermath of the weather event. FEMA can preposition resources. It has the capacity to surge resources and personnel, including people with real experience, and can coordinate with the local response, which is always very intense, from State resources and also from incredible outpouring of help from volunteers. But acknowledging the importance of FEMA in the immediate aftermath of a wild weather event in any of our States cannot disregard the fact that we need to reform FEMA. We need significant reform in FEMA. In the aftermath of the floods of 2023 and 2024, I visited all of our communities that were affected, and I followed up after that to talk to our local officials, our local volunteers, our local regional planning commissions: What worked and what didn't in the long-term response? And what I heard from officials--regardless of what their political orientation was but local officials who had a real sense of urgency about getting the community back on its feet--was that FEMA was too slow; it was too bureaucratic; it was conflicting in the advice and information that it gave. And the ability to respond quickly and timely was really inhibited because of the centralization of the decision- making authority in FEMA in Washington or in one of the regional locations where FEMA has administrative structures. For Vermont that, ironically, is Puerto Rico, which is not only not close to Vermont but doesn't have anything close to the weather in Vermont. So the aftermath of repairing, getting the community back on its feet--that is where FEMA has failed us. It is because of the centralization, in my view--actually, less important than my view--in the view of the local officials who have ongoing responsibility to get the community back on its feet. They just couldn't get answers. Let me just give some examples. When there is a culvert out, there is a road out, there is a bridge down, the people whose bridge is affected, the people who are threatened if we have a culvert replaced that is too small for what now we know will be the required carrying capacity of a culvert, the best people to make that are right there in that community. They have a sense of urgency. They have a commitment to the well-being of the people they represent in that community. They have the pressure of local community people watching to see if they are making progress on that recovery. But what has happened with FEMA, where everything is centralized, is you don't get an answer. Can we replace an 18-inch culvert with a 36- inch culvert? Can we do the bridge over Hartland Road? Or can we make a change because the bridge over Route 5 is more important to get fixed and that is the priority? One of the problems that our communities had is that the program managers--those are the people assigned by FEMA to serve communities as the bridge between the local community and FEMA--they are changed constantly. So we have had in some of our small towns--and I am talking towns with a population of like 300--they have one program manager after another and over the course of a year and a half might have seven or eight program managers. When that program manager is doing good work and asking questions and they are getting answers from the town clerk, the new program manager comes in, and it is as though nothing ever happened, and they have to start all over again. So it creates an enormous amount of frustration. We have a situation with the town of Stannard where the town clerk-- this is the town of 300--the town had to make a decision about repaving a road. It is a gravel surface. In order to get repaved more than a year after the road had been repaired, with the town borrowing money it really couldn't afford for a project that clearly was ultimately going to be covered by FEMA, the town clerk was getting questions about, what is the size of the gravel stones in that roadbed 12 inches down? That makes no sense. And what happens, of course, is it creates an immense amount of frustration. A community that goes through a major weather event, in the shock of it, in the immediate aftermath, everyone rushes in to help. But if it is your farm, if it is your business, if it is your home, you have to live with the effects of a slow-moving, nonresponsive, centralized bureaucracy rather than get on with life and get an answer. Yes or no? Can you do this or not? So as a result of my discussions with the communities that have been affected in Vermont, today, I have introduced a bill that is called the Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization, AID, Act. Quite simply, what this bill does is it recognizes that if you are going to get as quick a recovery as possible, as efficient a recovery as possible, as cost-effective a recovery as possible, you actually have to delegate responsibility and authority to the local community that has to live with the consequences of the damage that has been done. There has to be a partnership. There has to be accountability. But where FEMA's role is going to be better on this is on oversight to make sure that there is the proper use of taxpayer, FEMA-authorized money. But it is not going to micromanage local folks to death in the name of oversight; it is going to empower the local folks to make those decisions that have to be made right now about getting that community back on its feet. Every single one of us is horrified when the people we represent suffer the result of a wild and catastrophic weather event. The loss of life is horrifying. The destruction to the well-being of the community is inconsolable. But we can help by making that long-term recovery process work better, and the only way it is really going to work better is by having much more authority in local hands--the decisions that they can make about the culvert, about the bridge, about the grade of gravel that goes into the repairs. So my hope is that we can come together as a Congress to fix FEMA so that its capacity to help our communities when they have been hurt so hard through no fault of their own--that they will be able to get the capacity to make decisions, act, and get their community back on its feet. Now, I do oppose this discussion that we are had hearing to some extent from President Trump and Secretary Noem about abolishing FEMA. You know, we can abolish FEMA when we can get an Executive order abolishing and banning wild weather events, but that day is not going to come. But another storm in one of our communities inevitably will come. What I want us to do, for your State and mine, is to have a FEMA that can be on hand, prepositioned, and help in the immediate aftermath and then be a partner but where we put the decision making and the capacity to act and the flexibility that is necessary for the wise recovery of our communities in the hands of our local officials. I think this will make a much better recovery process for the folks all of us represent in the great United States of America.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues in supporting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I want to talk about two things: one, the people we represent and why it is so important that we maintain this service that is so essential to their well-being, and second, I want to speak about the institution we are part of and why it is an absolute betrayal of this institution's values and procedures to try to cut this program in this way and at this time. I mean, first of all, all of us have public broadcasting in our communities. One of the biggest challenges, especially in our rural communities, is all the forces that are fraying the bonds that have been so central to the quality of life in those communities. It is our community hospitals that are under such financial stress. It is the lack of manufacturing that we are trying to have come back, where there are good jobs. It is the depopulation, where we can't get folks--there are not enough folks to serve in the volunteer fire departments. These are real challenges to who I think all of us here who represent rural folks appreciate are really among the best folks we have in this Nation. You know, it is rural folks who sign up and enlist in the