[Pages S1596-S1599]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

HALT ALL LETHAL TRAFFICKING OF FENTANYL ACT--Motion to Proceed--Resumed

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
proceed to legislative session to resume consideration of the motion to 
proceed to S. 331, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to 
     amend the Controlled Substances Act with respect to the 
     scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, and for other 
     purposes.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to amend the 
     Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of 
     fentanyl-related substances, and for other purposes.
         John Thune, Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, Cindy Hyde-
           Smith, Tim Sheehy, Katie Britt, Tom Cotton, Pete 
           Ricketts, Kevin Cramer, John Barrasso, James Lankford, 
           Rick Scott of Florida, Jon Husted, Markwayne Mullin, 
           John R. Curtis, Roger F. Wicker, Bernie Moreno.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to amend the 
Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of fentanyl-
related substances, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a 
close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer) and the Senator from Wyoming 
(Ms. Lummis).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. 
Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), the Senator from 
California (Mr. Padilla), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner) 
are necessarily absent.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 82, nays 12, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 110 Leg.]

                                YEAS--82

     Alsobrooks
     Baldwin
     Banks
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blackburn
     Blumenthal
     Blunt Rochester
     Boozman
     Britt
     Budd
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Curtis
     Daines
     Durbin
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Gallego
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hassan
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hoeven
     Husted
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Justice
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     Kim
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lujan
     Marshall
     McConnell
     McCormick
     Moody
     Moran
     Moreno
     Mullin
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Paul
     Peters
     Reed
     Ricketts
     Risch
     Rosen
     Rounds
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schmitt
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shaheen
     Sheehy
     Slotkin
     Smith
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Tuberville
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--12

     Booker
     Duckworth
     Hirono
     Markey
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Schiff
     Van Hollen
     Warnock
     Warren
     Welch
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Cramer
     Fetterman
     Kelly
     Lummis
     Padilla
     Warner
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Budd). On this vote, the yeas are 82, the 
nays are 12.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.


                          Trump Administration

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am a big Boston Red Sox fan, and one of 
the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. 
Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing 
some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were 
really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior--
cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the 
infield--and bizarre off-the-field behavior. It disrupted the team.
  It became so regular that a phrase was adopted amongst the Red Sox 
fans: ``That is just Manny being Manny.'' And over the years, it just 
was accepted that every year, Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole 
bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team, and over time, 
it just kind of became accepted that that was a fact of life, a way of 
life with Manny Ramirez. As time went on, people reacted with less 
hostility. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in 
these detrimental forms of conduct.
  I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept. 
When bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior 
even if that behavior is hurting people.
  Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments 
where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders--the 
oligarchs--they steal from people. That is what they do. The leaders 
and the leaders' friends just keep a hand constantly in the government 
treasury, and they steal taxpayer dollars. They rig the rules of the 
economy in order to make themselves fabulously rich. They hurt the 
citizens of those countries.
  Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of 
government, but he is reportedly worth $200 billion. One of his many 
houses cost $1.4 billion to build. Supposedly, the landscaping costs on 
an annual basis for that house are $2 million alone. That $1.4 billion 
house was paid for by money he stole from the Russian treasury. In 
other words, he stole it from the Russian people.
  Putin and his friends have been doing it for so long and doing it so 
openly and brazenly--Putin, for instance, wears a watch that retails 
for half a million dollars even though his official

[[Page S1597]]

