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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to express the strongest possible support for the Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act.
improve tax policy for the American people. It cracks down, in particular, on shady tax prep services that scam low-income Americans to make a quick buck. For too long, taxpayers have been victimized by these shady tax preparers. They file returns that overclaim refunds; they pocket excessive fees from their customers; and then they leave the taxpayers struggling to repay the IRS for the erroneous tax returns the scammer filed on their behalf.
These updates will help ensure refunds get out the door on time. It will improve customer service at the IRS, and it will make it easier for taxpayers to get the help they need during filing season.
emphasize this—on both sides of the aisle. I could stand here all day describing how these provisions are going to improve service for taxpayers, but I am going to name just a few in the interest of time.
Warner that will digitize tax returns, expand online services, and make it easier for taxpayers to know when they will be getting their refunds. A provision championed by Senator Bennet protects access to the Earned Income Tax Credit. A provision authored by Senator Welch would expand access to critical low-income taxpayer clinic services for taxpayers who have a dispute with the IRS. It includes an important provision by Senator Coons which reduces unnecessary tax burdens on Americans held hostage abroad, and a bill that I worked on with Senator Hassan that helps ensure that whistleblowers will receive the recognition they deserve for blowing the whistle on wealthy tax cheats.
this. I wish to yield now to my Northwest partner, and as we say in Oregon: This bill is no small potatoes.
I yield to my friend.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, Senator Wyden, thank you. You are right, this bill is no small potatoes; it is a legacy piece of legislation that will be of massive support and strengthening to American citizens. I thank my colleague Senator Wyden from Oregon for working in a bipartisan fashion with us to draft this legislation.
with us on this, and all of them have a piece of this legislation, as Senator Wyden has indicated, and I thank them as well.
tax law. When they do, they deserve a tax system that is competent and responsive. Too often, however, taxpayers encounter a system that falls short of those baseline requirements. The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, or TAS Act, is a bipartisan response to this taxpayer frustration. It reflects what the Finance Committee has collectively learned through years of casework and oversight and proposals from both sides of the aisle.
ensure taxpayers' rights are protected. For example, a taxpayer who files a return should be able to go online and know where he or she stands with the IRS. A taxpayer who calls the Agency should reach a representative promptly. A taxpayer who submits a document electronically should not lose legal rights because the Agency processes it late.
These are basic expectations of tax administration. The TAS Act modernizes the IRS so that it can better meet these and other similar expectations. It expands electronic processing of returns and correspondence so filers receive their refunds faster. It also improves online accounts and callback technology and requires the IRS to provide clearer information about backlogs, wait times, refunds, and suspended returns. It also improves online accounts and callback technology and requires the IRS to provide clearer information about backlogs, wait times, refunds, and suspended returns.
But modernization alone is not enough. A modernized bureaucracy can still be burdensome.
the IRS Independent Office of Appeals and the Taxpayer Advocate Service. It modernizes U.S. Tax Court procedures. It improves review in innocent spouse cases and other disputes. It unlocks funding for low- income taxpayer clinics. And it increases accountability for unauthorized disclosures of taxpayer information.
improvements in the TAS Act, which the Finance Committee approved by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 26 to 1.
nonpartisan National Taxpayer Advocate and many leading tax practitioners, who agree that this bill will help the IRS administer the law more predictably and more promptly.
Finance Committee for their partnership in shaping and advancing this legislation.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, at this time, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5349 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 5349) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of
1986 to improve services provided to taxpayers by the
Internal Revenue Service by providing greater judicial
review.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Crapo- Wyden substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; that the title amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the title, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 6847), in the nature of a substitute, was agreed to.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under “Text of Amendments.”)
The bill was read the third time.
The bill (H.R. 5349), as amended, was passed.
The amendment (No. 6848) was agreed to, as follows:
Amend the title so as to read: “To improve services
provided to taxpayers by the Internal Revenue Service.”.
The title, as amended, was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Unanimous Consent Request—S. Res. 934
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, in 1972, there were just 300,000 female athletes in high school and collegiate sports. Today, there are over 3 million young women who are competing in high school and collegiate sports. This is something that every American should celebrate, and it is all thanks to what has happened with the law we commonly call title IX.
and scholarships for female athletic programs, title IX opened opportunities for women that would have been impossible in the past.
professional sports. From the Olympics to the World Cup, they are inspiring millions of young girls to pick up sports that improve their health, boost their self-confidence, and teach them leadership skills to succeed on and off the field.
last five decades, would have been impossible if men were allowed to compete in women's sports and steal opportunities from girls. This is just plain old common sense. But when it comes to protecting opportunity and fairness for young women in sports, we have seen a
pretended as if there are no biological differences between men and women. And they used the full weight of the Federal Government to force schools to allow biological males to play on female teams—endangering young girls and destroying fair play.
and trophies that belonged to their daughters. Many young women dedicated their entire lives to their sports, only to miss out on scholarships, career opportunities, and hard-earned records that they deserved.
President Donald Trump to the Oval Office with a mandate to restore common sense and protect our female athletes. And that is exactly what he has done.
affirms the Federal Government's position that there are only two sexes: male and female. This ensures government policies are grounded in biological reality, not gender ideology.
Office as he signed an Executive order that bans biological males from competing in women's sports.
that we celebrate the accomplishments of the young women who practice, train, and compete every day to achieve excellence in athletics.
establish October 10—10th month, 10th day, or XX, which is like the female chromosome—as American Girls in Sports Day.
athletes, this resolution calls on sports governing bodies across the country to protect women and girls in sports. That is it—very simple.
and it doesn't ask that we amend any law. It simply asks the Senate to say that women's sports ought to be protected.
We will see if they are going to do that again this year. If they object to celebrating our wonderful women, our girls, who are competing in sports, they are going to reveal that, once again, they have become the anti-woman party.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 934, submitted earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object.
Mr. President, I rise in opposition to Senator Blackburn's resolution.
the impact of women and girls in sports. This resolution is yet another salvo in the relentless, escalating attacks on Americans' freedom that MAGA Republicans are waging at every level of government.
administration and my Republican colleagues care more about limiting Americans' access to vaccines and healthcare, dictating school curriculum and banning books, overruling the judgment of experts when the facts do not align with their extremist agenda, and even policing what sports kids can play.
fact that healthcare costs are skyrocketing, gasoline prices are skyrocketing, diesel prices are skyrocketing, food prices are skyrocketing—everything is skyrocketing—and it is all cascading down onto the kitchen tables of families trying to pay their bills. And it is all because of this war in Iran.
And the price of fuel is going through everything in our society. The price of diesel is skyrocketing. That is what farmers use to do their farming. That is what farmers use once they finish their farming to put it in trucks and travel it across the country to put it on people's kitchen tables.
The prices are going up and up and up. We are not having a hearing on that.
billionaires in the White House who are the AI giants. And, of course, people are scared in our country. They are wondering: Is the government going to do anything to control AI and these billionaires and millionaires?
So Trump met with them, and when it was all finished, Trump said: You don't have to worry about it—he just took care of it, Trump—because all of these trillionaires and billionaires are all agreeing that they are going to voluntarily agree to a morally binding standard.
What? Are we really going to trust these people—by the way, they are all guys—these guys to really protect our people from AI?
Donald Trump is talking about something that is morally binding. We should be having hearings on this. We should be having debates on this out here. But we are not because, in a Republican-controlled Senate, they put all these people in a witness protection program. They don't appear before Congress. We don't debate the issues that are really impacting people, their families, and their kitchen table—the things that they really want to have the Senate do something about.
small group of people to distract from the President's disastrous policy agenda.
And Senator Blackburn's resolution is just the latest distraction. This effort is senseless. It is cruel. It is hateful. Politicians in Washington, they don't get to decide who belongs in society and who does not.
defend the rights of trans people. Trans people deserve the right to healthcare, to receive proper identity documents, to safe schools and workplaces, to serve their Nation, to celebrate the same unassailable rights to education and to jobs and to housing as every other American—simply put, to experience the freedom, the joy, the opportunity afforded to every other American.
Massachusetts. He is 13 years old, a three-time Little League all-star baseball catcher. Abbott is a successful and beloved student. And with the freedom and dignity to get the healthcare he needs, Abbott is thriving.
Every child deserves that freedom, that safety, that opportunity. Abbott understands this. He came into my office to demand that his rights and the rights of other children like him be protected. And I fully support him.
Here in America, we know that freedom must be fought for. It is fought for by people who say “no more” in the face of discrimination; “no more” in the face of invasive laws that seek to limit what healthcare you can get; “no more” to restrictions on whom you can love, what books you can read, what fields you can play on. Every transgender and nonbinary person deserves to live freely and without fear of discrimination.
This resolution is not about freedom; this resolution is about fear. And I will stand to object as many times as necessary to stop such fear, such hatred.
Mr. President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Tennessee.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, my colleague from Massachusetts really doesn't have to look very far to see how girls are being impacted by biological males that are playing in women's sports. Indeed, I have pulled some stats, and if you want to look at stolen gold medals, medals that have been taken from young girls and have gone to males, Massachusetts has had 70—70—70 girls—70 girls that were not able to receive the medal they actually
would have won if they were competing against girls. In Massachusetts this year, a transgender athlete competed in a girls 55-meter dash and took one of the eight spots in the final. A female athlete finished ninth and didn't advance.
So when my colleague tells us this is hypothetical, it is not. We have a list—a list—of what has happened in different States: Arizona, 101 medals; California, 803 medals. You have Ohio, 123 medals. You have Illinois, 120 medals. This is something that is happening out there; it is not hypothetical.
My resolution is very simple. The whole thing is 2\1/2\ pages top to bottom. And it shouldn't be surprising that my colleague is objecting to a simple resolution honoring girls and women in sports because, as he mentioned, he had introduced the Transgender Bill of Rights, which would call on the Federal Government to allow individuals to participate in sports on teams and in programs that best align with their gender identity. In other words, it would allow biological males on girls teams and in their private spaces, like school facilities, bathrooms—places that align with their gender identity.
This is a very simple resolution, very simple. It celebrates the impact that American women and girls have had on sports culture throughout our history. We have all cheered as we have watched women compete and succeed. This resolution celebrates that. It recognizes the importance of title IX, which seems to be controversial to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my colleagues Senator Curtis and Senator Armstrong.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ukraine
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I have the privilege—I have been in the Senate for 12 years, and I have never led a codel, but I decided one last trip that I wanted to take before I left the Senate was to get back over to Ukraine to really understand what is going on, on the ground and maybe what message we should convey to our colleagues here in the Senate and to our—to the administration and to the American people.
This is the second time I went to Ukraine. We also had a very, very productive visit with the government leaders in Poland before we traveled over to Kyiv and then to Kharkiv. We were actually the first delegation since the war began that has been able to get out to Kharkiv where the fighting is only about 10 or so miles away from the city's center.
which we spent the first 24 hours, it is an amazing sight to see a country that was illegally invaded that is being bombed on a daily basis still trying to have some semblance of normalcy—and this is in Kyiv.
there, civilian targets: gas stations, convenience stores, schools, and buildings that have all been bombed by the indiscriminate bombing of Russia, it gives you a real sense of the devastation, the heartbreak, and all that is wrong with the decision that Vladimir Putin made to invade a sovereign nation.