military at a far greater percentage than other parts of America, who pay the price of wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever it may be that the Commander in Chief and Congress send them. We have had a discussion in here that I do believe is bipartisan about the importance of strengthening rural America and how to do it. It is a topic of ongoing conversation, and it should be. But one of the institutions that have served your constituents in Ohio very well--Senator Durbin's in Illinois, Senator Wyden's in Oregon, Senator Cantwell's in Washington, and my constituents in Vermont--is public broadcasting. It is the radio and the television. One of the things that allow us to be united despite our differences is a shared understanding and knowledge of what is going on in our communities. That is what the news is about. It is not a propaganda machine. It is not advocating the point of view of the President or the point of view of the Senator from Vermont. It is giving information. At its most elemental level, it is giving dire information that is desperately needed when we have a natural disaster. We in Vermont had a flood on this day in 2024. We had a flood on this day in 2023. The institution that was so essential to response, to information that was really vitally necessary, that allowed people to share the experience and figure out what to do, was Vermont Public. It is important. It is not about politics; it is about the shared experience that people in a community need to have a sense of place to help them have confidence that they can count on one another, that they know where they live and they care about it. So the question I have for us in respect to the responsibility that you have and I have to the people we represent is, when we know that there are these extraordinary, globalizing pressures, the demographic changes that are occurring in our communities that are weakening the bonds of brotherhood, why would we compromise an institution that has served so many so well for so long? That weakens that sense of community, so why would we do that? There is not a good reason that we would do that. There is not a budgetary reason why we would do that. This is $1.60. If we wipe out everything, it is about a buck-60 for every taxpayer in the country. Seriously? A cup of coffee? What does that cost? A cable TV subscription? What does that cost? And at what price? That capacity to share information, to understand the experience, to appreciate the challenges that you face and your neighbors face--that is so essential for people to have the strength to carry on. You know, Vermont Public started just around the time I went to Vermont, and it was on the third floor of an aging building, the Windsor Constitution House. It was started by five people who knew-- they just didn't know better. They thought they could start something that would last, and they had no reason to think that other than they knew it would be beneficial to the folks in their community. Those five people who started from nothing included classical music but news right in the beginning, Vermont news. That has become a statewide news source that folks in Bennington, up to Derby Line, that folks working in the barns milking cows, that folks on the factory floor all have on as I visit them. And they might have FOX News on. They might have MSNBC on. But the news they all have on is Vermont Public. That has been so beneficial to Vermont. By the way, these news deserts that are afflicting all of us--what has helped us so much is that many of these extraordinarily gifted reporters who care about a sense of place, who have been on community newspapers, have now become the talent that has created this extraordinary institution of Vermont Public--great reporting. So in a democracy, we all know we need this, and it is not because it is going to be an agent for our point of view, but it is going to be a cohesive force in the community to help people figure out the path forward. We have to keep this. You know, in Vermont, we have pretty generous folks. The drives that we have to raise money are pretty successful, and we get about 90 percent of our funding through that. That is a lot higher than most States. But the 10 percent we will lose will cost us about $4\1/2\ million. That is real money for us. So I just ask myself the question, when I know that the things I am saying about our appreciation of people in rural communities are things that every single one of us, Republican and Democrat, knows is true, and every single one of us, Republican and Democrat, would assert that we want to strengthen those rural communities because we have direct experience with how powerful and wonderful the people in those communities are--they don't complain. They work hard. They face adversity. They somehow toggle it together when it is always tough to pay your bills at the end of the month. And then they have this one news source that helps them so much to be good neighbors to people they disagree with on many other things. Now, Vermont public television has also been tremendous. Vermont Public is both public broadcasting and public radio. They work together. And how many of our kids benefited from the extraordinary programming that helped kids share the values that are independent of what your political point of view is, values like goodness, values like tolerance, values like acceptance. That is what the program is about. It is values, shared values. You can be the most conservative person in the world; you can be the most liberal person in the world; you have no right to be disrespectful because you are ``right'' politically. This is an institution that has served us well at very little expense. It would be heartbreaking for us in Vermont to see the U.S. Senate give the back of the hand to those folks who, over 50 years ago, were inspired by a commitment to their neighbors throughout the State of Vermont and tell them that we want to take away their funding. The second point I want to make is about the institution we are part of. We passed a budget. We appropriated money for this. Fifty-three Republicans supported it, right? That was 3 months ago. What has changed? Nothing has changed. DOGE came. Trump came. They are looking for scalps. Cut funding. Get rid of USAID. But we as an institution have the power of the purse. We had a negotiation. We came to a mutual decision that spending public dollars on public broadcasting was a good thing, and that was a negotiated outcome that now is being torn up-- torn up. So what does it do for the budgetary process where we have to go through a process that is extremely difficult because there are extremely different points of view about how best to spend money and where to spend it? But an institution can't survive if, at the end of that process, the agreement made becomes the agreement that is broken. It erodes trust. It demeans our institution. It makes weak the bonds of trust that we must have amongst us to come to resolutions and defend them and carry them out. So we must not abandon the people we represent and the right they have to public broadcasting, and we cannot abandon the trust we must have in one another to keep our word. An agreement made must be an agreement kept. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I support the Kennedy amendment but not for the reasons my friend from Louisiana does. I think that there should be some flexibility and there should be some governmental policy that helps our industry. And I do agree that the President should have some power. What I do not believe is that the Congress should be powerless. And that is what we have become, ceding our article I authority to a Chief Executive. And I don't care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat. The most important branch is the article I branch because we are the closest to the people. And how is it that we have, in this bill, a billion dollars--a billion dollars--that goes to an Executive to be spent in ways we have no input as to how it will be spent? We have no accountability; we have no way to tell the people we represent how this money is being spent and why. Mr. President, I believe that the biggest threat we have to this democracy is the failure of this Congress to assert its authority and accept its responsibility to make the decisions that the Constitution says is our obligation to do, and that starts with the power of the purse. I support the man from Louisiana in his amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, when the Senate considers the reconciliation bill, H.R. 1, it is my intention to make the following motions to commit the bill: A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Agriculture with instructions to make strong investments in rural communities, including improvements to water and wastewater infrastructure, housing assistance, energy efficiency, business development, and high-speed internet access.