salary is only $140,000. They have been doing this so openly and 
brazenly, they are so public in their corruption in Russia, that it is 
just accepted; it is just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his 
cronies steal from the Russian people.
  That is what is happening in America today. It is heartbreaking for 
me to say this, but in the first 6 months of the Trump Presidency, 
Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a 
stunning rampage of open public corruption. It is not fundamentally 
different than what happens in Russia. These are efforts to steal from 
the American people to enrich themselves.
  Their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a 
dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or 
dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption or, 
maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works; that 
government is just corrupt. So the fact that it is happening out in the 
open instead of happening secretly--well, it is really nothing new.
  But this is not how government works. The things that have happened 
over the last 6 weeks are unprecedented. The President and his 
billionaire friends are not supposed to steal from us. They are not 
supposed to use their power and their access to power, their access to 
government levers, to rig the rules to enrich themselves. That has 
always been wrong, it is still wrong, and we do not have to accept 
this.
  So in the next few minutes, I want to try out an exercise. I want to 
try to lay out for you as quickly as I can just some of the most 
significant instances of blatantly corrupt activity that have happened 
in just the first 6 weeks of Trump's Presidency. When you see it all 
together, there is no way to avoid a simple conclusion: This White 
House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the 
country. And just because they are doing it out in the open for 
everybody to see doesn't mean it is not corrupt.
  My hope is that if you see it all in one place, the gravity of this 
moment may hit you. My hope is that my colleagues and the public choose 
not to normalize a President or his advisers using the Oval Office as a 
blunt mechanism to make themselves even wealthier.
  It is our decision--our decision--to have zero tolerance for 
corruption. It is also our decision to just decide to become a place 
like Russia where our leaders are allowed to routinely steal from us.
  So this is a heartbreakingly long list. This is just 20 or so 
examples of corrupt behavior in the first 6 weeks of the Trump 
Presidency.
  Here it goes. We are going to start on January 17. On January 17, 
Trump launches the meme coin. This is maybe the most corrupt of all of 
the acts because--what is the meme coin?--the meme coin is essentially 
a mechanism by which Russian oligarchs or corporate CEOs can literally 
send money privately directly to Donald Trump. Nobody knows who buys 
the meme coin, but Trump makes money when people buy it. So it is just 
an open sewer valve that allows for anybody who is trying to influence 
the Trump administration to be able to secretly funnel money to Donald 
Trump.
  He reserves 80 percent of the coin. He waits to release that coin 
until the price jumps back up again, which essentially means he is 
waiting for people who want favors from him to buy a bunch of the coins 
to inflate the value so that he releases more and makes more money.
  It is a disgusting kind of corruption because this is essentially 
Trump just posting his Venmo for anybody secretly to wire him as much 
money as they want. We have never seen something like this before, 
where anybody who has anything to gain from the Trump administration, 
through a manipulation of the value of Trump's meme coin, can funnel 
money directly to the President, whisper in his ear: That was me. That 
was me that purchased all that coin that jumped up the value that 
allowed you to release new coin. Hey, take care of me on the back end.
  On January 20, when he is sworn in, he institutes his new energy 
agenda. Now, open reporting suggested that during the campaign, he met 
with the oil and gas industry, and they cut a deal in which the oil and 
gas industry would give him a billion dollars of campaign contributions 
in order to receive favorable treatment when Trump was sworn in.
  Guess what happens on January 20. Trump unveils his energy strategy. 
What does it do? It preferences oil and gas, and it punishes oil and 
gas's competitors. It, for instance, freezes all permits on wind 
projects, both for the land and the sea. It undercuts permitting 
processes, not for oil and gas, but for oil and gas's competitors.
  Oil and gas got exactly what they asked for. They gave a campaign 
contribution, and they got the favorable treatment.
  Five days later, Trump fires 17 inspectors general. What do 
inspectors general do? They look for corruption inside of these 
Agencies. What do you do if you are trying to engage in corruption, if 
you are trying to steal from the American people, you fire the 
inspectors general.
  Two days later, on January 27, Trump fires Gwynne Wilcox from the 
NLRB. This is the National Labor Relations Board. When she is fired, 
the National Labor Relations Board cannot function any longer. Why does 
this matter? Because the person that has been put in charge of 
reviewing the hirings and firings of these Agencies is Elon Musk who, 
by the way, has lots of cases before the NLRB--so do the people that 
are standing behind Trump during the inauguration. Almost all of them 
have active cases before the NLRB. The billionaires supporting Donald 
Trump now don't have to worry about the NLRB because, on January 27, 
the NLRB is rendered powerless.
  Three days later, on January 30, Trump awards more than $800,000 
worth of stock to several of the board members of the Trump Media & 
Technology Group. This is the publicly traded company behind his social 
media platforms.
  So now, his Cabinet members, people like Kash Patel and Linda 
McMahon, are owning equity in Trump's media platform--equity that can 
be cashed out, sold to people who want to buy them out of their 
interest at any time. Those people who might want to buy them out--
Cabinet members--could be individuals with issues before the Department 
of Education, before the FBI--yet another avenue in which people who 
have influence, who want to gain influence inside the Trump 
administration have a conduit to be able to move cash from their 
pocketbooks, from their treasury, from their bank accounts into the 
bank accounts of Trump Cabinet members.
  Shortly thereafter, we start to see the weaponization of the DOJ. On 
February 23, a civil complaint from DOJ that had been pending against 
SpaceX, Elon Musk's signature company, is dropped. Eight days later, 
the DOJ drops a case against a Republican Congressman.
  On February 19, 2 or 3 weeks later, the DOJ opens up something called 
Operation Whirlwind, which seeks to target anyone who dares to try to 
obstruct or criticize the work of Elon Musk and DOGE.
  Over the course of the first few weeks, the DOJ has turned into an 
entity that drops cases against those who are loyal to Donald Trump and 
pursues aggressively investigations against those who are trying to 
criticize Donald Trump.
  On February 1, Trump fires the Director of the CFPB and announces 
plans to shut down--to shutter--the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau. Again, very much like the NLRB, this is an Agency that was, at 
the moment that it was rendered powerless, investigating Elon Musk and 
many of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump. So, once again, 
those that have access to Donald Trump, the billionaires that are close 
to him, now don't have to worry about labor violations being 
investigated by the NLRB. Now, they don't have to worry about consumer 
actions being taken against them by the CFPB.
  On February 4, there is the first of two extraordinary meetings in 
the White House in which Donald Trump convenes his business partners--
his business partners--the Saudi golf league and the PGA, to try to 
negotiate a solution to the dispute between those two golf leagues. 
Why? Because Trump has a business interest in that