Ukraine. That invasion started in 2014. As a matter of fact, I remember vividly when I was campaigning in 2014 how critical I was of the Obama administration; in the face of an illegal invasion, the idea was to send them blankets, not to send them the support that they needed to repel a foreign invader.
things in the outer reaches of Ukraine that they have been doing in Crimea. They are trying to—they tell kids in Crimea in school that the leaders of Ukraine are Nazis; that they are there for the denazification of Ukraine.
is what Vladimir Putin is telling his folks to tell these kids in school; that they are subhuman; that the people of Ukraine are. You can't think of them as human beings; you think of them as life forms that they need to eliminate.
do. But I also want to go back to a trip that I took a couple of years ago, my first time into Kyiv, and the devastation and the stories that I witnessed in an area called Bucha.
people to understand what happened there in about the first month of the war shortly after they invaded that February 2022.
authorize their folks on the ground to indiscriminately kill innocent civilians.
the presence of the husband, then to have the husband murdered. This is not fake; this is well documented. As a matter of fact, I went to a memorial where I saw those victims' names on a wall. That is what we are dealing with in Ukraine. That was 4 years ago, and they are continuing that systematic terror of this population.
That is what we are dealing with here. We are not dealing with two adversaries or two countries that we have good relationships with and that we are trying to calm a dispute between the two. We are literally talking about, in my opinion—I will let my colleagues speak for themselves—a fight between good and evil, between communism and Western democracy, between freedom and totalitarianism. That is what we are confronted with in Ukraine.
that now, I would like to defer to my colleague from Utah, Senator Curtis. It was his first time in Ukraine, but some insights and takeaways from you, Senator Curtis, and then we will go to Senator Armstrong
Mr. CURTIS. Thank you, Senator Tillis, Senator Armstrong. It was a delight to travel with you. I think it is appropriate to point out how much work goes into a trip like this. To our team and our staff that put this together and to the Ukrainians that were our hosts, a big thank-you for the things we were able to see and do.
Mr. TILLIS. I am so glad you mentioned that. I agree. Thank you.
Mr. CURTIS. As you mentioned, this was a unique codel—the first, as I understand it, since the war began to actually go just a few miles away from the front.
over people's heads as they took them into these underground bunkers so they wouldn't be able to identify where they were later on for the Russians. They spared us that indignity and actually put us in vans with curtains that were 360 degrees as we drove into these facilities. We were then shown firsthand how this war is being fought and why this is a different war than most people expected and why the Ukrainians actually are having significant progress.
their targets, and have a pretty large impact. As a matter of fact, more Russians are being lost per month than they are able to replace.
border the day the war started, it would actually make more progress than Russia has made. And I think that is an important story for us to come back and tell because the American people need to know this is not the war they thought it was 4 years ago.
ago. It appeared, when this began, to be a very weak friend—a friend that was totally dependent on the United States for its support. In reality, what we found while we were there is that Ukraine is not only not weak and not dependent on the United States, they are actually now a partner with the United States in providing us things and help that will help us in the future. The benefits to the United States far exceed, in my opinion, what we have actually put into this. I think we will see that at a greater rate in the future.
Clearly, these drones have changed the way battles are fought. What Ukrainians are learning, the data they are collecting—imagine the data from
thousands and tens of thousands and millions of drone strikes. That data is all being collected, and that is just one of the small parts they have to bring forward to us.
talked a lot about is how much humanitarian aid is going to Ukraine that is nongovernmental.
see a village called Hansen Village. A constituent in Utah, a friend, started Hansen Village. Obviously, it is Mr. Hansen. The amount of effort and work he has put into this so that some of these Ukrainians can start over and have hope and have a chance is overwhelming and touching.
their stories of imprisonment and torture by Russia. One gentleman had seen his son tortured to death. The stories will break your heart. But I am so grateful not just for the U.S. support but for the humanitarian support.
as a second language than anywhere else in the United States, and certainly it touches a lot of the hearts of Utahans.
There is a lot I would like to cover, but I don't want to dominate. Perhaps we can come back in just a minute. But I would like to turn the time over to my colleague from Oklahoma, Mr. Armstrong.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Thank you, Senator Curtis, and it was truly a joy to travel with you.
This was not luxurious travel. We were getting tired of each other's odor by the time we got done with this trip. And we were pretty confined to the same van for a long period of time. But it was very impressive on us, I think, the images that we took away.
everything here, and I think the questions we have here in the United States about, man, we have our own issues, we have our own budgetary issues, and we have our own fiscal issues that we need to deal with here—and all of those are very true, and all of those are very valid questions for Americans to be asking, including myself. But when you realize what is actually going on there on the ground; you realize the spirit of these people that did nothing wrong, that were minding their own business and had their own country attacked, had a democracy that they valued, that they cherished and had that attempted to be run over the top of; and you realize what is the difference—the reason they have been able to surprise everybody on the field is the spirit that they have and the belief that people like ourselves, people that believe in democracies, are going to be there to help and support them.
passion, their belief in democracy, and what they know to be true versus what they are being told by Russians.
Ukraine—it is impossible to miss the spirit of these people and how badly they want to defend their own democracy and not be told somebody else's version of the world but their own open, free perspective of the world.
that we as the United States should be taking from this, and we have a great opportunity to do so. This war is different than any war that has been before us. This is modern warfare with AI involved in it, with very low-cost weaponry involved in it, and I think a display that we had better pay attention to of very—in the business world that I come from, we would call this continuous improvement on steroids. This is every day a feedback loop right back into their drone development systems every day about how to get better, how to improve their communication with their drones, and they have done a remarkable job.
defense and how long it takes us to develop and to acquire our acquisition systems, that is no match for a group of people that have the spirit that they do and for a continuous improvement process that is being developed. They are giving us the opportunity to experience that without having to put our lives on the line, and we better take advantage and we better be listening and learning from their experience.
allies to defend democracy in a place that desperately wants it. This isn't a matter of us not knowing what things will be like after we leave; this is an area that has a democracy, a stable democracy, and we need to be there to support it and show how much we care.
going to turn it back to Senator Tillis as well. So a lot of great observations we had.
Mr. TILLIS. Thank you, Senator Armstrong and Senator Curtis.
they were just doing a training exercise and then turned it into a special military operation, our best intelligence estimates indicated to us—not publicly but in a private setting at the time—that Russia would likely have air superiority within about 3 or 4 days and total control of the ground within a week or two.
Putin has failed. He never achieved anything resembling that. He has sent tens of thousands of Russians into a meat grinder. It is so bad now that he is talking about conscription beyond the forced conscription he has now. And get this—he is forcing young Ukrainians to kill Ukrainians because they are brainwashing these young people into thinking they are subhuman.
He is not conscripting Russians yet. He is likely going to. But what he is doing is letting people out of prison and giving them U.S. dollars—$40,000 and $60,000 bonuses—to go on the battlefield. One of them was a prisoner of war. He was a sexual predator right out of prison. His family was given $60,000 to go fight. Now he has been captured, and he is going to be used to possibly trade to get a prisoner of war back to Ukraine.
Right now, 30,000 Russians are dying every month. They are being plowed down, and they are making no ground. You heard Senator Curtis talk about a snail moving more quickly. That is mathematically true. If the snail started to get to where they are on the frontline right now, they would have beaten the Russians.
President to use to the maximum extent possible the sanctions capabilities that Congress sent to him over the past couple of weeks to put the pressure on Russia, to not be the first President who equivocates against a Russian dictator, to continue the tradition of getting an opportunity. When you can win against communism, when you can win against totalitarianism, you do everything you can to win. And guess what. It will not require a single drop of American blood on the battlefield.
All the Ukrainians want is support. All they want is intelligence. All they want is to make sure that the European nations continue to do what they are doing and the United States maybe do a little bit more, and that has as much to do with sanctions as it has to do with materiel support. I, for one, hope we can do both.
dreadful trend in the last year and a half in terms of materiel support, but I would like to hear from Senator Curtis and Senator Armstrong about what we think we need to do to help Ukrainians before they go into the winter, which is when they are most vulnerable, because I firmly believe that if they make it through this winter, Putin's days are numbered and rightly so.
Senator Curtis.
Mr. CURTIS. I will be brief because I want you to have the last word, but I came home convinced that we should continue finding ways to do four simple things: 1, help Ukraine to defend itself; 2, affirm NATO's resolve to use force against any threats or attacks on our members; 3, impose costs on Russia and those sustaining its war machine; and 4, one of the things we learned over there is that signals from the United
States matter. We need to send a signal and make it clear that, from Moscow to Beijing, invading your neighbors is not a successful strategy and we will push back.
I yield to Oklahoma.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Well, we certainly learned that on the very frontline, Ukrainians are doing a great job of actually way outperforming the Russians on the frontline. But the thing they are not capable today of defending themselves from are the ballistic missiles and the jet- powered drones that they don't—the Ukrainians don't have the capabilities of building interceptors for that.
destruction among soldiers, but meanwhile, you have, every night while we were there, air raid sirens continuously.
And so you think about the impact on the people there. So they are really sitting there somewhat defenseless with drones in the air every night and ballistic missiles.
interceptors; they need spare parts and ammunition that assist in the defense of their lands and their citizens, and they need them consistently.
European Investment in Ukraine's Defense Act. That is S. 5175. This legislation would make it easier for NATO allies and other designated partners to purchase and transfer certain defensive munitions to Ukraine while maintaining congressional notification safeguards against unauthorized retransfer.
So this cannot be an American effort alone. Our European allies have an enormous stake, and they understand that and they should continue to carry more of the burden. But S. 5175 is actually designed to help them do that, and it welcomes greater allied investment in the American defense base and creates a more predictable pathway for our allies and partners to provide Ukraine with specified American-made munitions.
are stepping up. I would say that is one thing that has come very positive out of that—they understand that—but we need to be taking the actions if we expect them to be aligned with us on the weaponry. And the weaponry they use, we need to make sure we are adequately providing it to them so they can help support Ukraine as well.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, thanks again to my colleagues from Utah and Oklahoma.
staff—my MLA—Mike Leeman. It is his birthday today. I don't know if that is allowed, to say that. I won't sing “Happy Birthday,” though, for the Parliamentarian's sake. But Mike Leeman is one of the ones who coordinated the trip.
You did a great job, Mike.
idea of what the winter is going to look like and what the Ukrainians are up against if last year is any indication.
Between October 2525 and March of 2026, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission documented at least 423 attacks on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities; 74 strikes on combined heat and powerplants.