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, never in my time in Congress have I seen a bill that does so much damage in so many ways to so many people in so many States and that will affect so many generations. The clerks have read the bill. It is now time for us to kill the bill. The point of reading the bill was to reveal that this bill has one goal, and that is to extend tax cuts to very wealthy Americans-- where the top 1 percent will get 60 percent of the benefit--and to make everyday Americans pay the price to fund those tax cuts. It is no wonder, right now, that two in three Americans oppose this bill. The question is, Will the U.S. Senate oppose this bill? Here are just a few ways that the President's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill will hurt Vermont. In Vermont, 11,500 people will lose their healthcare coverage under ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act. Twenty-one thousand Vermonters will lose Medicaid coverage and food nutrition programs that are so essential to the well-being of your citizens and mine. In Vermont, on the SNAP Program, 11 percent of our households use it, 65,000 people. A little over a third of households rely on the SNAP program, and they have kids. Nearly 3,000 veterans in Vermont rely on the SNAP program. By the way, we are talking about 6 bucks a day. Billions are going to be cut across the country. That is going to hurt Vermont, and it is going to hurt everyone. In Vermont, some homeowners, to save money on their energy bills, use the home energy efficiency upgrades that were made possible under the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are being ripped apart. Folks saved about $420 to $980 a year. That is real money for people living paycheck to paycheck. This bill scraps that. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good, we still have time to kill this bill, and we should kill this bill. We Democrats are united in opposition to this bill, but it is not only Democrats whose constituents are going to be hurt by this bill. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have an opportunity to make a choice. Read the bill and decide: Are you going to protect your constituents who are going to suffer the same afflictions as my constituents or are you going to defer to President Trump? The bad in this bill is going to inflict bipartisan pain. This is not aiming at red States or blue States. This is aimed at working-class and middle-class Americans. Just to give you an example, in West Virginia, a great State I visited, I went into a coal mine--the hardest working people ever, except maybe for Vermont dairy farmers. More than 76,000 people in West Virginia will lose access to healthcare because of this bill. And 278,000 West Virginians are going to lose access to the nutrition program, SNAP. In Tennessee, more than 295,000 people will lose access to healthcare--Medicaid--through this bill. And for SNAP, it means 758,000 Tennesseans lose their nutrition benefits. I just want to repeat here. This is the bipartisan infliction of pain. This is real. This is real. And it is because of the tax cut largely directed to the very wealthy people. Is it worth inflicting that kind of pain on so many when the tax cut benefits so few? Let's talk more about what is in this bill, because the American people need to know what we are voting on. It makes major cuts, of course, as I have said, in Medicaid. But the immediate effect of those Medicaid cuts is it really threatens the financial stability and the viability of the community hospitals that are in all of our communities. Folks are going to show up to get care. Across the country, 17 million people will lose any reimbursement for Medicaid. So they will go to our community hospitals, and they will do what they do: They will provide care, even if they don't get paid. But they can only do that for so long. So those hospitals are literally threatening to go out of business in every single State. This bill cuts Medicaid by over $930 billion. So that ripple effect is going to hurt all of our hospitals, and, absolutely, some of those are going to close. By the way, that is going to result in a higher cost shift so that those employers who are doing everything they can to provide employer-sponsored healthcare for their employees are going to see their premiums spike badly. The bill is going to rip away food assistance programs that more than 42 million Americans need. That is $6 a day, as I mentioned, and that will be gone. This, by the way, has a real impact on our farmers. They put food on our tables. One of the things that our farmers are so proud of is they feed America, and they feed the world. And they have been able to supply the food that is then distributed through the SNAP program. It is going to undercut the revenue that they get for doing really good for a lot of people across our country. The bill takes us backward in our effort to expand energy production and fight climate change. The bill actually adds a tax on wind and solar. It takes away the incentives, and it adds a tax. Ninety-five percent of the new electric generation--and we need so much more of it--in the past few years has come from clean energy. If we don't have that going into production to provide energy, along with storage technology, the cost of electricity to the people you represent and the folks I respect in Vermont is going up. There is another aspect of this bill that just makes no sense being in this bill. It makes no sense being in any bill, particularly. It is a Republican-led bill that strips States of their right to pass laws to protect their consumers against AI threats and against social media threats. It imposes a moratorium for 10 years on any States taking any action. This affects Vermont directly. It affects every single one of our States. How, I ask, can one argue they are for State rights and then strip States of being able to act on behalf of their own citizens? This bill is a real threat to our economy. It is going to increase the debt, already about $35 trillion, by at least $3.3 trillion. And for what? Tax cuts to very, very wealthy people--very wealthy people-- multinational corporations that are having record profits, at the expense of healthcare, at the expense of our community hospitals, at the expense of our investments in clean energy, at the expense of our food and nutrition programs. Invest it in what? It is destructive. It is not productive. Inflation is going up under this bill. Just think of how much more we are going to pay in debt service--dead money. It is about $1 trillion. Home mortgages, folks, are going to be paying at least $1,000 more; small business loans, at least $1,000 more. Grocery prices are definitely going up for all Americans. There is an ugly aspect in this bill, as well, and it is that this bill is entirely in service of providing tax cuts largely to the very wealthy. The top 1 percent of income earners in this country will get 60 percent of the benefit. That is a couple hundred thousand people who will get immense tax breaks that exceed the so-called tax breaks that go to a couple hundred million Americans. And it is those in the 60- percent category who are going to be paying the higher prices for utilities, credit card debt, the cost of a car loan, rent, and groceries. So I say, let's come to our senses and not do something that is a massive escalation of the wealth transferred from the working class and the middle class to the very, very wealthy. Many of us have a number of amendments--and I do, too--to try to make the point that our job is to make things better for everyday working Americans, not inflict additional burdens on them. We have a job to do, and it is to strengthen this economy and provide more stability for our families in our communities. In this bill, we are doing exactly the opposite--aggravating income inequality, not mitigating it; accelerating climate change, rather than diminishing it--making life tougher for everyday families. I urge my colleagues to defeat this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, when the Senate considers the reconciliation bill, H.R. 1, it is my intention to make the following motions to commit the bill: A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance with instructions to maintain the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit of section 25G of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as it is currently in effect, through December 31, 2028. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance to strike any changes to Medicaid provider tax provisions that impact Medicaid expansion states. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance to strike any changes to Medicaid provider tax provisions. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance to allow the use of electronic data sources, auto-renewal, and provisional advanced premium tax credits for verification of eligibility with respect to the tax credit allowed under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to allow States to determine qualifying events eligible for special enrollment in qualified health plans offered on the American Health Benefit Exchanges. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance to exempt managed care programs operated by a State government entity from any changes to State-directed payment. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance to strike provisions that negatively impact care provided at rural hospitals or to the fiscal well-being of rural hospitals. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to establish that any Federal student loan payments made during the general forbearance period count towards payment requirements of the public service loan forgiveness program under Section 455(m) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 1087e(m)). A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Agriculture with instructions to strike and SNAP administrative cost- shifts to States. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Agriculture with instructions to make strong investments in organic farmers and businesses, including improvements for the Organic Certification Cost Share Program, support for organic supply chains, improvements in organic data collection, and continued efforts to address fraudulent organic imports and to protect the integrity of the organic seal. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Agriculture with instructions to make changes that would allow volunteer work to qualify as work under work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance with instructions to revise section 48E of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make investments in retrofitting or partially upgrading a qualified facility a qualified investment.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I do not want the United States of America to be involved in yet another regime-change war in Iran. Have we not learned anything from what happened in Iraq? We deposed Saddam Hussein, and all hell broke loose. That was a war of regime change--no sense since it wasn't related to 9/11. We had a regime-change war in Afghanistan and then went on to embrace nation building. Thousands of American men and women who answered the call of the President reported for duty, lost their lives, lost their limbs, or are suffering today with PTSD. Trillions of taxpayer dollars have been spent and wasted. Yet, in the Middle East, the flashpoint now is Iran, and we came within an eyelash of getting dragged into yet another war where the goal was regime change. I want to acknowledge the professionalism of our Air Force and our men and women in the military. The strike they were ordered to perform they executed flawlessly. To them, I extend my congratulations. But the question for us is, Who authorizes the use of force? Our men and women will do what it is the Commander in Chief requires and do what it is Congress authorizes. We all have confidence in that. But this was a wake-up call for us because we came within an eyelash of being in a conflict where the goal would have been the Netanyahu goal of regime change. What we did in this action, with the President's decision to send our bombers in at the request of Netanyahu, was to essentially put in the hands of the Iranian Government the question of how far this war would go. Would they turn the other cheek, which is essentially what they did, or would they retaliate in a way, as President Trump said, that he would rain hellfire on them and have us in a war? The point here of the Kaine resolution is that if this country is going to make that decision, it must be Congress that authorizes that decision. It must be Congress that has the debate about what are the national security concerns, what are the costs, and what are the benefits. We can't simply bypass that and continue to abdicate our responsibility and congressional authority and duty, and that is why this resolution is so important. Now this question of, how did we get here? You know, a war oftentimes happens not by design; you stumble into it. That is what almost happened here. We do not want a nuclear Iran. There is nobody in this U.S. Senate who wants a nuclear Iran. Russia doesn't want a nuclear Iran. China doesn't want a nuclear Iran. Our Presidents--bipartisan-- have worked hard to make certain that Iran didn't have it. The Obama agreement was working. After President Trump was not President Trump, he challenged the agreement. When he got elected, he tore it up. But he saw at some point the wisdom of diplomacy, and he was engaged in active negotiations about a nonnuclear Iran and was making progress on those. That was objected to by Prime Minister Netanyahu. He was against the JCPOA that Obama was negotiating and actually, as a foreign leader, came to this U.S. Congress and gave a speech in conflict with the Commander in Chief of the United States wherein he lobbied in this Capitol against entering into an agreement that ultimately made us more secure. That determination on his part continues, and the biggest act of sabotage to the Trump negotiations as to a nuclear agreement was the bombing campaign that Netanyahu did that sabotaged those talks. Again, I say congratulations to our men and women in uniform who, when they were ordered by the President to do the strike on the nuclear facilities, did it and did it well, but we should not at all discount how precarious that situation was for our country. It was the result of a decision by Iran to turn the other cheek, to disregard the attacks and basically not escalate. I am so glad they did, and the President showed temperance there himself. But we can't be putting ourselves in a position where our future and whether we do get in a war is based on the actions of other people--particularly folks who run Iran. So if we are going to protect the national security, if we are going to protect the men and women of this country who will always respond to the call of the Commander in Chief--that is what makes them such wonderful patriots. They cede the authority to make the decision about whether they will be put in harm's way to the men and women who serve in the Congress of the United States and the Commander in Chief. That is a profound responsibility that each of us has to debate the question of whether we should commit this country to war. So this resolution is absolutely vital--vital--to the well-being of this country and to the humility that is required of a country