[[Page S1598]]

dispute being resolved. The Saudi golf league plays tournaments at 
Trump's courses in the United States. And so, if the White House, using 
its official power, can try to negotiate a settlement between those two 
groups, Trump stands to make money.
  On February 6, something absolutely stunning happens. Pam Bondi, the 
AG, issues a memorandum in which she proposes to dull the criminal 
enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
  If you are representing a foreign government before the United 
States, you have to register so that we know if you are acting on 
behalf of American interests or you are acting on behalf of foreign 
interests.
  In the prior Trump administration, Trump officials got in big trouble 
for secretly working for and getting paid by foreign governments 
without registering.
  Well, what has Trump announced? That they are going to limit the 
applicability of the enforcement of that statute, making it much easier 
for Trump's friends, for his MAGA crowd, for the people who show up to 
Mar-a-Lago to get paid quietly by foreign governments in order to 
influence Donald Trump.
  On February 10, maybe aside from the meme coin, the most stunning act 
of corruption--the Eric Adams quid pro quo, in which Eric Adams, 
indicted for corruption, is let off the hook. His charges are dismissed 
in exchange for the mayor's pledge of political loyalty to Donald 
Trump. They literally went on TV and announced the deal--that they were 
getting rid of the charges against Eric Adams as long as the mayor 
pledges political loyalty to the President.
  That was so corrupt that six or seven DOJ officials resigned because 
they refused to withdraw those charges. But the deal went through 
because the seventh or the eighth or the ninth official finally filed 
the withdrawal.
  And now, in America, it is 100 percent clear, if you want to get away 
with corruption, if you want to steal from your constituents and you 
are an elected official in this country, all you have to do is just 
sign up for political loyalty to Donald Trump, and he will instruct the 
Department of Justice to let you get away with it.
  On February 10, Donald Trump directs the DOJ to pause enforcement of 
U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Come 
on--like come on. He instructs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. 
laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas.
  Here is an example. Goldman Sachs was engaged in outright bribery. 
They were paying bribes to Malaysian officials so that they could get a 
contract to manage the resources of the Malaysian sovereign wealth 
fund.
  American companies should not be overseas bribing foreign 
governments. That compromises America's reputation and America's 
national security. But now, you are going to pause enforcement of the 
laws that stop American companies from bribing foreign governments 
because corruption is now being normalized.
  This is what you do if you want to normalize corruption; it is that 
you make it legal for American companies to engage in corruption 
overseas. That makes it easier for Trump to get away with corruption 
here.
  Two days later, on February 12, the announcement comes out that the 
State Department is going to buy $400 million in armored Teslas.
  OK, so now it is getting even more blatant. It is getting even more 
brazen. The State Department is just going to buy a whole bunch of 
product from Elon Musk--product that they were not previously scheduled 
to buy.
  It is true that the Biden administration had a blueprint that it was 
going to buy some electric vehicles, but it was around $483,000 worth 
of vehicles. Trump revises that blueprint of spending so that now the 
Federal Government is going to spend $400 million on armored Teslas 
from Elon Musk.
  Let's see. That is February 12. That same day, Elon Musk's people 
infiltrate the Department of Labor, and reporting suggests that, during 
that infiltration, Elon Musk's personal representatives get access to 
enforcement information at OSHA, not only against Elon Musk's 
companies--and, by the way, SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is 
nine times higher than the industry average--but, also, workplace 