Vladimir Putin is trying to freeze the Ukrainians to death. This is not targeting military facilities. It is targeting homes like people in the Gallery have here, hopefully, safely. It is targeting schools. It is targeting hospitals.
not having heat. That is what happened last year. Does anybody believe that Putin is going to do anything less this year?
facilities, schools. Kids are meeting in subways now because they can't safely go to school.
round, but they have the unique threat of a harsh winter. And literally Putin's strategy of terrorism is to freeze them to death in their homes. That is what we are up against. That is what he did last year. Many people died.
this winter—is to change this trend. Our spending has dropped to almost nothing. Now, we are providing support and other forms beyond just the cash appropriations, but we need to do all of the above, ladies and gentlemen.
the President to move forward with, with the proper resourcing—and they are not asking for a lot. This speech alone gives the Ukrainian people hope. They are a pro-American country, and the Ukrainian people need to know that the Americans are behind them, that Congress is behind them. And we need this administration to take a few steps to make it very clear that they are behind them too.
available. I know it is complicated, but we have got to move quickly. And it also continues with the proper imposition of sanctions capabilities enabled in the bill that we passed in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham.
do everything I can to use every lever we can to convince the administration that we have got to make it a priority. We have to move quickly.
The Ukrainian people are patient and still silently pro-American. I didn't go anywhere without having people in bombed-out facilities thanking America for what we have done there.
we do, Putin's days are numbered. That is good for democracy, and that is great for the Western World.
an opportunity to get success in Ukraine, move to Moldova, and try to Russify all of the free countries that the United States and the European nations liberated. That is the end goal, folks.
America steps up, Europe continues to do its job, and we stop them in their tracks.
time. But if you would like to make a few closing comments, I want to thank you.
I see at least one of the staff up in the audience. It was a trek. We were on planes, trains, and automobiles, but I can't think of a more rewarding trip. I had the pleasure of traveling with you all and your staff, and I thank you.
Senator Curtis, do you want to wind up, then Senator Armstrong?
Mr. CURTIS. Mr. President, my closing remarks are just simply this: When you make trips like this, you find out firsthand who your friends are and who they are not. And I will clearly say that Ukrainians are allies and friends, and Putin is not.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ARMSTRONG. Mr. President, I would just add—and Senator Tillis mentioned this—the Ukrainians are worn out. They have been fighting this war. Those on the frontline have been fighting this war for a long time, and you realize how much it means to them that we are there.
I don't know how many times I told somebody: Listen, if you drove through a neighborhood where I am from some, you will see plenty of blue and yellow flags supporting you. So don't misunderstand that America wants to see you be successful, and we are working hard to make sure that we help you and we provide the resources for you.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, we appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion amongst my colleagues. Again, I thank you all for joining us and the staff that have put it together and support us, and I hope everybody will say a prayer for Ukraine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here to talk about the Kids Online Safety Act and receive unanimous consent for its passage, but I cannot begin this conversation without remarking on the colloquy that we just heard because I so strongly welcome the powerful statements made by Senator Tillis.
favor of action by the United States to help prepare Ukraine for the long, hard, cruel, potentially devastating winter ahead.
convinced than ever that the United States must stand behind Ukraine, not just with words on the floor of the Senate and not just with the Russia sanctions bill—as profoundly and important as it is—but the kind of materiel, self-defense, and other military aid and economic support that will help Ukraine weather the cruel, hard winter ahead.
when I sat face-to-face with him at the National Prayer Breakfast: the Russia sanctions bill, air defense, and Starlink. They are all potentially within the control of the United States of America.
fight. Our national security interests are at stake. In North Carolina and Oklahoma and Utah—all across the country—our sons and daughters will be in harm's way if we allow Ukraine to fall to Putin's slaughterous, murderous aggression.
when we come back and we do the NDAA, we can make use of this consensus to take that next step.
was. And I thank my colleagues for joining in that effort in the memory of Senator Graham and the response to the pleas from Ukrainians for our throttling flow of revenue to Putin's war machine. To bring him to the table and to seek peace, that is the goal—peace in Ukraine, security for the people of Ukraine who are so bravely fighting now.
United States standing up and standing strong for the people of Ukraine, and I welcome this colloquy.
make it a bipartisan colloquy because support for Ukraine should be and has been bipartisan.
Unanimous Consent Request—S. 1748
Mr. President, I want to share my appreciation—speaking of bipartisanship—for my partner in drafting and advocating the Kids Online Safety Act, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Unfortunately, she had to make a flight and so is not with us physically. I think she is here in spirit.
tirelessly on this bill through public hearings—the kinds of advocacy that it has taken to get us this far with whistleblowers, documents showing that Meta and others knew that their products were harming children.
colleagues, with advocates, with tech companies. And because of those negotiations, and all the work that was done, we were able to pass this legislation through the Senate by a 91-to-3 vote. We have hundreds of endorsements from across the tech industry itself.
parents and young people who came forward and spoke to colleagues, gained the consensus that we needed to go forward. This bill is a tribute to parents and kids who have been the most effective advocates.
censorship or privacy are simply a red herring. This bill is about product design, not blocking content. It is about making product design safe, not about censoring.
misleading and false. None of it exists in this legislation. The Kids Online Safety Act simply imposes the same standards of accountability that every other industry faces. It requires tech companies to be responsible for their own products. It requires transparency. It gives kids and parents the tools to protect themselves.
tech industry's power, its money, its sway, its lobbyists and lawyers— armies of them. And there is a human cost to delay. The human cost is lives.
parents who have lost their children—some of them who lost children after the Kids Online Safety Act was introduced. If the Kids Online Safety Act had been law, maybe their kids would be alive today.
Holding back this legislation has cost lives.
our legislation. Those excuses and lobbying have cost several lives. And, frankly, if delayed today—if it occurs—that is potential damage as well. More children will suffer because the tech industry seems to have a powerful veto over the U.S. Congress.
home, especially parents who have lost children. There are moms and dads who are anxious that social media is doing harm to their children, and young people themselves who know that they are losing control over their lives because of the addictive content, purposefully made addictive and driven to them by algorithms beyond their control and beyond their knowledge—secret algorithms.
We will overcome Big Tech's obstruction. We will overcome Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. We will overcome the Big Tech obstruction that has so far prevented KOSA from becoming law.
Our coalition has grown, and it is growing. We have more cosponsors and more support than last session. We will not go away. We will not surrender. We will not give up. That is a promise.
pass this bill. We will pass it again through the Senate. It was approved unanimously by the Commerce Committee. And we will send KOSA to the President's desk after it is passed.
But we need your help. We need your help to contact, literally, Members of Congress over the next 30 days to ask them—as they ask you for your vote: Where do you stand on the Kids Online Safety Act? Will you vote for it?
supported us, all the parents and children, all of the advocates, and hope that we can actually pass it by unanimous consent today. And if not then, as soon as we return.
XXII, unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration of S. 1748 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Reserving right to object, if good intentions created laws—or created good laws—there would be no need for congressional debate.
protect children, but the bill they have written promises to be a Pandora's box of unintended consequences.
to mitigate certain harms associated with mental health, such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
content, imposing a duty of care will inevitably lead to one outcome: the stifling of First Amendment protected speech.
KOSA's effective censorship mandate, I want to discuss one group in particular.
Once again a piece of Federal legislation with broad powers
and vague definitions threatens pro-life speech . . . those
targeted by a weaponized federal government will almost
always include pro-life Americans defending mothers and their
children—born and preborn.
Students for Life Action concluded its statement by stating:
Already the pro-life generation faces discrimination,
deplatforming, and short- and long-term bans on social media
on the whims of others. Students for Life Action calls for a
No vote on KOSA to prevent viewpoint discrimination from
becoming Federal policy at the FTC.
encouraging adoption and discouraging abortion might cause a teen mom anxiety, then KOSA is the kind of censorship all those who believe in the sanctity of life should oppose.
KOSA should not pass the Senate. But it certainly should not pass the Senate today, the 50th anniversary of the Hyde amendment, which bans Federal taxpayer funds from being used for abortion.
times KOSA's authors try to disguise its censorship, the reality remains that this legislation will silence constitutionally protected speech.
Government mandates and censorship will not protect children online. The internet may pose new problems. But there is an age-old solution to this issue. Free minds and parental guidance are the best means to protect our children online.
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I want to respond very briefly because everything that has just been said in objection to this bill is totally irrelevant.
this bill somehow imposes censorship or content evaluation. In fact, it is not a free speech issue.
The bill explicitly focuses on design features. Section 102(a) says a platform must exercise reasonable care in the “creation and implementation of any design feature” when that design feature foreseeably contributes to one of the enumerated harms.
The bill even defines “design feature” in section 101(4) as a platform feature or component that encourages or increases “the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform”— “the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the . . . platform.”
design feature that is involved when a manufacturer makes a defective toaster or a car that goes off the road, or some other harm-causing feature that could be foreseeably corrected.
require a platform to prevent a minor from “deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content.”
In short, the duty of care has nothing to do with censorship. It says nothing about allowing government enforcement based on the viewpoint of users expressed through speech. And it preserves the First Amendment and everything that is involved in it.
mental health crisis. And one in four children ages 9 to 17 reports sexually explicit interaction with someone they believe was an adult online. And 59 percent of U.S. teens report having experienced cyber bullying.
This problem will not go away in the next 30 days. It will only become more egregious and urgent. And so I regret that Senator Paul is objecting today, but I am hoping that we will act quickly when we return.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Unanimous Consent Request—S. 5658
Mr. WYDEN. Just last week, it was reported that the Trump administration intends to develop public land in several States, including Oregon, to build new data centers.
opportunity—every opportunity—to chip away at what belongs to the American people, all in an effort to boost profits for corporations and secure bigger campaign support for themselves.
taxpayers. The people get to decide what to do with their public lands, not the big corporations and especially not Donald Trump.
massive demands on local utility grids and scarce water supply. In Western States like mine, this is especially troubling as we are facing very serious drought conditions.
grabs before they do more damage. This is an opportunity to reject the effective privatization of America's beloved public lands and protect them for future generations of hunters and anglers and hikers and campers.
precedent, a precedent that our public lands are a fire-sale inventory for development by the highest bidder.
lands and putting a stop to Trump's taxpayer rip-offs to support my bill.
So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5658, submitted earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Reserving the right to object, local communities have a right to determine whether a data center makes sense for them; some want them, some don't.
so abundant, you can't drive 5 miles without running into it. Washington should preserve local flexibility rather than declare an entire category of land off-limits.
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I will just be very brief.
are already being developed in my home State and across the West right now. This is an immediate threat to public lands that we have the opportunity and a requirement to address today in order to protect them.
Kentucky is talking about—while Trump runs roughshod over America's public lands.
balanced approach to protection with respect to these issues, which we are not getting today because of my colleague's objection.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Unanimous Consent Requests
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, the Federal Government has become a gold mine for fraudsters. Just last week, we saw that one health insurance marketplace had over 700,000 fraudsters and over $2 billion in fraud. In the 6 months since President Trump tapped Vice President Vance to lead the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, Federal investigators have uncovered more than $200 billion in fraud against the American taxpayer. Think about that—hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from hard-working Americans every single year.