before it makes the ultimate decision to ask the men and women who are citizens of our country to potentially sacrifice their lives for the well-being of this country. I urge my colleagues to support the Kaine resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, there is time to kill this bill, and I hope we do. You know, as my colleague from Hawaii just said, what is happening in this bill is the infliction of bipartisan suffering, whether it is in the State of Vermont or the State of West Virginia or the State of Tennessee. Folks who are depending on Medicaid are going to lose it. Let me just give a couple of examples. When I was in the House, my good friend David McKinley, a Republican, invited me to West Virginia, and we went to the Harrison coal mine. I was very deeply moved because the only people I know who work as hard as coal miners are dairy farmers. So we have a lot in common--hard- working folks in Vermont, hard-working folks in West Virginia. But what this bill is going to do is threaten the access to healthcare that those West Virginia folks need, just like those folks in Vermont need, just like those folks in Tennessee need. It is not about whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. It is not about whether you are from a red or blue State. It is actually about real people who work in coal mines, who work on dairy farms, who work in factories, and seniors who need the help of nursing homes. Two out of three nursing home beds are paid for by Medicaid. Parents of disabled children so depend on healthcare, especially through Medicaid. And that is true in West Virginia. It is true in Nebraska. It is true in Tennessee. It is just as it is in Vermont. Let me just give a few numbers. In Vermont, 32,000 people--32,000 people--are going to lose healthcare if this bill is passed. In West Virginia, 76,000 people will lose their healthcare coverage. In Tennessee, it is going to be 290,000 people who are going to lose their healthcare. It is not just those individuals who are going to lose healthcare. This budget reconciliation bill, the Big Beautiful Bill--the big bad betrayal--there are real consequences to this that are going to be devastating to rural America. And we have a lot in common in Vermont with so many other parts of rural America, like West Virginia and like Tennessee. Rural hospitals will close, and people will be forced to travel for their care so far that they oftentimes won't be able to get it. And the sad reality is, if you take away people's healthcare, they are going to get sick and stay sick. You take away people's healthcare, and people are--people are--going to die. You know, the American Hospital Association showed that this bill will likely close 338 hospitals in rural communities across the entire country, in your State and in mine. In Vermont, the fear is that 3 out of 14 hospitals are at risk of closure with the passage of this bill. In West Virginia, seven hospitals are at the risk of closure. In Tennessee, nine hospitals will be immediately at the risk of closure. Do you know what happens too? It is like we don't even debate this; we don't even discuss it, when this reality is about to strike a hammerblow to folks in rural America. If people lose their healthcare, it doesn't mean they don't need healthcare. It just means they can't pay for healthcare. So folks in Vermont who were depending on Medicaid are going to show up at our rural hospitals. Our hospitals are under a legal requirement to provide care. By the way, they would provide care even without a legal requirement because that is what we do in rural America: We help folks who need help. But those hospitals already on a thin margin are not going to be able to afford it. That is what threatens to have them go out of business. And then, we know the spiral. This bill, in Vermont, is going to result in over $200 million in uncompensated care in the next 10 years. In West Virginia, it is $1.4 billion. In Tennessee, it is over $3.5 billion. These rural hospitals provide critical care to people in need. We have to protect the people first. If we take away their hospitals, they have no protection. We have to protect the struggles that communities in rural America have to keep a strong community sense against the enormous pressures that they face. There is a cruelty in this bill. There is an irresponsibility in the Senate if we don't acknowledge explicitly what the impact of this bill will be on the people we represent, on the hospitals that are dependent on us, and on the future of community strength in all of our rural communities. Let's kill this bill. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, last week, President Trump sent to Congress a request to rescind $9.4 billion in fiscal year 2025 and 2024 funds that a majority of Republicans and Democrats had debated and had voted for. Those appropriations were signed into law by President Trump. I want to briefly discuss the impact these rescissions would have because of the consequences for Americans, for our relationships with other governments, and for millions of people around the world. Also, I want to speak about what this does to the appropriations power and authority and responsibility of Congress. We are seeing, from my view, an abdication of article I authority that belongs under the Constitution to Congress and delegating that to the Chief Executive. It is a violation of our separation of powers, which is a pillar of the checks and balances that is essential to the well-being of our democracy. First, talking about the rescissions: The White House--as it says about everything that we do appropriate money for--the White House claims it is waste, fraud, and abuse and also claims that it contributes to the ballooning deficit. There is a contradiction here because according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that the President is determined to pass will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit-- $2.4 trillion. And that is before we add the increased debt service that will be required to pay it. In this country, taxpayers are now on the verge of paying a trillion dollars annually in interest payments, and that is dead money. It doesn't support our military. It doesn't support our schools. It doesn't support scientific research. It is paid to bondholders, many of whom are in China. Most of the funds that the President is proposing to cancel were approved 2\1/2\ months ago for fiscal year 2025. And there has been absolutely no showing that any of these funds--not a single dollar-- cannot or should not be used for the purposes for which they were appropriated by a bipartisan majority in Congress. There has been absolutely no showing--none--of any waste, fraud, and abuse. These funds were deemed worthy of funding 2 months ago, and the President himself agreed. He signed it. This is an end run around the article I authority of Congress: We pass a budget, and then the Executive rescinds what it is we appropriated our funds for--an enormous erosion of the responsibility of Congress under article I. But let me just mention a few specific examples of the funds that are on the chopping block: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In the case of Vermont, it is called Vermont Public. It is our public radio station, and it is our public broadcasting. Every State has the Public Broadcasting System. In Vermont--and I know we are not unique--it is essential programming that knits together our community and provided information that was crucial, constantly, when we had floods in July of 2023 and July of 2024. Federal funding is about 10 percent of our budget, but in many States it is about 40, 50 percent. The administration is proposing to get rid of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting altogether. I totally and completely oppose that. It is the equivalent of $1.60 for each American annually. It provides a source of local news at a time when we have news deserts all around the country. The pressure on our local newspapers, on our local broadcasters, on our local radio stations is enormous. We need public broadcasting. I saw it in Vermont, as I mentioned, when