[Pages S2683-S2708]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TERMINATING THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED TO IMPOSE GLOBAL TARIFFS

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, S.J. Res. 49 is
discharged and the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 49) terminating the national
emergency declared to impose global tariffs.

Thereupon, the committee was discharged and the Senate proceeded to
consider the joint resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 6
hours of debate only, equally divided between the leaders or their
designees.
The Senator from Maryland.

El Salvador

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, yesterday marked 100 days since Donald
Trump was sworn in as President. It happened right down that hallway.
He promised a golden age for America. He has not delivered that golden
age. In fact, in that 100 days, all he has delivered is chaos and
destruction.
Consumer confidence is plummeting, and today we learned that our
economy is shrinking. This is all a totally self-inflicted, Trump-
inflicted wound on America and American families.
That is here at home. On the world stage, Candidate Trump promised to
be the great peacemaker, to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on day
one, but he has nothing to show for that other than distrust from our
allies and smiles from our adversaries. He has thrown the Ukrainian
people under the bus, and in Gaza, the hostages have not been released,
and we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Over the last 100 days, Donald Trump has embarked on a lawbreaking
spree that has torn up our Constitution, torn apart our government, and
torn down our economy.
Over 200 lawsuits have been filed in Federal courts around the
country because we are watching this President break laws on every
front, on everything from his illegal freezing and impoundments of
taxpayer funds for important public programs that benefit communities
all over the country, to his illegal firing of patriotic Federal
employees, including many veterans who provide critical public
services, to letting Elon Musk loose on Federal Government programs
with a chain saw--not to make government more efficient but to rig
government for the already rich and powerful like Elon Musk at the
expense of everybody else.
President Trump has also been abusing his authority to create tariff
chaos that has sent consumer confidence plummeting, badly damaging our
economy. He is violating the First Amendment by cracking down on
students at colleges and universities for their exercise of free speech
and right to assemble and also violating another vital constitutional
provision: the constitutional right to due process for those who live
in America.
It is a staggering amount of lawbreaking in just 100 days. That is
why all of us should fight back--in the courts, in this Congress, and
in communities all over America.
We know that the American people don't like what they are seeing,
what they are experiencing. They are rising up in communities all over
America to voice their disapproval with President Trump's performance.
They are giving him a big fat F for the first 100 days--total,
miserable, failure.
The only people who don't seem to get it are some of our Republican
colleagues here in the Congress who apparently live in constant fear of
being on the wrong end of a tweet from Donald Trump or Elon Musk and
want to look the other way in the face of this massive lawbreaking and
ripping up of the Constitution.
So I want to take a little inventory, just a small sampling of the
actions of this lawless President. I want to cover four categories: his
violations of constitutional due process rights; his violation of First
Amendment rights; his illegal withholding and impoundment and freezing
of public funds that benefit communities all over America; and fourth,
exceeding his authorities, claiming emergency powers that he doesn't
have in the area of tariffs, making sham claims to justify his tariff
chaos that is sabotaging our economy as we speak.
I want to start with Trump's violations of the constitutional right
of due process--a bedrock American principle.
As we speak, President Trump is violating the due process of many,
many individuals, including the rights of a man by the name of Kilmar
Abrego Garcia, who was snatched off the streets of Maryland and
illegally shipped to one of the most notorious prisons in Latin
America, called CECOT. As I have repeatedly said, this case is not
about one man alone. It is about all of us. I am not vouching for Mr.
Abrego Garcia, but I am vouching for his constitutional right to due
process--because, if Donald Trump can ignore court orders and trample
over the rights of one man, he threatens the rights of everyone who
lives in the United States of America.

Mr. Abrego Garcia had legal status in the United States. He lived in
Maryland with his family. He had a work permit. He was an apprentice
with the sheet metal workers, SMART Local 100, where he worked full-
time to help support his family. He was driving in his car with his 5-
year-old autistic son when he was pulled over by Federal agents. He was
taken to some facility in Baltimore where he asked to make a phone call
to let folks know what was happening. He was denied the opportunity to
make that phone call.
He was then shipped to the State of Texas. From there, his feet were
shackled. He was handcuffed. He was put in a plane where he couldn't
see out the windows, and he didn't know where he was going, and he
landed in El Salvador and was taken to one of the most notorious
prisons in our hemisphere, a place reserved for the worst of the worst,
for terrorists.
Now here is the thing: There was a standing court order not to deport
him to El Salvador because doing so could put his life in jeopardy from
gangs. Indeed, the Trump administration admitted in Federal court that
Abrego Garcia was wrongfully seized and shipped to this prison in El
Salvador. But instead of fixing the problem they admitted to in court,
what did they do? They punished the lawyer who told the truth in court.