The fraud is egregious, and it is systemic. Consider New York City. The Vice President's task force discovered that there is more than $2 million in unemployment insurance fraud every
day—$2 million in fraud every day—in one program in one city alone. That is more than $700 million annually, all stolen from the American taxpayer. It is money that was earned through blood and sweat, through sacrifice and service. It is money that was supposed to care for the sick, to assist those with disabilities, to feed hungry kids, to help struggling families, to support our veterans. Instead, it has been stolen by lowlifes, degenerates, con artists, and organized crime.
American people was treated as a cost of doing business. Career bureaucrats shrugged, and politicians—many purposefully—looked the other way, all while fraudsters kept stealing and looting from our country.
not a Division at the Department of Justice focused on investigating and prosecuting fraud against the government. President Trump saw that. Vice President Vance saw that. Attorney General Blanche saw that. And they took action. They created the National Fraud Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice to root out this fraud and hold the fraudsters responsible.
We saw this problem here in Congress as well. I launched the Senate Anti-Fraud Task Force with my colleagues to help build durable solutions to prosecute this fraud and prevent it from happening in the future.
rampant fraud against the American taxpayer and to enshrine the National Fraud Enforcement Division as a permanent Division within the Department of Justice.
but a transnational criminal enterprise. To address this problem, we need a permanent National Fraud Enforcement Division that brings together prosecutors, investigators, Federal Agencies, and State and local law enforcement to attack fraud on the frontlines. The mission is simple but very, very important: Protect the American taxpayer and government against fraudsters. That mission should transcend red jersey-blue jersey party politics. Find the people stealing taxpayer dollars, and bring them to justice.
Today, right here, we can make that Division permanent. Regardless of party affiliation, every Member of this body should want taxpayer dollars to go where they are supposed to go, not into the pockets of fraudsters. It is that simple, truly. So often, we squabble over commissioning studies or we analyze a problem or host briefings to research root causes of an issue or hem and haw toward issuing a white paper, but today, on this Senate floor, we can permanently establish an enforcement Division that does three things: finds fraud, prosecutes fraud, and stops fraud.
The House passed this bill with overwhelming bipartisan support. Why? Because stopping the theft from the American taxpayer is just as important as deciding how to spend those dollars.
When I am back home in St. Louis, I often hear from the great people of the Show-Me State with similar complaints. They are sick and tired of watching criminals steal millions—billions—of dollars while their friends and families struggle to achieve and receive basic services. They are sick and tired of a government that can track down a single Venmo payment, but somebody can't find the organized fraud rings walking out the front door with an obscene amount of taxpayer dollars. These are not signs of serious governance, and at a certain point, indifference to fraud becomes complicity in it.
the rot goes. Fraudsters exploit virtually every government program ever created. They create fake businesses. They bill for services never provided. They manufacture beneficiaries who do not exist. They exploit vulnerable people as names on the screen while diverting money into their own pockets to fund obscene purchases and lifestyles.
These people, they are sick and twisted people. They are cold and calculated. These fraudsters are running an entire criminal enterprise into empires to steal from the American people.
genuinely need it. Government assistance should not help subsidize lavish lifestyles for criminals who have learned how to manipulate a lackadaisical legislature. We need prosecutions with real authority, with serious resources, so that our government can follow the money wherever it leads and consequences—real consequences—for those who defraud our country.
If we are a serious Senate, we must be able to say with clear eyes: If you steal from the American people, we will find you, and we will prosecute you.
You may hear shortly that this division already exists. And thanks to President Trump and Vice President Vance, that is currently true. But without this bill codifying it, fraudsters will know that their paydays will soon return because a future administration could disband the division, be distracted elsewhere. There should be no reason that the U.S. Senate should object to creating a permanent division within the Department of Justice to find and investigate and prosecute fraud.
I would also like to thank Senator Moody for her work on this. Senator Moody has been fighting fraud since day one, and she has been a great partner. We served together as attorneys general, and she had a reputation for that even then.
I want to yield the floor at this point to Senator Moody.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mrs. MOODY. Mr. President, thank you to my good friend and colleague Senator Schmitt. The grift is real, and the grift is great. I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass this vital legislation to stop the rampant fraud that we are seeing around this country.
colleague and his work as attorney general, we know how important it is to safeguard our citizens and the American taxpayer.
I know every time we uncover another case of fraudsters benefiting off our public tax dollars, it is a slap in the face to hard-working Americans.
for stepping up and taking the lead. We know that fraud being uncovered across the Nation sets up a challenge to Congress to address our laws to make sure it is not easy to accomplish; that the criminals don't have their work laid out for them; that they don't keep getting away with this. Congress should be embarrassed if we don't take action.
In addition, the administration has uncovered more than $260 billion in fraud nationwide. Americans should be hopping mad.
overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion to advance commonsense policies holding fraudsters accountable, I worked directly with the House sponsors to file the Senate companion the very next day. That is why my colleague and I are standing here on the floor today to try to get something done immediately. We have to stop the bleeding.
this noble institution that has vowed to clean up this mess and actually do something, thank you. It couldn't come at a more important time.
issue, the common sense of this issue, and the support of the American people for this issue, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle block every effort we have made to address rampant fraud in this country.
are spending the finite resources of this country responsibly. And yet every significant attempt taken by this body,
on the Republican side of the aisle to do something, it gets blocked or stalled.
with many of the provisions being bipartisan—earlier today, Senate Democrats blocked the bill.
committee, making sure we weren't outlaying money for students that didn't even exist, and that got stalled by the Democrats.
rejected, even if the idea saves taxpayer dollars for more crucial needs or would lead to refunds to the American taxpayer. It is irresponsible to not do something. We should be embarrassed.
And think about what is happening. I am talking about the Dems not allowing us to push forward legislation to fix laws that are allowing this to happen. Right now, we are just trying to put forward a permanent division to enforce existing laws, and we can't seem to get that through, even though it passed the House bipartisan.
conclusion; that certain Members or parts of this institution prioritize fraud recipients and grifting the apparatus over the fiscal health of the country or our fiscal stewardship responsibilities.
I hope I am wrong. I hope that we, as the Senate, as the legislators we are, will come together to support this cause and permanently enact and set up a Fraud Enforcement Division. There could be nothing simpler. And if we pass the National Fraud Enforcement Division Act today, we guarantee that more fraudsters and bad actors are held accountable for stealing taxpayer dollars. I say: Let's get this done.
I yield back to my colleague from Missouri.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, the American people have paid the bill for fraud for too long. Now is the time for the fraudsters to pay.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 9576, which was received from the House; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I have to start by noting that President Trump and his cronies are using the White House to commit political fraud and corruption on an epic scale. This is unprecedented levels of corruption. The rot runs deep.
dismantled the ordinary mechanisms of government that deter, investigate, and punish that kind of activity.
destroyed the mechanisms of government that investigate and police corruption. The DOJ historically had all sorts of different components that worked to investigate and prosecute fraud: the Public Integrity Section; the Consumer Protection Branch; the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team; the Tax Division; the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, known OCDETF. All have been gutted or side- lined under this corrupt administration. If there is something we should be embarrassed about, it is the destruction of those mechanisms.
inspectors general, the actual people whose job it is to root out fraud and corruption in government.
priority. What is, is weaponizing the Justice Department to use as a tool to go after President Trump's political enemies, and this new component is the perfect vehicle for more of that.
cochair of the so-called Weaponization Working Group, which is the semicovert array of Trump operatives put into government across various different organizations to go after and punish his political enemies and to propagate the lie that somehow he actually won the election against Joe Biden.
Weaponization Working Group, and completely at odds with destruction of all the organizations within the Department of Justice, the components that actually did this work and whose destruction our Republican friends had absolutely no complaint about as they were being torn apart.
Now, there is one that I will focus on: the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. When I was a U.S. attorney, I had an OCDETF group, and we worked in a very important way. OCDETF was who had brought Federal, State, and local law enforcement together to focus on organized crime, drug trafficking, and major fraud operations. It targeted major players. It had a financial crime component. Fraud was a piece of it, and the cartels and other big crime networks were its target.
President Reagan established OCDETF. What is not to like about it? It is very successful. It had a winning track record. Well, OCDETF got eliminated entirely by the Trump administration.
about fraud, that would take a proven mechanism that worked for 40 years targeting cartels, big organized criminal investigations, huge fraudsters, RICO characters, and simply restore it to the way it was. It was working perfectly well.
Mr. President, so I, therefore, ask that the distinguished Senator's consent be modified and, instead, the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 4004 and the Senate proceed its immediate consideration; and I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the modification?
The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
My bill is simple. It should be a really uncontroversial purpose codifying the National Fraud Enforcement Group. It has done remarkable work protecting American taxpayer dollars. And by the way, this wouldn't survive. This isn't just for this administration—beyond it. It would be great if a Democrat President somewhere down the road was focused on this with an existing National Fraud Enforcement Division.
But the proposed amendment deals with a completely different topic. Regardless of how you feel about the amendment, it seeks to undo the administration's new model for combating transnational organized crime, a new model that has been incredibly successful.
poured across Joe Biden's open borders. Those drugs poisoned our communities, destroyed families, and stole the lives of Americans who should still be here with us today.
the American people with violent crime, human trafficking, and dangerous drugs.
In Missouri, the consequences of that open border were all too real. There are empty chairs at kitchen tables, parents who buried their children, grandparents raising their grandkids.
these dangerous drugs. He understood that it is our obligation to protect the homefront, protect those families, and use the resources at our disposal wisely.
counteracts transnational organized crime, focusing on using Homeland Security task forces. That model incorporates FBI and DHS agents alongside
true problem, securing the border and stopping the cartels and other transnational criminal organizations. By focusing on the actual root of the problem through the Homeland Security Task Force model, we have seen investigators, prosecutors, intelligence analysts, and immigration enforcement working together to disrupt the cartels and the criminal networks threatening our country.
taking the fight to them. And there is an important downstream effect of this approach: The trafficker moving fentanyl often also traffics people, launders money, and arms violent gangs.
ground and the realities of modern transnational criminal threats, the new Homeland Security Task Force model has achieved remarkable success. Our intelligence Agencies have reported that fentanyl crossing the border fell 55 percent after President Trump took office.
percent—98 percent. And the new Homeland Security task forces have arrested thousands of criminals, including more than a thousand cartel members, hundreds of MS-13 gang members, and hundreds of Tren de Aragua members.
fentanyl pills, and they have taken thousands of illegal guns off the streets as well from hardened gang members and cartel members.
decades to try to stem the tide of transnational organized crime and criminal gangs. The Trump administration inherited the status quo with dedicated law enforcement agents but an organizational and operational model that wasn't working.
the results have been promising. This proposed amendment—an amendment to a bill that seeks to codify protection for American taxpayer dollars—would disrupt this new model approach, and it tries to codify the old approach of combating transnational organized crime. That would be a return to the approach that just wasn't working.
of reorienting enforcement through the Homeland Security Task Force model. Too often, people in DC confuse the survival of a program or an enforcement model with the success of its mission.
proved to be one of the most important steps we have ever taken against the cartels. This amendment is an attempt to revert to a prior model that wasn't working, and it is a distraction from our effort to codify the administration's important efforts to protect Americans' hard- earned taxpayer dollars against fraudsters. And for those reasons, I do object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
Is there objection to the original request?