we had the enormous benefit of the information we needed desperately to deal with the floods. My Republican colleagues in North Carolina had a similar experience. It was local public media markets and outlets that provided lifesaving emergency alert information to ensure that victims knew which roads they could travel, which food distribution centers were open. The elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting puts all of this at risk. Another program said to be eliminated is PEPFAR. PEPFAR is a flagship HIV/AIDS prevention program. It was started by President George W. Bush. It has saved millions of lives. It has created enormous goodwill for the United States around the entire world. The chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee has strongly opposed any rescission of PEPFAR funds, and I agree with Senator Collins and cannot, for the life of me, understand how anyone would support rescinding those funds that provide so much to so many for so little. Here are some other programs: Global Health--$500 million would be cut. These activities on Global Health protect child and maternal health. They combat HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases. We would be rescinding funds that fight malaria, Ebola, polio, HIV and AIDS, and other diseases that have been kept under control and out of the United States--in many cases, thanks to these programs--but could easily explode into full-blown epidemics. There is $800 million being cut for refugees, like those who are fleeing genocide in Darfur and Burma. Should we turn our back on the Afghan refugee folks who served our men and women in uniform during the course of the Afghan war? Another cut is $83 million for programs that have supported democracy through organizations like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House. These have all historically received bipartisan support and strong support. This rescission would put them out of business, even though we kept them in business by a bipartisan vote just 2\1/2\ months ago. There is a cut of $1.65 billion for the Economic Support Fund. It may not necessarily be apparent on its face, but that fund account funds our economic assistance for Jordan, which has been an incredibly important ally to kind of release pressure in the Middle East, Egypt, Indonesia, Lebanon, and other programs that combat corruption, transnational money laundering, terrorist financing, human trafficking, and wildlife trafficking. These programs also, by the way, expand and build markets for U.S. exports, creating good, high-paying jobs in the United States of America. There is a cut of $460 million for assistance for Georgia, Armenia, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other former Soviet Republics. We want them to be our friend. We are in a contest with Russia. Walking away from these on-the-edge countries, fragile countries, would send the message that Putin wants, even while he is seeking to overtake Ukraine. There is a cut of $496 million for international disaster assistance. That, by the way, provides lifesaving aid for victims of natural and manmade disasters, from earthquakes and hurricanes to armed conflicts. This is the United States doing its share as the major power in the world to help those who have been impacted by these extreme events that cause immense harm and suffering to people, through no cause of their own. Also, it would cut $202 million for some specialized Agencies, including UNICEF that has traditionally been led by an American. And the Chinese love this because where we leave, they have made it no secret that they want to replace us. These are just a few of the examples of the irreparable harm these rescissions could cause to programs and organizations that have had longstanding bipartisan support. They serve our interests, and they promote U.S. global leadership. I understand the White House is looking everywhere it can--except the defense budget--to find revenue, and they need that revenue to offset the tax breaks that will go, by and large, to the richest Americans. But these rescissions are thoughtless, and they are reckless. Leadership of the United States is not solely a function of military power. Soft power really makes a difference, and it is a function and a power that we have to use our resources to act as a full force multiplier for democratic principles for free markets and for building alliances. If these rescissions are approved, we will be asked to explain why Congress did an about-face literally in a matter of 2\1/2\ months and ceded U.S. global engagement influence to China. None of us want that; all of us will get that. The President likes to talk about his historic mandate. He did win. It was 2 million votes out of 152 million cast. It was a small margin of victory--the smallest by a Republican Presidential candidate since the 1900s. My point here is not so much the size of the mandate. Whatever the mandate, a President should embrace the responsibility that he or she has to the entire country, and that includes folks who didn't vote for him. I do not believe even those who did were voting to risk the lives and their children's lives by cutting funds to stop the spread of Ebola or measles or West Nile virus. This wasn't a mandate to shut down programs to defend democracy where it is under assault. This was not a vote to withdraw from UNICEF. This was not a vote, necessarily, to turn our back on the world's refugees, including, in particular, Afghan refugees who saved the lives of our men and women in uniform. In the talk about wasteful spending, we are with everybody. I have yet to meet a Member of the U.S. Senate who is in favor of waste, fraud, and abuse. But we have got to identify it and then attack it, not assert the deficit justification for ending a program like PEPFAR that has proven to be efficient and effective in saving lives at very little cost. The final point I think all of us have to consider is the one I made at the beginning, and that is about the article I responsibility of Congress. Alexander Hamilton warned about the excessive power that could reside in any one branch of government and that for the well-being of our democracy, we had to maintain that competition between the branches, which required them to exercise and assert the authority that was given to each branch in the Constitution. Of course, article I gives to the Congress the power to tax and the power to spend, and it is absolutely essential that we do that carefully and wisely because our constituents are the ones who are going to pay the bill through taxes we assess, and they are the ones who are going to receive the benefits through appropriations we make. To abdicate that power, which is essentially what rescission would accommodate for the Executive, is to turn over that power to the President. And it is not just a matter of being this President; it is any President. In order for us to meet our responsibilities, we have to adhere to our constitutional responsibility under article I that we are the ones who are subject to the will of the people--in the House, every 2 years; in the Senate, every 6 years--to account for how we tax and how we spend. Let's not dodge by delegating that power to the Executive. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues in talking about one of the terrible elements of this bill, and that is it is going to take away Medicaid coverage, healthcare for--this morning, it was 13.7 million people across this country, including Vermont and including Missouri. But we just got an update: It is 16 million people; 16 million people are going to lose healthcare. And this Medicaid Program that provides access to low-income folks, to kids with disabilities, and, of course, those parents who do so much to care for their child with special needs--they need that Medicaid to be able to keep body and soul together and give that child that they love the best they can possibly have. It provides healthcare for two out of three seniors who are in nursing homes. Medicaid pays for those hospital beds. So how is it that at a time when healthcare is expensive--it is getting out of reach for more and more people; it is the biggest expense many families face--that we are actually considering in the U.S. Senate a bill that would take away healthcare from 16 million people? It is hard to believe that the U.S. Senate has any degree of appreciation for the reality of the everyday lives of folks who depend on this healthcare. The legislation also takes away subsidies that have made it affordable for people to buy into the Affordable Care Act, known as ObamaCare. It is the margin that is necessary for millions of people to be able to continue to get healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act. So we literally have a piece of legislation that is going to take away this healthcare for individuals. It is going to take away healthcare from families who are getting access through the Affordable Care Act. This bill also is cutting nutrition programs. The SNAP benefits really matter for lower income families. It is how they feed their kids. And in your community and in mine, we have thousands of volunteers who put together food shelves, community food programs; they do Meals on Wheels; they volunteer to do everything they possibly can to help our kids in school with nutrition, to help with the Meals on Wheels for our seniors and then, of course, to distribute and help with the SNAP program. Millions of Americans are going to lose that. And, by the way, that SNAP benefit amounts to about 6 bucks a day, maybe a little more. Hardly a big bonanza but an incredibly important component of keeping body and soul together. It is the meals that are so essential to the well-being not just of our seniors but to our children. So all of this is being done as a way of ``paying for'' legislation that is going to lower taxes. And I don't know how it works for you in Missouri, but when I am talking to Vermonters, nobody has come up to me and said: Peter, you have got to get to work on getting me that tax cut. Nobody believes that there is a tax cut in this bill that is going to be anything at all meaningful to them in their struggles with affording paying their bills at the end of each month. Now, if you are in the uberwealthy class, you would get $250,000. That is real money, although for some of those folks who are making millions of dollars a year, it won't even be anything they notice. But why is it that we are pushing through this legislation that will provide a tax cut to folks who, by and large, don't need it, will do very little for working-class people, will have a negative impact on their ability to pay their bills, especially the ones who are going to lose access to Medicaid, especially folks who are going to lose access to food stamps or the SNAP benefits that are so essential to their well-being? And that is on top of all of those folks having to pay more because of the tariffs. So this is an assault on the budgets of working families in America. That is what it really is. It is going to shrink their take-home pay at the end of the month. That is literally what it is we are doing. And for what? To provide a tax cut that is not going to be meaningful for the vast majority of Americans who really will end up paying more through tariffs and lost access to healthcare and nutrition programs than they will ever even in the wildest stretch of the imagination get from the so-called tax cut bill, the Big Beautiful Bill. But there is another part of this that is so damaging, and especially for those of us representing rural America. Individuals need healthcare, but they can't get healthcare unless they can go to a community hospital, unless they can go to a community health center, unless they can go to a private practitioner who accepts Medicaid reimbursement. All of those people who lose access to Medicaid to pay those bills are going to continue to show up at the doctor's office. They are going to show up at the emergency room. They are going to go to our community hospitals. They are going to go to our community health centers. And those health centers and those doctors will continue to do everything that they can to provide care, even if they don't get paid. But at a certain point, they can't continue. They can't keep the doors open, they can't pay salaries to staff. They can't pay the light bill. So what this does is not only take away access to healthcare for individuals, it starts to unravel the healthcare system to deliver healthcare to people in the community. Those institutions that lose the modest revenue reimbursement that you get from Medicaid--far less than Medicare, far less than private pay--are going to lose that revenue. And those institutions, those hospitals, those practices already operating on a very thin margin are going to go out of business. And then what happens? We put all of the pressure for paying for the healthcare system on the private sector. And what we have seen over and over again is the so-called cost shift. It is a real thing. It is not a so-called cost shift; it is real. So the more money you take out of Medicaid, the more money and more burden you put on the private insurance market. And who pays that? A lot of our employers. You know, in Vermont--I am sure this is true in Missouri--our employers care about their employees, and there is a struggle every year for employers who want to provide employer-sponsored healthcare when they get the sticker shock of a 10-, 15-, or a 25-percent increase in premiums. And that always then forces the discussion about ``Do we want to give a raise?'' or ``Do we want to just maintain benefits but pay for the higher premium with what would have been your raise?'' So that is further pressure. So this bill does real harm to individuals, but it really also starts to continue and accelerate the unraveling of a financially insecure medical payment system. So why do we do this? It is hard to answer. You know, it is a theoretical benefit. The theory here is if you lower taxes, you will boost the economy. We have been hearing that since Reagan, and that is very much in dispute, especially when the lower taxes go to folks who don't need it, and the folks who are struggling to pay their bills aren't getting much relief and are getting higher costs from tariffs and getting higher costs because they are losing access to healthcare, and this is going to weaken our communities. And then of course, finally, what we are going to see is a significant increase in our debt. And the recent CBO scores, I think, put it at $2.8 trillion. And what are we getting for that? You know, sometimes a country has to borrow like we did in World War II. Sometimes you have to borrow like we did during COVID. Sometimes you have to borrow to rescue the economy like we did after the 2008 Wall Street crash. And you know why you are doing it. But when you are in better times where you don't have this market collapse, you don't have this mass pandemic, that is not the time to be adding to the debt. And what it does is it means that in the future, if we do have to borrow for an emergency, our capacity to do it is more limited. And what it is also doing right now is raising interest rates. And as interest rates go up, the cost of debt service on our budget goes up. And right now--right now--the biggest expenditure of taxpayer money is to pay interest on the debt that is escalating exponentially. So we are spending more on debt service than we do on the military. We are spending more on debt service than we do on Medicare and way more than we are on Medicaid. And by adding to the debt, it is clearly putting pressure on interest rates, raising what it is taxpayers have to pay. So there is nothing good in this bill for the working person or for their small businesses that when they need to borrow money, they are much better off if they can get a lower rate of interest or when a family has to get a car loan, they can get a lower rate of interest or a mortgage, they can get a lower rate of interest. It is the exact opposite. So we have got families who are paying more because of tariffs, losing a lot because they are losing their Medicaid eligibility and losing their access to the Affordable Care Act, and then everybody is paying