safety violations against Elon Musk's competitors.
  Here is the message: If you are close to Donald Trump personally, if 
you support him politically, you can get secret access to enforcement 
data against your companies and your companies' competitors. That is 
what happens on February 12.
  Three days later, there is some suspicious firings at the FDA--again, 
related to Elon Musk's personal financial interests. Elon Musk owns a 
medical device company called Neuralink. It is currently being reviewed 
by the FDA. And guess what. On February 15 and 16, all over a weekend, 
there are 20 people fired from the FDA's Office of Neurological and 
Physical Medicine Devices--fired by DOGE, run by Elon Musk.
  Clear message: You are going to get fired if you aren't on the right 
side of Elon Musk's application.
  Now, whether that was explicit or not, if the guy who is firing you 
has a pending application before your Department, aren't you going to 
think twice? Aren't you going to think twice about ruling against his 
interests?
  This is why this is unprecedented. It feels normal because it has 
been happening every day. But never before in American history have we 
allowed someone who has a pending application for approval of a 
medicine or a medical device to be able to personally decide who gets 
hired and who gets fired at the regulatory Agency making the decision 
over that medical device.
  But, now, this stuff is happening every day because, on February 15, 
as well, that same weekend, there is an announcement that the FDA cuts 
are going to be even deeper, perhaps as big as 50 percent. That means 
that hundreds of drugs and devices won't get approved at the FDA.
  And you know who benefits from that? The folks that are selling the 
snake oil products.
  And guess who is selling the snake oil products? The people who work 
for Donald Trump selling ``vita gummy scams.'' The Director of FBI is 
selling vaccine reversal pills. When the FDA gets gutted, it is the 
people who sell those unregulated products who stand to gain.
  On February 19, 4 days later, we find out that the IRS is going to be 
cut by 7,000 people, and the biggest chunk of the folks who are going 
to be laid off are the people who do the audits of the billionaires and 
the millionaires and the corporations.
  So, once again, Elon Musk and the people standing behind Donald Trump 
on inauguration day are going to get off because the IRS just had its 
enforcement powers--its audit powers--absolutely gutted.
  That same day, on February 19, we start to receive word that 
advertising on Elon Musk's platform is starting to grow again. And the 
reporting on February 19 indicates that American companies have come to 
the collective decision that they need to keep advertising on Elon 
Musk's platform because Elon Musk has so much regulatory power inside 
the Federal Government that they need to make sure that they are paying 
Musk through Twitter and through X, so that if they ultimately need 
something from the Federal Government, they can get it.
  This, again, is why we have never, ever in the history of this 
country allowed for the richest man in the world, somebody who controls 
major companies, to also have an official position inside the 
government, because, of course--of course--it opens up these clear 
avenues where people are going to do business with him privately to try 
to curry favor with him publicly.
  I am not done. It just keeps going. The next day, on February 20, the 
CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices' monthly meeting is 
canceled and not rescheduled.
  So we were very worried that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who makes money 
off of his attacks on vaccines, would continue those attacks when he 
took over HHS because, if faith in vaccines continues to plummet, it is 
very likely that RFK, Jr., will make money. Why? Because the not-for-
profit that he will likely return to--the company that he will return 
to after he leaves--makes money as vaccine misinformation spreads, and 
he also continues to collect fees for referring cases to a company that 
handles claims of personal injury due to vaccines.