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, there is, Mr. President. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from New Hampshire.
Economy
Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, 2 years ago, the American people elected a new Congress and a new President. The American people did so based on a promise that the President and his allies in Congress would work to bring down high costs.
people will ask their elected representatives when they return home in a few days: Did the President and his allies in Congress make good on their pledge to bring down costs for American families? The answer is clear: No.
down costs, not only is it evident that he never even bothered to try, but it is clear that on virtually every metric, it costs more to be an American than it did 2 years ago when this President was sworn in and the 119th Congress began.
promise by broken promise, to examine the ways in which the President's policies—including his tariffs and his war—have driven costs higher and higher.
prices down from $3 a gallon to less than $2. But under this President and his majorities in Congress, gas prices haven't just failed to go down, they have instead shot up to around $4.50 a gallon, meaning gas costs 50 percent more now than when Donald Trump entered office.
to win, the American people have paid an additional $93 billion on gas in less than a year, and, on average, each American family has had to spend $790 more on gas since this war began.
diesel prices. Diesel now costs around $3 more a gallon than it did when the President took office. Farmers and truckers are weathering the highest prices for diesel in American history, with costs at the pump exceeding $6.50 a gallon last week.
something; it is quite another to be responsible for the highest price of that good ever recorded in our country's history.
The President also promised to make healthcare “affordable again.” Of course, this is not at all what happened. Instead, the President gutted Medicaid to take away healthcare for millions of Americans in order to pay for tax giveaways to billionaires like himself.
families now pay more for insurance every single month, even if they don't get sick.
health insurance was $468 a month. The President did not reduce those premiums by a dime. Instead, families now pay $611 a month. That is almost $150 more monthly, almost $2,000 more per year—$2,000—dollars that could otherwise be spent on the mortgage, the rent, repairs for the car, let alone parents just using it to do something nice for their kids.
And what about the cost of groceries? The President promised repeatedly that he would bring down grocery costs. Well, let's look at the numbers.
Since the President took office, ground beef has risen to $7 a pound, and coffee has risen from about $7 a pound to more than $9.
“groceries” is an “old-fashioned word,” as he often claims, but I do know that old-fashioned math tells us that $9 is more expensive than $7.
services that we pay for every day—and add it all up. How much, if at all, did the President and his allies in Congress reduce costs?
They failed to reduce costs at all. The American people have had to pay an additional $4,200 on goods and services since the President took office. The President had nearly 2 years to try to lower costs, and instead, families had $4,200 more taken out of their pockets.
This isn't a partisan point. This isn't spin. This is just basic mathematical facts—facts that make evident that the President both completely failed to lower costs and honestly didn't even try.
working on these last 2 years? Well, the President's been clear about his priorities. He is not interested in lowering costs for families. He is interested in raising monuments to honor himself.
He hosted military parades in his honor. He destroyed the East Wing to build himself a golden ballroom. He has been trying to put his name on other monuments. He is running taxpayer-funded ad campaigns praising himself. And, according to a new report from the Joint Economic Committee Minority, while the American people are paying more to keep up with high costs,
the President wants to spend $1.8 billion on projects to flatter his own vanity.
remembering what the American people know full well: This is real money we are talking about. It is the American people's money. We owe it to them to ask: How could that same $1.8 billion help them?
What can $1.8 billion buy when it is not being diverted by an apprentice dictator, who, rightly fearing that no one will ever honor his Presidency after he is gone, rushes to build gilded tributes to himself?
Mr. President, $1.8 billion, it can buy a lot of things: It can pay for the electric bills for 12 million families for a month; it can fill up more than 35 million tanks of gas, even at the President's new high prices; it can buy 600 million school lunches, fully paid for, so our children can have a good, healthy meal at school; $1.8 billion could hire around 30,000 new firefighters to keep our communities safe; and it can pay all the medical expenses—every medical bill—for more than 88,000 American veterans for an entire year.
he owes them an explanation. So if I have one request today, it is this: I want the President to explain why a monument to honor himself is a better use of taxpayer dollars than paying for healthcare for veterans.
healthcare for a year for the heroes who fought to keep our country free? What more did America's heroes—people who have given everything to this country—what more do they need to do to deserve the $1.8 billion that the President would rather spend to honor himself? And when in America did honoring service become less important than honoring one man's ego?
colleagues, also find the President's vanity projects distasteful, but I think we are all doing a bit of play-acting if we forget that the President's determination to shower himself in honors is not simply excessive or distractions but is wrong and is distinctly un-American.
Consider our other Presidents. George Washington didn't order the construction of the Washington Monument. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson didn't pick out sculptors to build their memorials. John F. Kennedy didn't name the Kennedy Center. And none of them tried to put themselves on our currency. They received these honors from grateful citizens after their time in office. The current President is the only exception to this rule.
support the Continental Army. He didn't use his office to enrich himself, nor did he have any interest in being King.
appease his own vanity and his failure to bring down costs are linked because it is deeply telling that the President will go to such extravagant lengths to honor himself. He will break with American values and precedent when they stand in the way of his whims; he will use a wrecking ball to tear down buildings; he will spend great time and effort planning every detail; he will file court appeals while defying court orders; he will pilfer taxpayer funds and even ignore the law and the Constitution—all just in his mission to leave a gilded tribute to himself.
What does this all reveal? It reveals that the President is uninterested in listening to what the American people want.
ballroom; they want him to build homes that they can afford.
They are not asking for parades and car races on the National Mall;
they want to pay less at the pump on their way to work.
They don't want his face on our currency; they want to keep more money in their pockets.
broken promises tell us? Since the President took office, Americans have had to pay $4,200 more to keep up with rising costs while the President spends $1.8 billion to keep up with his own ego.
He seeks to honor himself, but he is unable to honor his word.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. GRAHAM). The Senator from Oregon.
Unanimous Consent Request—S. 5670
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, we have a challenge—a problem—and that is the President is exercising a line-item veto, and line-item vetoes are unconstitutional because the Constitution assigns the power of the purse to Congress, not to the President of the United States.
Laws are not suggestions. The Constitution is not optional. A President is not a King. That was the Founders' vision for our democratic Republic.
vision, at the Constitution. He and Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, proceeded to—in the dark of night—notify that they were canceling nearly a billion dollars in programs authorized and funded by law.
Well, let's be clear. Canceling resources for these programs is both illegal and unconstitutional—illegal because the funding is in law, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President himself, and unconstitutional because the Constitution creates a separation of powers, with the power of the purse belonging to Congress, not the President.
This has been tested a few times. In 1996, Congress tried to give the President a line-item veto, and the Supreme Court struck it down. It struck it down as unconstitutional because it violated the Constitution's separation of powers.
Office reaffirmed that this strategy by Trump, called a pocket rescission—a fancy name for a line-item veto—is illegal. Here is what they said. I will quote it at some length.
GAO has previously concluded that the Impoundment Control
Act does not permit the withholding of funds past their date
of expiration.
The plain language of the ICA provides that amounts
proposed for rescission must be made available for obligation
unless Congress completes action on a bill rescinding them.
The legislative history of the ICA, Supreme Court precedent,
and the overarching constitutional framework . . . compel
this conclusion.
Therefore, the rescission proposals contained in the
President's September 25, 2026, special message to Congress
do not permit the President to withhold the appropriations
beyond the end of fiscal year 2026.
And that fiscal year—we are hours away from it ending.
authorize, and fund programs. It is the Executive's job—the President and his team's job—to implement those programs. The assignment of responsibilities is designed to ensure that we have a government that serves the people.
from every part of the country, from every walk of life—debate and negotiate and legislate so that you will have programs and spending decisions that reflect the needs of every part of the Nation. We don't just deliver programs for red States when Republicans have the majority; we don't just deliver programs for blue States when Democrats have the majority—no. All of us, working together, produce spending bills to serve people throughout this country—urban and rural, north and south, east and west, plains and coast. However you want to divide up the country, we serve everyone. So a President taking those bipartisan agreements to serve everyone and canceling out individual programs is both illegal and unconstitutional.
But in an authoritarian, strongman state it is all different. The President alone decides what gets funded and can use that power to reward allies and punish opponents. In those states, there is no separation of powers; there is one authority. Call it a King. Call it a czar. Call it an emperor or a dictator or a tyrant. Whatever you call it, it doesn't fit in a democratic republic.
We do not have a tyrant or a dictator. We do not have a King. We have
the programs that we design, authorize, and fund here in Congress. That is how you get government by and for the people rather than by and for a billionaire or by and for an elite class or by and for a King himself.
in a, if you will, line-item veto through this fancy term “pocket rescission,” canceling nearly $5 billion in programs authorized and funded by law.
Impoundment Control Act, and it allows the President to propose canceling a program, but it also says that cancellation does not take effect unless Congress votes to cancel the programs, and we haven't voted to cancel these programs. So, therefore, that is why it is illegal to cancel them.
Well, it is pretty straightforward. The law says that no rescission or cancellation goes into effect without Congress authorizing the cancellation by law.
have printed in the Record, a statement from the chair of Appropriations, Senator Susan Collins.
@SenatorCollins
Without warning or consultation, Congress just received an
$810 million package of pocket rescissions from the
Administration. This is the most recent attempt by this
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to undermine Congress's
Constitutional power of the purse. This move shows that OMB
intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this
unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on
a bipartisan basis and signed into law. Not only is the delay
itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but
also it is a usurpation of Congress's appropriations powers.
OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to
decide which programs are worth funding. The independent
Government Accountability Office has concluded that pocket
rescissions are unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment
Control Act. Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without
congressional approval is a clear violation of the law. I
will work with my colleagues to address these illegal
actions. Mr. MERKLEY. She wrote very succinctly and to the point here.
She notes:
Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not
reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of
Congress's appropriations powers. OMB is an agency of the
executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs
are worth funding.
Constitution are coming together and saying: We have to fix this, and we have to put an end to this end run of canceling programs with days to go and then claiming the clock has expired.
This is essentially the situation. Imagine Cinderella and she is in her carriage. The carriage turns into a pumpkin at midnight. So in comes the President, and the President says: We are going to pause these programs—or Cinderella's travel—and so we are going to hold her hostage for a few minutes until midnight so her carriage will turn into a pumpkin.
And my colleagues across the aisle, we will all be affected by this. The programs the President tried to cancel—his process of canceling— may be programs that are favored by one side or the other, but imagine a different President with a different set of priorities.
