[Pages S443-S445]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am honored to be with my colleagues on 
the floor to talk about the actions that have become very manifest in 
Virginia today because of the President's Executive orders, 
particularly the recent order pausing Federal funding--grant funding, 
program funding.
  I want to thank my colleagues for being here on the floor to talk 
about this and share just in the last 24 hours what Virginians are 
saying and what Virginians are asking and what Virginians are worried 
about. Then I want to make one point about my Federal workforce and an 
offer the President made to them at the end of the day and then finally 
raise a question of what President Trump is afraid of.
  President Trump has two Republican Houses. If he wants to do 
something to shrink the size of government, if he wants to do something 
to reduce spending here or there, we have a March 14

[[Page S444]]

budget deadline, and he has two Republican Houses, and there is a way 
to do this--unless you are afraid that your Republican majorities don't 
want to go as far as you do in cutting Medicaid and cutting Medicare 
and endangering Social Security and hurting kids and hurting veterans 
and hurting families.
  Let me talk about the orders of the day and then the Federal 
workforce and finish with this question: What is President Trump afraid 
of?
  I started to hear from Virginians about this Federal funding pause 
yesterday. I was at an event in Fredericksburg to kick off tax season. 
The local United Way and chamber of commerce were initiating something 
they have done for 21 years in a row--volunteer tax assistance for low- 
and middle-income folks. It is a classic community program. A lot of 
volunteers help everyday folks figure out how to file their taxes and 
make sure they can get benefits they are entitled to.
  As I was at this kickoff, people came up to me and said: Hey, I am a 
veteran. I am trying to get an appointment at a VA hospital or clinic, 
but the VA portal is closed to me. What is going on?

  What is going on? This was the leading edge of this chaos.
  Someone else came to me at this kind of good-news event about 
volunteer tax assistance and said: The Federal Government has paid to 
build a VA clinic in Fredericksburg--state-of-the-art, right on 
Interstate 95, visible to all, scheduled to open in February. We are 
still being told that the grand opening is going to happen, but now 
those working there are saying they are under a hiring freeze. We spent 
tens of millions of dollars to build this facility that looks great, 
but we are under a hiring freeze. Can we even hire people to serve the 
veterans in this region?
  This was how it started.
  From then to today, let me tell you other calls of anguish we have 
received in our office. Two childcare centers, one in the Williamsburg 
area and one in Appalachia, far, far away in southwest Virginia: We 
think our funding is being cut off. We think we may not have enough to 
pay staff. We also think parents who are receiving some childcare 
funding--that may get cut off. So neither they can afford childcare, 
nor can we afford to maintain the employment of these hard-working 
childcare workers in childcare centers.
  Universities reached out to me today: We are doing cutting-edge 
medical research. We have contracts that are ongoing right now, and we 
are about to send a bill to the Federal Government because we do the 
work and then we submit bills. We are not sure it is going to be paid. 
What do we do--lay off the researchers and not get the research done? 
What should we do, Senator?
  There is an organization in Virginia called the Virginia Health Care 
Foundation. What they do is they help low-income people and seniors 
apply for Medicaid, apply for Affordable Care Act subsidies. They have 
a contract with CMS to help them hire eight staffers--they call them 
navigators--who work around the State helping low-income people access 
programs to which they are entitled, for which they have paid taxes.
  They received a note suggesting that that grant to hire these 
navigators to help everyday people was going to expire and they 
couldn't get any Federal funding after 5 today. They heard this late 
yesterday. So they did what any good organization would do. They 
reached out this morning to the CMS to say ``Please give us the payment 
right now, before 5 o'clock today,'' and what they got back from CMS 
was ``Sorry, our website is down. We just decided that today will be 
the day that we will just spend time repairing our website, and it will 
be open again soon''--open again soon but after the 5 o'clock deadline.
  You don't have to be a genius to figure this out. Hurting people 
getting health insurance. Hurting people trying to get Medicaid 
benefits. Hurting childcare centers. Hurting veterans trying to get 
appointments. Hurting a VA clinic we spent tens of millions of dollars 
to build by threatening, through a hiring freeze, the ability of this 
place to open.
  That is just a little snapshot. There was an earlier order freezing 
foreign assistance funding. A whole lot of nonprofits, church-based 
nonprofits like World Vision and other organizations that do foreign 
assistance work around the world--humanitarian aid in Ukraine, for 
example--they were told they don't get funding anymore. The only 
foreign assistance we will give, according to the Trump Executive 
order, is military armaments transfers to two countries in world: Egypt 
and Israel. No humanitarian aid. No transfer of military assistance to 
other nations.
  This is all on the say-so of a President trying to overturn existing 
appropriations bills that have been passed by a bipartisan Congress.
  If I heard these stories in 1 day and my colleagues have heard these 
stories in 1 day, I know what I am going to hear tomorrow. I know what 
I am going to hear through the weekend. This is going to build like an 
avalanche, and it is not just Democratic Senators who are hearing these 
stories.
  We have to respect the law and congressional appropriations.
  I ask anyone hearing who is concerned about this: If you are in 
Virginia, call my office. If you are not in Virginia, call your 
Congress man or woman, call your Senator and tell them the President is 
not above the law, the President must follow the law, and it is 
Congress--Democrats and Republicans--that has to ensure that the 
President follows the law.
  Second, I want to talk about Federal employees. The Federal employees 
received an interesting email at the end of the day today. I happen to 
have some fellows assigned to me who are not Senate employees, but they 
are executive branch employees, as most of us have, working in my 
office. They received an email from the administration that said: If 
you tender your resignation by next Friday, we will guarantee you 
payment through the end of September whether or not you show up for 
work.
  So tender your resignation and then, boy, it is just going to be a 
gravy train. You are just going to get paid for 7 months without 
working.
  The President has no authority to make that offer. There is no budget 
line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. This is a guy 
who made this promise to contractors again and again and again when he 
was a private business guy: Oh, come work for me at my casino. Come 
work for me in a hotel. We are going to do a handshake. We are going to 
do a contract.
  The contractor does the work and then finds out they get stiffed.
  So my message to Federal employees who received this is, yeah, the 
President has tried to terrorize you for about a week and then gives 
you a little sweetheart offer: If you resign in the next week, we are 
just going to pay you for doing nothing for the next 7 months.
  Don't be fooled. He has tricked hundreds of people with that offer. 
If you accept that offer and resign, he will stiff you just like he 
stiffed the contractors. He doesn't have any authority to do this.
  Do not be fooled by this guy. You were here before he was here, and 
you will be here after he was here. Show up for work. Be diligent. 
Serve Americans every day. Make their lives better. Answer their phone 
calls. Give them an answer. Track down their constituent's calls. Don't 
be fooled by a fake offer that, because he has terrorized you in the 
last week, it would be easy to just resign now and get a check for 7 
months because I can tell you, that promise is worth nothing. And you 
will regret it just like these contractors regretted it who did work 
for this guy while he was a businessman.