more because of the high interest associated with the escalation in the debt. We should kill this bill, and I would urge all of my colleagues to take into consideration how this is going to affect the people whom each of us represents. You know, there is a bipartisan element to this bill. The bipartisan aspect of this bill is that everybody is going to share the pain of what this bill does. It is folks in red States. It is the folks in the blue States. Whether they voted for Harris or they voted for Trump, if they lose their Medicaid, that hurts; if they lose their community hospital, that hurts; if they pay higher interest rates, that hurts. Let's come to our senses and vote against this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to align myself with the comments made by the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Illinois. The Constitution is pretty straightforward on this. It is pretty basic: [N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. This $200 million plane that is going to--$400 million plane--the estimates go up and down, but it is an expensive plane--is a gift, and it is going to the personal use of the President of the United States. The Constitution says it is the job of Congress to say yes or no to a gift. It is our job. And if this Congress wants to vote to accept this $400 million plane, that is our job to do it. If this Congress is silent and doesn't demand that we enforce article I responsibility about this extraordinary gift from the Government of Qatar, that is on us. That is on us. And what we are seeing time and again is the relinquishment of authority and power under article I, and it can't be shipped out of here fast enough to the Executive down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to satisfy anyone. That is so profoundly threatening to the well-being of our democracy. The whole point of having three branches of government is the recognition that you cannot allow one person, or even one branch of government, to consolidate all power. There has to be checks and balances. It was based upon what was true then and is true now: Absolute power can corrupt absolutely. And the foundational principle that has served us well is that with the checks and balances, the ambition of one branch can compete with the ambition of the other branch. We have given away the authority that Congress has and the responsibility it has to have those checks and balances and defend democracy. And by the way, why in the world would we want some other government to be providing transportation for our Chief Executive? It is embarrassing. We don't need no stinking Qatar plane. We need our own planes. We need our own planes. This is about us having respect for the men and women who work here. It is about us having respect for our own responsibility to take care of our own national security needs. We can't outsource this to another government. We shouldn't do it, just as a matter of pride. But we also shouldn't do it because it does stink--it does stink--of corruption. And all the evidence here is that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump thought this would be a pretty cool plane to fly in. He started putting the pressure on, directly and indirectly, to get this offer of a gift, and now it is a $200 million, $400 million gift. That is what we have. And that is, by the way, without any of us having any opportunity to ask the hard questions: What is it going to cost to so- call retrofit? Can it be retrofitted? How much will taxpayers be asked to pay? Is this gift going to be something that actually costs us a lot more money? So the Appropriations Committee has no capacity to look into this, to kick the tires, to assess what this means for the taxpayers of this country. So I find it astonishing that we would even be considering and that the President of the United States would be considering having the national security transportation, Air Force One, be a gift of a foreign government. I find it astonishing that we in Congress wouldn't, on a unanimous basis, demand that the emoluments clause be enforced by the Congress voting yes or no on acceptance of this gift. The implications are pretty clear: Corruption is alive and well in the administration. The implications are pretty clear: Passivity is alive and well in the Congress of the United States, that we turn our back on exercising the profound responsibility that we have, an obligation we have to the people we represent. Mr. President, I urge the passage of this resolution, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, all of us are extremely concerned--and I mean all of us: Senator Risch and all the Republican colleagues and me and all of the Democratic colleagues--about the suffering and famine that are upon the folks in Gaza. Today, I am here to offer a resolution for consideration on which 46 Senators on our side agree. Although we have not had signatories on the Republican side, I know that my colleagues on the Republican side are very concerned about the devastating absence of food, medicine, and baby formula for 2 million Palestinians who are living in Gaza. It has been 74 days since aid trucks were allowed to transit into Gaza. That is a decision that the Israeli Government has made under Prime Minister Netanyahu. What does alarm me is that it is very clear under international law and it is very clear on prior actions that this U.S. Senate has taken that in a conflict, as a tactic of war, starving a civilian population is illegal, impermissible, and just wrong, absolutely wrong. As an indication of the suffering, this is one young child who died in her parents' arms, Janan Al-Saqafi. That was due to no food, no baby formula to feed this young person. The U.N. has released a report that indicates that if food is not brought into Gaza within the next 48 hours, 14,000 more infants will die, and they will die in the arms of their mother or father. So this question of should aid get in--obviously it should. It is not right for aid to be withheld as an instrument of war. Regrettably, that appears to have been a decision that has been made by the Israeli Government. It is not right, it is not necessary, it is not helpful, and it is extraordinarily harmful to innocent children and to innocent mothers. My hope is that this Senate would pass a resolution making very clear our concern about the well-being of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. The food those Palestinians in Gaza need is right on the other side of the border. It is there. All it needs is to be transported from where it is into Gaza and then distributed. I want to just quote a Palestinian about how dire that situation is. In the words of a Palestinian: Believe it or not-- This is, by the way, at a moment when bombs are still dropping, where people who have been relocated a dozen times are having to relocate again, where the two remaining hospitals in Khan Younis have been bombed, where there is no security whatsoever. This is what a Palestinian said that sums it up: Believe it or not, people no longer care about bombs, rockets, or even death. What consumes them now is food. How to find it. How to feed their children. It is impossible to describe how hard life has become. People walk around in a daze, dizzy from malnutrition and despair. People are confused, anxious, and exhausted. They are literally dying of hunger. At this point, they would accept anything just to survive. People are fainting in the streets. They look like skin and bones, pale and dizzy. If you saw them, you would break down and cry. Those are the words of a Palestinian in Gaza. Mr. President, we have to feed those people. The food is there. We all want those innocent people to survive and avoid famine. Let us do every single thing we can to persuade the Israeli Netanyahu Government to get that food in to people who desperately need it. At this point, I yield to my colleague Senator Van Hollen from Maryland.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you again, the Senator from Maryland. Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 224; 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.