We have to defend the institution. We have to defend the Senate and make sure that no President of any party, at any time, gets a line-item veto that corrupts us from being a democratic republic into being an authoritarian state.
same Constitution, let's come together and set this right. And we have tried to set it right before. In the Appropriations Committee, I and others offered amendments to say: Hey, make sure this is immune from being undone by a rescission within 90 days.
well, they are not going to support that; the Republican majority said they wouldn't support that. But we heard assurances that they agreed with us, with the principle, that they weren't going to let it happen, but here it is. Five days before the end of the fiscal year, it just happened, and the chair of the Appropriations Committee is crying out and crying foul that this is not acceptable under the law or the Constitution. So let's all listen to her. Let's all listen to the Constitution.
here tonight to speak to it. And I just want to pass this conversation on to the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee to emphasize how important it is that we address this and we address this tonight.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for setting out what is going on here because, as he said, on Friday night, President Trump announced that he was stealing more money from the American people.
rescission. Well, whatever you call it, it is illegal. Trump is taking the bipartisan funding that we passed, funding that Democrats and Republicans agreed on, that he signed into law, and he is now ripping out the pages he doesn't like. Forget about ideas like Congress and the law.
Look, this is theft from the American people, plain and simple. In this case, Trump is tearing away funding to help Americans buy a home. He is cutting off funds for healthcare research which would prevent things like hospital infections that are dangerous or saving taxpayers literally billions of dollars. But you know what, Trump could not care less. While he blows your tax dollars on an illegal war, Trump is illegally cutting off funding for health research, housing, and more.
out of touch with American families—saying “tariffs” is his favorite word or saying that he loves inflation or saying he wants housing costs to go up. He said that. But where are my Republican colleagues who passed these funds that Trump is now stealing? Because this did not come out of left field. No one can pretend to be surprised by what is happening now.
darn transparent about the fact that he planned to break the law, he planned to tear up our bills, and he dared us to stop him. That didn't stop every Republican Senator from voting for him. When his Deputy was nominated and told us this summer that pocket rescissions were very much still on the table, what happened? Once again, every Senate Republican voted to confirm him too.
Anyone watching could see this coming from a mile away. Trump used this scheme to unlawfully impound $5 billion last summer, for heaven's sake. That is why Democrats have fought again and again and again to prevent the President from being able to use this illegal tactic, including in recent negotiations over the CR that is now law. But Republicans have refused to work with us to prevent Trump and Russ Vought from stealing from the American people. Time after time after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents.
what is at stake. President Trump and Russ Vought are saying: Hey, we can ignore the law. We can ignore bipartisan deals and just make our own decisions as long as we do it last-minute.
Everyone knows that is ridiculous and illegal. Congress would never have created a system that gave any President the ability to decide to just ignore or bypass a law. It makes no sense. In fact, GAO has looked at what this President has done and has said it is clearly illegal twice.
My Republican colleagues know this. Some of them have even said so. But whenever they have had the chance,
they have not joined us to put an end to this. Democrats have language that Republicans could have let us put in the last CR or the CR before. We have taken vote after vote on versions of this language on the floor and in committee. And, of course, we had the vote where Republicans confirmed the unabashed architect of Trump's illegal scheme as budget director.
Well, now, tonight, they are getting one more chance. Senator Merkley and I and others have a bill to help Congress reassert its authority— our authority—and head off Trump's completely illegal pocket rescission scheme. And we should be clear. Trump isn't just illegally robbing our constituents through this pocket rescission; there are a whole lot of other funds that he is refusing to get out the door—more healthcare research funding, grants to prevent teen pregnancy, funding to protect Americans from global health threats, and even a quarter of a billion dollars to help families in rural areas get the financing they need to finally achieve their dream of owning a home. Hundreds of families in rural America will be denied the shot to buy a home as Trump lights this money on fire tonight. So it is not just the pocket rescission; it is all the rest of the money this administration is holding up or misspending. The Republicans have been pretty quiet about it.
Russ Vought has always made his message to Congress painfully clear. He thinks the votes we all take here don't count. He thinks the laws we pass are optional.
never let this happen to help us now pass a bill that makes our message to Russ Vought equally clear: Stop stealing from our constituents. Start following our laws.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise with my colleagues. I appreciate the Senator from Oregon and the UC he will seek in a few minutes about a very important bill to reclaim congressional authority over appropriations. I think both Senators Merkley and Murray have done a good job of laying out the law that appropriations are an article I power for Congress and the Impoundment Control Act requires that, once appropriated in a budget that the President signs, the dollars have to be spent.
priorities. I want to talk about priorities and what this move of the President shows about his priorities.
When the news was announced that he was going to cancel $800 million of appropriated funding in a budget that he had signed, he and some others said they are trying to shrink government or make government more efficient.
Folks, that is a joke. That is a laugh line.
stealing money from the Department of Homeland Security to run “Love Me” ads on television because he is so insecure about his low popularity.
border and turn it into “Love Me,” “Love Me,” “Love Me” ads on television?
He is not trying to shrink anything. In fact, the White House is here trying to get us to agree to a 40-percent increase in the Pentagon's budget in the middle of an illegal war so he can continue to, as he says, restart bombing after the midterms.
I am likely to restart bombing after the midterms.
Who has that thought much less says it publicly? So the President who is cutting the $800 million is seeking more money for an illegal war, is running ads about himself on television, is trying to build ballrooms and arches and put his name on buildings—this is about priorities.
proposing to cut in the $800 million? It has been alluded to by my colleagues.
The $800 million in funding includes, in the midst of a housing crisis, when all of our constituents are talking to us about housing affordability—the Trump administration wants to cut $56 million to the HUD Housing Counseling Program, which aims to expand and preserve home ownership opportunities in every ZIP Code in America.
Commonwealth and around the country to offer essential financial and support services for families looking to access the American dream of home ownership.
funds—they have helped over 1,000 families in the past 2 years achieve the American dream of owning a home, and a large factor that has contributed to their success has been these funds that President Trump wants to cut.
them repair their credit and pay down their debt and save for downpayments, which helps them afford to buy a home.
a home and ensure they are able to become successful and sustainable homeowners.
they are seeking money for ads or ballrooms or arches or names on buildings or illegal wars is directly affecting our constituents in their effort to have a piece of the American dream.
Everything my colleagues have said about the law is correct. This violates article I of the Constitution. It violates the Impoundment Control Act. It goes against the promise that the President made when he signed the budget, that he would implement it.
excited to be here to support my colleague is, to cut programs that help Americans afford homes to fund ads and ballrooms and illegal wars shows that this administration's priorities are completely out of touch with what our citizens expect of us.
their own prerogative as Members of the Senate to write a budget, at least stand up for your constituents who are crying out for housing relief and not let that money be taken away to be put into ballrooms and illegal wars.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I join my colleagues this evening to express my deep concerns. And I share your outrage, Senator Kaine, about the Trump administration's decision to recklessly take away funding for critical programs that hard-working Americans rely on to get ahead.
that he would lower costs, and instead he is putting services that millions of people count on at risk, including in my home State of New Hampshire.
Last Friday, the administration sent its request to cancel over $800 million in Federal funding. And because today marks the end of the fiscal year, there is not enough time for Congress to stop these funds from being eliminated.
rescission, and it is illegal. Let me say that again. It is illegal, plain and simple.
Hampshire about the importance of the programs that are being cut by this pocket rescission.
and Senator Kaine have said. That is vital to people in New Hampshire who are trying to afford housing.
programs. It is abundantly clear that these cuts won't bring down costs. They won't keep our neighborhoods safe, and they certainly won't make our country any stronger.
Office of Management and Budget to decide where the Federal funding goes. They can't cancel a program simply because they don't like it. That is what they are trying to do, but it is illegal because our Constitution grants Congress—not the executive branch—the power of the purse; Congress writes the checks and the administration is not supposed to just tear them up.
that this move is illegal, not to mention that several of our Republican colleagues have also acknowledged that it is illegal.
that the cost of housing is a pain point for families already struggling with high prices.
The average price of a house in New Hampshire now is over $550,000. Too many young families can't afford that, and with housing prices hitting those highs, too many people are being priced out of this critical part of achieving the American dream.
just so important. Housing Counseling helps families buy homes, avoid foreclosures, and secure affordable rents.
Since the program began in 2009, it has helped over 4.2 million households across the country avoid foreclosure. In New Hampshire, thousands of families have used Housing Counseling to lower their home purchase price, to reduce their debt, and to secure safe and stable housing.
apartment in Grafton County, which is in the northwest part of our State. Their landlord decided to sell their apartment, and Jake and Lisa needed to relocate. But because of high housing costs, they struggled to find a home that was in their price range.
certified housing counselor. In one instance, their housing counselor helped them obtain a home inspection that revealed major heating and electrical issues, and without this help, they might have closed on a home that would have cost them in the long term.
them to pay their debts while maximizing their savings. And just a few months ago in a happy ending, Jake and Lisa officially became homeowners. But without their housing counselor, who knows when, or even if, Jake and Lisa would have been able to achieve this milestone?
Sadly, they are not alone. Too many families are still looking for a safe and affordable place to call home. And Housing Counseling isn't the only program in jeopardy.
This administration has left $230 million in Federal rural housing funds unspent. Now, Russ Vought may not think that is a lot of money, but in New Hampshire, we think that is a lot of money. And we should be doing everything possible to help families put a roof over their head, especially in the most rural parts of our country where affordable housing options are too often few and far between.
they can afford, the administration has cut funds that allow students to master foreign languages and become more well-rounded scholars and to do business around the world.
I mean, the President says he wants to do business around the world. He wants the United States to be a global business hub. How can we do that if we have people who can't communicate in foreign languages? And the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships program has made it possible for students from New Hampshire to attend universities that specialize in foreign languages and international relations.
to other countries and to understand cultures around the world and to do business around the world. Eliminating 1,900 fellowships denies young Americans, including Granite State youth, from developing the skills to serve our country, to improve international relations, and to strengthen our national and economic security.
The administration has also eliminated $28 million in funding appropriated to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This includes cutting a grant program at Dartmouth College—Dartmouth College where we have the only medical school in New Hampshire.
access for rural populations living in Northern New England. The program focused on improving care for kids with complex medical needs and for better coordinating that care for cancer patients.
Now, it is not just healthcare funding that was gutted as we know. OMB also canceled funding for a program that has helped Americans build safer communities since the 1960s. The Department of Justice Community Relations Service was established in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a mission to help States and communities address and heal from incidents of discrimination.
The idea behind this program is pretty simple. If we get people talking to each other—something that might be helpful in the Senate— we can constructively deal with incidents like swastikas painted on synagogues or racial slurs that are used in schools, and we can foster understanding and help avoid outbreaks of violence.
I have seen very directly how this program can help. In 2022 at a middle school and high school in Dover, NH, which is next to the community where I live, tensions amongst students reached a boiling point after some students decided to write racially biased and anti- Semitic posts on social media.
the situation, and CRS offered a program it had developed called the School-Student Problem Identification and Resolution of Issues Together, or School-SPIRIT—an appropriate name.
key school administrators, students, and community stakeholders to identify the biases and prejudices that were driving tensions and to formulate a plan to help diffuse those tensions through communicating.
entire community. And yet, despite the many positive outcomes all over the country, Russ Vought all by himself decided that CRS needed to be shut down.
rely on have only created uncertainty and frustration at a time when people are already feeling immense financial burdens. They are feeling uncertainty and anxiety about what is happening in this country. These programs matter to people in New Hampshire.