[[Page S2684]]

And now the Trump administration is ignoring orders from the Federal
district court, the Fourth District Court of Appeals, and a 9-to-
nothing order from the Supreme Court. We don't get 9-to-nothing
decisions out of the Supreme Court very often. But that is what all
those courts ordered the Trump administration to do with respect to
facilitating the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia, to facilitate his return.
This is not just trampling over his rights. And, again, I want to
emphasize: If you allow the President to trample over the rights of one
person, you do threaten the rights of everybody who lives in America.
That is why yesterday I wrote to President Trump about this case, and
I am going to read that letter to the Senate so no one can say they
don't know what is going on in this matter.
Here is what I wrote in that letter:

Dear President Trump,
I read with great interest your interview with Time
Magazine regarding the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision ordering
you and your Administration to ``facilitate'' the return of
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who your lawyers admitted in federal
court was wrongfully seized and deported to prison in El
Salvador. You conceded in that interview--

This is the interview he had with Time magazine just a short while
ago.

You conceded in that interview that you have not asked
President Bukele--

That is the President of El Salvador--

to return him. You also said, regarding this case, that you
``don't make that decision'' because your lawyers do. Your
comments and the actions of your Administration clearly
demonstrate your failure to comply with court orders as you
continue to violate Mr. Abrego Garcia's constitutional and
due process rights--and when you deny the due process rights
of one person, you threaten them for everyone in America. The
American public knows this. Recent polling shows that a
majority of Americans reject your trampling over
constitutional rights in this case.

I went on to write this:

During my visit to El Salvador, I had the opportunity to
meet with [the] Vice President. . . . My conversation with
him revealed the extent to which you and your Administration
are violating the orders of the federal courts and the
Constitution of the United States. Our discussion--

Again, referring to my discussion with the Vice President of El
Salvador--

showed that your Administration is doing nothing to comply
with and implement the Supreme Court order to ``facilitate''
Mr. Abrego Garcia's return to the United States and revealed
that the Government of El Salvador is holding him solely at
the request of your Administration and, specifically, because
you are paying them to imprison him.
While I had expected a private meeting with Vice President
Ulloa, when I arrived at his office there were several
cameras rolling--

I think they were probably his own private cameras. I don't know, but
they were rolling to record the conversation.

[So] I agreed to have our conversation on the record.

And then I write:

[Mr. President,] I want to report some important details of
our [conversation].
Vice President . . . told me that, ``El Salvador is not
able to take any action regarding the case because the case
is in the U.S. and usually we do not express any opinion on
domestic affairs.''
He went on to say--

I quoted him again--

I mean, the ball is in your court.

Meaning the ball is in America's court, and he used that expression
multiple times during our conversation.
I went on to tell President Trump that the Vice President of El
Salvador:

. . . made clear that ``once the case will be resolved
definitely and there will be clear instruction regarding this
case . . . El Salvador's government will apply [our]
principles . . . of course we will act accordingly.'' He
indicated that, ``at this current moment we cannot take any
actions because the case is still in the United States'
situation.'' He reinforced this point throughout our
conversation, saying the ``bottom line is this is an issue
that has to be solved in the United States. We have not
expressed, we cannot express any opinion on that case,
because it is up to you.''
Again, this is what the Vice President of El Salvador told me and
what I reported to President Trump in this letter.
I went on in my letter to President Trump to say:

All of this makes crystal clear that, even though your
Administration's lawyers admitted in federal court that Mr.
Abrego Garcia was wrongfully detained in Maryland and sent to
prison in El Salvador and despite the Supreme Court's order
to ``facilitate'' his return, your Administration has not
lifted a finger to comply with the court order. As [the] Vice
President. . . . indicated, ``the ball is in your court.''
When I asked--

And I am continuing to report this to the President of the United
States.

When I asked [the] Vice President. . . . whether El
Salvador had any evidence that Mr. Abrego Garcia had
committed a crime, his response was, ``how can I have it?''
He said the Government of El Salvador does not ``qualify
those persons who are there, we just take them.'' I asked if
El Salvador is imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia simply because
the United States is paying to keep him and others there. His
response was, ``exactly, that's it.'' He also said, ``I mean,
if the person that you send is not a criminal, is not
whatever, I mean it is up to you, that's what I'm saying. I
don't want to express any opinion . . . I think it is up to
you . . . The ball is in your court.''

And the Vice President of El Salvador ``made it clear that they did
not review the file of Mr. Abrego Garcia.''

He said, ``we have a deal with the U.S. government. They
send people. We host them. They pay. And that's it.''
When I asked the Vice President why El Salvador cannot
release Mr. Abrego Garcia from prison when the U.S.
government conceded in court that he was wrongfully
abducted--and whether he is being charged under El Salvador's
law--he responded, ``What is your recommendation to El
Salvador's government? We can take him to the airport and ask
an airline to take him to the States? Are you saying the
airline would take a person without a passport? What kind of
visa should we carry?''