  Finally and lastly, I will say this: What is this move by the 
President to try to shrink the Federal workforce? Because we all know 
this: If he can persuade a bunch of people to resign, he will stiff 
them, and then he won't fill the position.
  OK. That is one way to shrink the Federal workforce: If I can get 
away with not distributing money pursuant to a congressional 
appropriation, OK, that will shrink the Federal budget.
  But wait a minute. Wait a minute. The President has two Republican 
Houses. We are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14. What 
is today? Is it, like, the 25th, 26th, 27th? Is it the 28th? Is today 
January 28? Do you think I am right? March 14 isn't very far away. We 
are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14, and the 
President is sitting in the captain's seat. He has got two Republican 
Houses. So if he wants to slash

[[Page S445]]

Federal spending, if he wants to reduce the Federal workforce, if he 
wants to gut Medicaid, gut Medicare, gut Social Security, gut the SNAP 
program, gut low-income heating assistance, gut rental assistance, gut 
title I funding to our public schools, guess what? He has got two 
Republican Houses that he can persuade to do his bidding. He has been 
pretty good so far at persuading these two Houses to do his bidding.
  So why didn't he do that? That would be the lawful way to accomplish 
that. If President Trump could convince the two Houses to slash all of 
these programs in a budget, that would be lawful and get an 
appropriations deal that cuts all of these programs the way he and 
Russell Vought and Project 2025 want to do it.
  But that is not what he is doing. He is trying to do it on his own. 
Why? Why would President Trump, who has a clearly legal path ahead of 
him that he can exercise over the course of the next 6 weeks--it is not 
very long--to get a budget deal with two Republican Houses--why would 
President Trump, with two Republican Houses and 6 weeks to get a budget 
deal to do everything he wants--why would he not exercise that route 
but, instead, use an illegal route as an Executive to slash funding 
contrary to clear statute?
  It is because he doesn't think that elected Republican Members of the 
House of Representatives and the Senate will go along with his radical 
plans. He doesn't think he can convince my GOP colleagues to take the 
ax to all of these programs and hurt the American people in the way he 
wants to.
  Let's make President Trump do this the right way, not the wrong way. 
Let's put it on the shoulders of President Trump and the two Republican 
majorities. Do you want to slash this stuff? Fine. Have that debate on 
the floor of the Senate and on the floor of the House when we are doing 
the budget negotiation between now and March 14. Show the American 
public your homework. Show them who is going to get hurt. Show them 
that we are going to hurt everyday people at the expense of the big 
guys, who are getting a tax cut in the reconciliation bill later. Let's 
really have that debate right here in the full view of the American 
public with these spotlights on and the TV broadcasting it.
  That is what this President is afraid of, and that is why he is using 
this illegal strategy to accomplish what he is afraid he can't 
accomplish in the article I branch.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

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