They make a difference in their lives. But the President and his cronies and this administration couldn't seem to care less. It is part of a disturbing but all-too-common pattern from this administration— bypassing Congress, skirting legal authority, and leaving families to pay the price. And what is the administration prioritizing instead? Well, they are driving up prices. They are driving up the cost of gasoline, they are driving up the cost of groceries, they are driving up the cost of home heating oil that people in New Hampshire are going to depend on because the weather is starting to get cold, and they are doing it because of a needless and costly war in Iran.
for ads to promote himself and his administration. He is spending Federal resources to put his name on as many things as possible, to build a ballroom, to change the color of the Reflecting Pool, to build an arch that is going to obstruct the view of Arlington Cemetery. Americans don't see those as priorities. They are concerned about how they are going to pay for their groceries, how they are going to pay for their gasoline, how they are going to pay for childcare, and this administration is doing nothing—zero, nada, nothing—to help the American people.
So let me close with this. As a former Governor, I know how important it is to ensure that tax dollars are being spent efficiently and responsibly. But let me be clear. Taking a sledgehammer to programs Americans rely on every day isn't responsible governing.
again, and I look forward to working with my colleagues so that no administration, Republican or Democrat, tries to cut congressionally mandated investments again.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Ms. BALDWIN. Madam President, I rise today because for the second year in a row, the President is trying to illegally steal money from the people I work for.
appropriations bills, and the President signed them into law. Democrats negotiated those bills in good faith.
laws and the agreements we made when negotiating them don't matter, and he is saying the investments we made into the American people don't matter. That is going to make negotiating future appropriations bills significantly harder. How can one side make concessions if they know that the other side will tear them up along with the deal months later?
this rescissions package that the President considers wasteful. Now, mind you, Donald Trump is spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on prime-time commercials promoting Donald Trump. He is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a gold-encrusted ballroom and an arch—a monument to himself—over the objections of veterans and their families due to its proximity to Arlington National Cemetery. He is spending tens of billions of dollars on a war in Iran which is raising gas prices and home heating costs for American families.
Director Vought consider wasteful. No, no, no. They consider that a priority. What Trump and Russell Vought consider wasteful is $28 million for research to reduce healthcare costs and improve Americans' health. What they consider wasteful is $70 million in education funding that supports national security priorities and helps ensure we remain competitive globally.
Quality—what we often refer to as AHRQ. The Agency is “critically important, it helps us understand what we're doing well and where we have opportunities to improve.” Now, that is not me saying that about AHRQ; that is what HHS's Deputy Secretary nominee told me at a hearing just 2 weeks ago. Ten days later, the Trump administration said it was going to illegally impound funding for this “critically important” work.
treat patients in rural areas and help lung cancer survivors monitor for recurrence. AHRQ has supported work to reduce the rate of hospital- acquired infections and to make sure that kids waiting for a heart transplant can get one. It has funded work to improve healthcare for older Americans coming home from the hospital. This little but mighty Agency has saved literally billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, but President Trump has decided that this research is wasteful and that his personal vanity projects are more important.
Let me turn to the Department of Education. There, the President is illegally cutting funding that supports important national security interests. It funds training in less commonly taught languages that the U.S. Government determines are a national priority. It helps educate students that go on to serve in national security and U.S. intelligence roles.
wasteful. It is not tens of billions of dollars lit on fire for an illegal war in Iran or taxpayer-funded commercials to promote himself; no, it is funding for Americans' healthcare and education he deems wasteful.
This pocket rescission is illegal. It is also throwing away opportunities to improve Americans' health and make our country safer. These are small but important investments that we should be making.
stand up for the laws we pass and the agreements we make as part of them and stop this President and any President, Democrat or Republican, from so blatantly breaking those laws.
we didn't vote to confirm Director Russell Vought, who said this was exactly what he would do if confirmed. It is why we have tried to enact laws to prevent this nonsense idea of a pocket rescission so we don't get to this point.
that again and again. But I am not going to stop fighting to uphold the law and for these programs that benefit the people of my State and the United States of America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, we have heard tonight from the independent Government Accounting Office that what the President did in proposing and putting forward this line-item veto is illegal. We have heard in the words of the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee that this is illegal. We have heard colleagues speak tonight from different directions about why it is illegal—because the Constitution makes it so. The Constitution says the power of the purse rests with Congress.
a line-item veto. Nixon tried. He cut funds that had been passed into law, and the Supreme Court said: Nope, you can't do that. Have you read the Constitution, President Nixon? That is not just illegal; that is unconstitutional.
give the President a line-item veto and say: Hey, Mr. President, we passed these bipartisan spending bills, but strike out anything you want.
The Supreme Court responded and said: No, Congress, you actually have this responsibility. You can't assign it to the Supreme Court. You can't assign it to the President. No, the Constitution places it squarely on Congress.
power of the people from every corner of the land coming together to craft programs and to decide how to fund them that serves this Nation. To delineate or to assign that important function representing people throughout the Nation and say “None of that matters; the President can just kill any program he wants” is to believe in a King.
There is also a very practical consideration. If you craft bipartisan spending bills that serve every part of the country, but then a partisan President can strike down the ones that, well, maybe are more likely represented by Senators from the other party or House Members from the other party, well, then you have undermined the whole concept of us working together to serve the whole Nation, and therefore you make it very difficult to do bipartisan bills in the future.
So that is why so many people have come to speak to this. That is why the chair of the Appropriations Committee put out such a powerful statement on it. That is certainly why I am here tonight. And that is why we have come to the floor with a bill, S. 5670, to fix this— because the President, in exercising this line-item veto, said: I am going to do something clever. I am simply going to hold on to the funds that I am supposed to spend under the law until there is no time left in the fiscal year, in the financial year—a year that expires a couple hours from now.
unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5670, introduced earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. JOHNSON. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would like to make two points.
Office—the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office—believes that pocket rescissions are illegal. Well, the fact is that is a reversal of their previous position. Every President since President Ford believed he had—or she had—that ability to do a pocket rescission.
law that is hard to interpret. It will probably all have to be sorted out by the Supreme Court.
wouldn't fix it. It certainly wouldn't clarify it. If anything, it would probably even make it more murky. So that is one reason to object to this unanimous consent request.
a pretty small pocket rescission. Personally, I wish it was a lot larger. This storied Chamber—“Chambers” includes the House—has allowed this country to accumulate $40 trillion in debt with no end in sight.
additional deficits and added debt is $26 trillion. So I personally am glad—I don't care who the President is, out of what party. I will generally support that President reducing spending, and I would applaud it.
types of rescissions—whatever it takes—because Congress is certainly not fiscally responsible.
But, in particular, this $810 million—that is what we are talking about, $810 million. That is not even pocket change in our budget. Seventy percent of it is for funding in HHS's Refugee and Entrant Assistance Program.
secured the border. Under the Biden administration, they threw the border wide open, creating a clear and present danger to this Nation and also a clear and present danger to unaccompanied children.
children who were probably sold into involuntary servitude, sex slavery. That is what the Biden administration did with the help and abetting of the Democrat Members of Congress.
So 70 percent of the $810 million—$567 million—is simply money we don't have to spend to try and handle unaccompanied children that the Biden administration lost track of and probably got sold into horrific situations. That money doesn't have to be spent, and it shouldn't be spent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, the Constitution matters. And what does the Constitution say?
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in
Consequence of Appropriations made by law.
just wanted to shred the Constitution. He says: It doesn't matter. We want a President to cancel programs.
He said he wouldn't even care if it was a different President.
And then we saw that debt chart. Wow, well, let's understand where that debt comes from: the war in Afghanistan, from a Republican President; the war in Iraq, from a Republican President; the Bush tax cuts—1 and 2—for the billionaires and megamillionaires, from a Republican President; the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires under Trump 1 and 2. Those are the sources of that debt.
about debt—from the other side of the aisle—and would actually own that they are the problem, that they have been pissing away our national wealth on foreign wars and giveaways to the richest and most powerful Americans, running up last year a bill that added $30 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years.
nor did I hear from him that he knows that if the interest rate is 1 percent higher than the Congressional Budget Office estimated, that $30 trillion debt that he voted for last year will be $50 trillion over the next 30 years.
And do you know what else? The estimate used for that debt was 4 percent, and right now we are paying 5 percent. So we are already 1 percent higher.
would not continue to be the ones who are spending this Nation into bankruptcy. That would be nice because then we would have funds to invest in families, healthcare, and housing and education and good- paying jobs.
education and infrastructure, not to the ones that give away the national Treasury to the richest Americans and say: The hell with families across this great land.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Unanimous Consent Request—S. 1171
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, congressional stock trading is profoundly corrupt. We in this Chamber were elected to serve the public, not our portfolio.
But what do the American people see? They see Senators and Representatives who are thinking about their portfolios when they are voting on different measures, including a whole lot of tax credits and tax deductions. They are both different elements.
say renewable energy stocks—they might be thinking about: I want to promote those stocks, rather than ask the question: Is this the right move for America?
Wall Street stocks and they are thinking, “I want to give a big break to the banking community on Wall Street to inflate my personal wealth”? That is just absolutely wrong. It is a massive conflict of interest.
idea that we should end this stock trading, and that means buying, that means selling, and that means holding.
President of the United States, in his last State of the Union, said we should attack this problem.
about their portfolios—trying to make themselves richer, corrupting their votes on the issues before us—they are suffering.
thinking about the price of gas at the pump, maybe thinking about the cost of diesel and fertilizer for our farmers, maybe thinking about a war of choice—an unconstitutional war of choice—that is spending more than $1 billion a day.
expensive healthcare system that delivers the least effective healthcare for a person in the developed world, and maybe we need to improve it.
programs in other developed programs—other developed countries—are pretty good and maybe ours should be better.
around the neck of our children, when children in other countries are able to go to college debt free.
The American people see Congress—the House and Senate Members—and
the President of the United States cashing in on stock trades. The President of the United States actually invested in stocks before announcing big agreements for major companies—buying Dell stock before a major announcement, buying Nvidia stock before a major announcement.
Come on. This is massively corrupt, and we should be ending it. So let's end it.
recuse themselves from conflicts of interest, but Senators and Representatives think it is just fine to get rich on conflicts of interest and corrupt their representation of the public.
Congress and their spouses, their dependents, and the President and the Vice President and their dependents from owning, trading, or holding individual stocks. If they want to invest in America, invest in a broad-based mutual fund that has establishment in all of these industries at once, like the S&P 500 fund.
Members of Congress will have to divest their holdings or move them to mutual funds.
corruption; banning funding for Trump's gold-plated, billion-dollar boondoggle; stopping insider trading on prediction markets; implementing a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court; outlawing the taxpayer-funded “cash for cronies” slush funds, like the President arranged with his $1.8 billion fund when he sued himself to award himself $1.8 billion of money; banning Members of Congress to have a longer period before they serve as lobbyists; and more.