He went on to say--this is the Vice President of El Salvador:

President Bukele said we cannot smuggle a person to the
United States. Because if we send a person without a visa,
tourist visa, working visa, student visa, what kind of reason
can we call to get legally into the United States?''
Regarding his papers, he asked, ``Who will provide that? We
don't have it.''

So I continued to report on this conversation in my letter to
President Trump, and I said:

I repeatedly pointed out that neither I nor anyone else was
asking El Salvador to ``smuggle'' Mr. Abrego Garcia back into
the United States. That argument is, of course, a red
herring. I repeatedly pointed out that Attorney General Bondi
had said, when President Bukele was in the Oval Office with
you--

Referring to the President of the United States--

that the U.S. would send a plane to pick up Mr. Abrego
Garcia. So, I was not asking the Government of El Salvador to
``smuggle'' him into the United States, only to release him
from prison.

And I pointed out to President Trump that ``Your Administration
illegally took Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in a plane, and
Attorney General Bondi has said the United States could send a plane to
pick him up. And the U.S. government can certainly provide him with the
papers necessary to return.''
I went on in my letter to President Trump to say this:

My conversation with [the] Vice President. . . . clearly
demonstrates that the Government of El Salvador has no
independent legal basis for imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia;
that, as they readily concede, the only reason for keeping
him in prison is that they entered into an agreement with
your Administration to be paid by the United States. This
also reveals that your Administration could easily facilitate
his release by letting El Salvador know that--given his
wrongful detention--they are not contractually bound to
continue imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia. My conversation with
Vice President Ulloa shows that your Administration's claim
that El Salvador is exercising its ``sovereign'' decision to
continue to hold Mr. Abrego Garcia is a farce. The Government
of El Salvador is imprisoning him because your Administration
is paying them to do so and they claim to be contractually
obligated. Obviously, your Administration could say El
Salvador was no longer contractually obligated to imprison
Mr. Abrego Garcia. Then El Salvador can release him, and
Attorney General Bondi can, as promised, send the plane.

I went on to write to President Trump that:

It is outrageous that Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family have
been forced to suffer through this trauma because your
Administration has, to date, refused to follow the
requirements of the Constitution and the orders of the
federal courts. Instead of fixing the egregious
``administrative error'' that the Administration conceded has
wrongfully deposited Mr. Abrego Garcia in a prison in El
Salvador, your Administration chose to attack and punish the
lawyer who told the court the truth. That is shameful.

I went on to write to the President--I think this is important.

It is also shameful that you and your Administration
continue to try to change the subject in this case. You--

Referring to President Trump--

[[Page S2685]]

continue to put out information on social media asserting
that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 and Vice President
Vance falsely asserted that he has been convicted of crimes
in the United States. Yet the federal district court judge in
this case said your Administration had presented the court
with ``no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or to any
terrorist activity.'' So your Administration should put up or
shut up in court. I am not vouching for the man, Kilmar
Abrego Garcia, I am vouching for his rights.

I am going to take a little departure here. I don't know if my
colleagues witnessed the interview that President Trump had with an ABC
reporter, Mr. Moran, yesterday, but it is all over social media because
it turned out that, you know, President Trump had taken a picture of
what was Abrego Garcia's fingers, and he had superimposed--or someone
in the administration put an ``MS-13,'' written that on. That had been
photoshopped or otherwise falsely there. Apparently, no one informed
the President of this, or he just decided to pretend he didn't know.
In this interview, he said: He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed.
The reporter said: That was photoshopped. And Trump's response was to
the reporter: Terry, they are giving you a big break of a lifetime. I
picked you, but you are not being very nice.
Well, my point here, again, is whatever evidence there may be, the
proper form to submit it is in the courts of the United States. And at
least today, judges in those cases have made clear that the declaration
has not relied on such evidence.
I went on in my letter to President Trump to say this:

It is also dangerous for you to suggest that we cannot
fight gang violence without trampling over constitutional
rights. More than two decades ago [I pointed out to him] I
helped establish a regional anti-gang task force to combat
MS-13 and other gang violence in the Maryland-Virginia-D.C.
area. We have made substantial progress in this fight, but
there is more that can be done. But that is not what you and
your Administration are doing. You are engaged in gross
violations of the Constitution and due process rights.

I then, in this letter, cite Judge Harvie Wilkinson, who wrote on
behalf of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit the following. I am going to quote him, and I have this
in my letter to President Trump:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of
the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The
government is asserting a right to stash away residents of
this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due
process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.
Further, it claims in essence that because it has [already]
rid itself of custody there is nothing [else] that can be
done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the
intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from
courthouses still hold dear.