[[Page S1599]]

  And so when the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is 
canceled, it is a clear indication that, yes, this campaign of assault 
on vaccines is going to continue, which--not surprisingly--is likely to 
make RFK, Jr., even more money.
  On February 26, we see Trump's MAGA hats that are for sale on his 
website displayed in the Oval Office. And it is just a reminder that so 
many people inside Trump's universe continue to sell merchandise on the 
side in order to make money.
  Donald Trump has always done this, and we have just kind of accepted 
it, even though it is a kind of corruption in and of itself. But Kash 
Patel, the Director of the FBI, is still selling Kash-branded 
merchandise, even while he is going to run the FBI. Elon Musk and 
others are selling DOGE merchandise.
  So as they trumpet their brand inside the government, they are making 
money off their brand outside of the government. On February 26, maybe 
the third most significant brazen corruption happens. News breaks that 
Elon Musk is just going to have the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon 
that has been in the works for years and instead just substitute in 
Starlink for Verizon. Just extraordinary that this is happening in 
plain view of everybody.
  Elon Musk takes his private company, uses his access to government to 
just shove out of the way his competitors and instead insert himself 
and his company. Again, we have never seen this ever before in American 
history, and now it is happening on a daily basis.
  And now we get to this week. This week, Wired reports that guests are 
paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and 
business leaders are being targeted with advertisements that sell 
access to a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States 
for $5 million.
  Come on, like seriously, there are advertisements that say if you are 
a business CEO and you pay $5 million to Donald Trump, you can get a 
meeting with him. Like, this isn't OK. And yet because it happens every 
single day, every single day, they are asking for us to pretend that 
this is normal.
  This is just 6 weeks. It is just 6 weeks, and the last thing on the 
list is an offer to meet with the President for a million dollars or $5 
million. If any previous President had sent out an advertisement 
suggesting that you could meet with them for a payment to them of a 
million to $5 million, in and of itself, we would deem that to be 
unacceptable.
  But Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe that because they have 
arranged this dizzying pace of corruption in which not a day goes by in 
which something doesn't happen inside our government in which Elon Musk 
or Donald Trump use their power in order to rig the rules to enrich 
themselves, that we are all going to feel that it is normal.
  This is how democracies die. Democracies die when the very powerful 
people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically that 
we come to believe that it is normal.
  And listen, I understand that many Americans may think that all of 
this stuff just used to happen quietly, and the only difference is that 
Trump and Musk are just putting it all out in the open. And I am not 
saying that there haven't been instances of corruption. Democrats and 
Republicans in this body have been accused of and convicted of acts of 
corruption.
  It has been a fact of life in American politics for a long time, but 
never before has the corruption happened this openly or this 
frequently. And so I lay it all out for you this afternoon in the hopes 
that it is not too late for us to decide to stand up as a body and as a 
nation to say that this isn't OK.
  The Trump meme coin is not OK. It is not OK for people who have 
interests before the Federal Government to be able to anonymously 
funnel money to the President of the United States. It is not OK for 
Elon Musk to have access to the Department of Labor enforcement data 
against him or his competitors that nobody else gets access to.
  It is not OK to just cancel contracts that were going to Musk's 
competitors and substituting his own business just because he has the 
ability to do it as a friend of Donald Trump. The rule of law matters. 
Doing things by the rules matter.
  This level of corruption was not occurring behind the scenes prior. 
It is not just that the cover got pulled off of it all, and it is our 
decision as a body and as a country to decide not to normalize this 
scale of corruption.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). The majority leader.

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