But Congress can lead by example. Right now, let's pass the ETHICS Act.
have to get rid of. It preserves the conflicts of interest. That is pretty damn weak tea—keeping the corruption and legitimizing it—and, meanwhile, throwing in an extra measure on the bill that proceeds to engage in the effort to rig the November election.
corruption. But the ETHICS Act, it is that serious effort. Let's pass it. Let's ban Members of Congress from trading stocks. Let's make it clear to every American that we are here to serve the people, not our portfolios
rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the bill at the desk, the ETHICS Act; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, reserving the right to object—I would like to reserve the right to object on this.
of stocks by Members of Congress. I am pretty confident of why this came up today, because earlier today, we had a vote in this body to ban Members of Congress from owning stock—or, I am sorry, buying and selling stock on it. But it also included what the vast majority of Americans also want and that is voter ID.
It is pretty simple and straightforward. It is a very short bill. It just mandated voter ID, and it also banned Members of Congress from buying and selling stock: short bill, straightforward, easy to read, uncomplicated language.
states already have voter ID; exactly what we voted on. There is only 14 States that don't, which means 72 Senators in this body already serve in a State that has voter ID. This is not a complicated, highly politicized, red versus blue issue. This is Americans that just say: Hey, we show ID to do everything. Why don't we show an ID to vote?
completely confused by Americans, that we don't show ID to be able to vote, when most countries around the world do. It is not diminishing people's right to vote. This is acknowledging the reality of where 36 States already are—red and blue—that we show voter ID. It shouldn't be an issue.
response that Democrats voting against the bill earlier today, it is different. This is not just a “can't buy and sell stocks”—which I, by the way, totally agree with. That is why I wholeheartedly voted for the bill earlier today.
discussed here on the floor that I think we should actually put out onto the floor. This bill itself also includes requirements for the Ethics Committee—which I happen to chair—which is a bipartisan, equally represented group here in the Senate that has to evaluate all this. So I am pretty attentive to bills that actually deal with this to know: How are we going to implement this?
and all those, that the Ethics Committee has to come and evaluate every single one of those from every Member to determine if there is going to be a conflict of interest from them owning a family farm.
So let me give you an example. If you own a family farm, you can't be on the Agriculture Committee because that becomes a conflict of interest. So the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. Senate suddenly becomes a group of people that don't know anything about ag because this bill would force them to divest from their family farm or it becomes a conflict of interest in the Senate.
farmers. I would like to have some farmers on the Ag Committee and some people that know something about this.
just an LLC—which it is typical for most family businesses to be incorporated as an LLC—this puts an additional requirement on them on any kind of securities ownership, which is pretty common in an LLC that anyone who serves in this body that has a family business, multigenerational business, may have to divest from that to be able to come into the U.S. Senate.
business. That puts out a lot of Americans that suddenly wouldn't be eligible to serve in the U.S. Senate.
This bill also prohibits what is called a qualified blind trust. It is one of the most misunderstood aspects of this. A QBT—a qualified blind trust—any Senator that is here that has a stock portfolio that is larger has the ability to be able to take all of those assets, put it into a qualified blind trust, and they are prohibited by law from talking to that person that is actually doing all the investments. They can't know what is in it; they can't get updates on it; they can't have any interaction. And it is called a qualified blind trust because we actually have to qualify that.
a qualified blind trust and the person that is there to actually get all communications. So we literally monitor that to be able to make sure there is no interaction on that. Well, this bill would actually prohibit this.
This bill would also prohibit digital assets. Well, I understand that for investment in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and everything else, but there is also a digital asset called stablecoins, and this body actually passed that. Stablecoins aren't an investment piece; stablecoins are just a dollar in digital form. That is all that it is.
digital dollar because it would be now considered a new investment asset, when it is not an investment asset at all.
I wish this bill would have gone through committee. There is a lot we could have discussed in committee to be able to work this through. But this
actually talk through it because there is even a section in this bill where it talks about one section where the Secretary of the Senate does the reporting, or another aspect where the Ethics Committee is doing the reporting. Some of those little pieces could be worked out in committee. That is not controversial at all; it could be worked out.
kind of oversight to try to figure out how to be able to perfect some of these areas.
buying and selling stocks. It is much larger. It gets into family farms. It gets into small businesses. It gets into stablecoin. It gets into all those different aspects on this.
it is a short couple-of-pages bill to be able to make it very clear what it is and what it is not. It was not this 31-page very complicated bill that is actually being brought to the floor today.
So my challenge to all of my colleagues are: We should not be trading stocks. And if you have got stocks, those need to either be divested or put into some blind trust so that Americans have full trust that Members of this body are not looking at their portfolio all the time; they are actually looking at the people that live in their State and what they can do best to be able to serve them. That is where my colleague and I adamantly agree.
able to figure out how we can get this right because I think it is an incredibly important issue, but this needs more work back in the kitchen.
So with that, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I wish my colleague had actually got a bunch of things right, but he got a bunch of things wrong.
hold stocks. It actually allows you to hold those individual stocks. It allows the corruption to continue. And yet, he is saying: Oh, I voted for this great bill because it bans holding of stocks. But he is wrong.
There is a reason this was done. It was to allow a vote in the House, a vote in the House that pretended to address the issue, rather than addressing the issue.
committee. It has been worked on in committee. Many of these elements and nuances—great. Fine. Let's continue that conversation. But don't come to this floor and misrepresent the bill that you voted on earlier tonight as having banned the holding of stocks because it allows it.
And second, blind trusts. They are called bogus blind trusts. As one Member of this body said to me: I meet every quarter with the guy who runs my blind trust.
You want another example? Who runs a blind trust for the President of the United States? His family runs it. His son is involved in running his blind trust.
And then voter ID. Can't we be honest about the voter ID strategy? It was written to disenfranchise—fancy word for block citizens from voting that Republicans don't want to vote.
The President put forward an Executive order that said: You have to submit your voter roll to the President's team, they will decide who votes, and send the list back to you.
Act—the SAVE Act. What did the SAVE Act say? The same thing. The President gets to decide who votes. That didn't pass here. And it didn't even have a majority support here, let alone supermajority support.
So, the President did another Executive order. And under this order, the President would strike down—his team would strike down people that look suspect to them.
What are we talking about? We are talking about 64 million American women whose last names do not match their birth certificate. Your name doesn't match your birth certificate, you can't vote. And the President could strike this down right before the election, making it impossible for people to proceed to get reauthorized to vote. And they couldn't even get reauthorized to vote, reregistered to vote, using their birth certificate. Wow.
provision that said any ID that doesn't have an expiration date is excluded. Well, you know, you are not a Tribal member year by year or month by month, my friends. You are a Tribal member for life. They don't have expiration dates. They knew that, and they put it in to stop Native Americans from voting.
Why? Why do you want to stop women from voting? Because they vote more on the blue side of the aisle.
People have called this Jim Crow 2.0. What are they talking about? After the Civil War, we had a national consensus, we were going to protect people's right to vote. And in the South, you had a lot of States that had a majority of Black citizens.
To this very Chamber, 2 U.S. Senators were elected from Mississippi; 14 Members of the House were elected from the South that were Black Americans. And then reconstruction ended in a horrific deal that was struck and the result was almost a century of blocking Black Americans from voting. And that is what the President wants to do.
So I say to my good colleagues: How about you actually come forward with a version of ID that isn't designed for partisan advantage? That would honor the vision of the Constitution. That was what was in the Freedom to Vote Act.
And the President wants to attack vote-by-mail. And why is that? Vote-by-mail is the highest integrity system in the land, bar none. Why is that? Because on election day, it is easy to manipulate the election.
Here is what you do: You change the location of the precinct voting from the previous year so people go to the wrong place; you proceed to put out false information about the location; you put out the wrong date for voting; you put out text messages—and this has been done— saying “sorry you missed the election last week, hope you will vote next year” when the election is actually coming up the next Tuesday; you put in machines that don't work; you put in staff members that don't work; you perceive to create 8-hour lines like they created in the urban areas of Georgia—recent history.
That manipulation can't be done in vote-by-mail. That is why the President hates vote-by-mail, because it stops the rigging of American elections on election day.
And it has this very powerful form of voter ID called a signature. The same thing we use to verify checks and so many other transactions in life. Same signature we use on our marriage certificates. Same signature we use on financial transactions. And if the signature doesn't match, it gets challenged, and a voter has a chance to cure it.
today was designed to rig the November election—my colleagues know that—and it allowed the corruption in stockholding to continue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I appreciate the conversation from my colleague.
on this. I got it from a “secret source,” the 31 pages of the text of his bill. There was no outside group. I appreciate the conspiracy theory that some secret group must have manipulated it somehow and given me the information. I just read the text.
There are issues with the text. Again, we are back to—we can't have farmers on the Ag Committee and small business owners who may have to get rid of their family businesses to be able to run in the Senate. That is a problem.
is someone who has said to my colleague that they talk to their qualified blind trust person every quarter, I would encourage my colleague to submit that to the Ethics Committee because that is a violation of current statute, if that is actually occurring, and it is already a violation. So, if my colleague knows of someone who is interacting with their broker and they have a qualified blind trust and they are interacting, as he claims, every month or every quarter, please let us know because that is something the bipartisan Ethics Committee would address immediately because that is already against Federal law to be able to do that.
My simple statement for today is: Listen, there is a right way to be able to do this. Let's do it. Let's go through the process. Let's actually figure out how to be able to get this done and get it done right, but this is not it. The way this bill is written has so many problems within the bill that I have to come down as the chairman of Ethics to say I would have to be the one charged to actually enforce this, and there will be major problems with this.
the issues about problems with voter ID. Apparently, my colleague believes that, if you have voter ID, you are Jim Crow 2.0; you are a racist State. Well, I am confident the folks in Rhode Island would be shocked to hear that.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President.
Mr. LANKFORD. I do not relent the floor. I do not relent the floor. I do not have to yield. I do not yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma has the floor.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I do not relent the floor.
accusation that comes at Republicans that all we want to do is be able to block people from voting. Rhode Island has voter ID. Delaware has voter ID. Connecticut has voter ID. Wisconsin has voter ID. Colorado has voter ID. New Hampshire has voter ID. Michigan has voter ID. I could go on and on and on. This is not a red State or a blue State issue. These are States that have said: If we are going to make sure we have secure elections, we are going to have voter ID.
7.5 percent of my State are Tribal members. We also have voter ID in my State. And do you know what? We welcome Tribal members to vote like every other Oklahoman.
married women still vote in my State. This sudden accusation that married women will not be able to figure out how to do voter ID and get an ID I find offensive as a dad of two very smart daughters and one brilliant wife.
The issue today is not all this. Obviously, we voted on that earlier today. The issue is about this particular bill. This particular bill has problems that are solvable if we will actually get to committee and be able to work through the process, but as it is currently written, there are problems in the bill.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.