I should point out that Judge Wilkinson was a Reagan administration
appointee and this was a unanimous opinion of the three-court panel.
I went on in my letter to President Trump to say:

The Fourth Circuit got to the heart of the case. Kilmar
Abrego Garcia was snatched from his car while he was driving
in Maryland with his five-year-old autistic son, then
illegally stashed away in a prison in El Salvador. His wife,
his mother, and his brother have been unable to communicate
with him in any way. He has a work permit and his fellow
sheet metal workers have been organizing to bring him back
[home], as have thousands of Americans. His constitutional
rights must be respected.

I close with this paragraph in my letter to the President:

This case is not about Kilmar alone. It is about everyone
in America. While Mr. Abrego Garcia is at the center of this
case, its consequences impact the due process rights of
everyone who lives in America. If your Administration can
strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance
of court orders, it can do it to all of us. I will continue
to fight to defend the Constitution and due process rights of
all who live in America.

That was my letter to President Trump. I haven't heard anything back
from them, and they continue to violate the Supreme Court orders.
You know, colleagues, Members can look the other way but cannot deny
the fact that this is happening as we speak today. I would urge every
Senator to recognize the threat to everybody's rights under the
Constitution.
Now I want to turn to another area of lawbreaking--constitutional
violations being committed by the Trump administration because not only
are they violating the due process clause of the Constitution in the
Abrego Garcia case and others, but they are also tearing up the First
Amendment and trampling over free speech rights of individuals in
America, especially students on college and university campuses but
many others as well.
The Trump administration and Secretary Rubio apparently think the
First Amendment is like an a la carte menu. In other words, they seem
to believe that the U.S. government can punish those who engage in
speech that they don't like. That is not how it works. They don't get
to cherry-pick speech under the First Amendment and use governmental
power, state power, to sanction those who disagree with their points of
view.
But that is exactly what they are doing in cases like those of
Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, and Mohsen Mahdawi. Mohsen Mahdawi was
illegally snatched as he was taking his citizenship test in the State
of Vermont.
I want to read one of the questions that is on the U.S. citizenship
test. It is important that everybody recognize what we ask those who
are working to become citizens to understand. Question 6 on the
citizenship test reads:

What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?

And under it there are a number of things, but the first one on there
is speech. The second one on there is assembly--speech and assembly. I
think members of the Trump administration need to take a refresher
course, the kind we ask citizens to take in this country because,
apparently, President Trump, Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, and
others would like to cross that question right off the citizenship
test.
We observed recently, when Vice President Vance took an overseas
trip, that he lectured some of our European allies like the UK and
Germany about freedom of speech. He said that they had too many limits
on freedom of speech; that they were curtailing freedom of speech for
people who lived in their countries, but here at home, they are tearing
up the First Amendment of the Constitution. Apparently, here at home
for the Trump administration, freedom of speech exists only for those
who agree with their point of view.
Mr. President, you know that our colleague who served with us,
Senator Rubio, used to take to this Senate floor regularly to talk
about an American foreign policy based on democracy, based on human
rights, based on freedom of religion, and, yes, based on freedom of
speech and suppression around the world, telling other countries that
it was wrong to have the governments lock them up for expressing their
points of view. And yet now in their home, Secretary of State Rubio is
trashing freedom of speech. He is ripping up the First Amendment of the
Constitution, and it is shameful. The American people should not stand
for it because if you rip up the First Amendment for some people, you
threaten it for everybody who lives in the United States of America.

I was fortunate to grow up in a Foreign Service family. We sort of
went back and forth between the United States and other countries. I
was proud to be from a family that represented the United States
overseas. We are far from perfect, and we have a lot of work to do to
live up to the principles that we say we stand for around the world.
But one of the things we do--or used to do--is stand up as a beacon for
human rights and freedom of speech. That is no longer happening. You
can't say you want everybody else around the world to live up to that
principle when you are violating it right here at home.
Now Secretary Rubio has doubled way back into a McCarthy-era statute
from what was called the McCarran-Walter Act. That was a law passed at
the height of the McCarthy era, and he is using that to claim that
these students represent a threat to the foreign policy of the United
States.
It is pretty pathetic that students expressing their views represent
a threat to the foreign policy of the United States. We have students
of all different faiths who are protesting the war in Gaza and
advocating for Palestinian rights. Others may agree or strongly
disagree with what they say, but to claim that they somehow represent a
threat to the foreign policy of the United States is ridiculous. It is
so clearly being used as a ruse to deny their First Amendment freedom
of

[[Page S2686]]

speech rights that I hope the courts will see right through it. What it
is, is an effort to punish speech.
Donald Trump's lawbreaking doesn't end with his efforts to tear up
the constitutional rights of due process and the First Amendment. He is
also tearing up article I of the Constitution by illegally freezing,
withholding, and impounding funds for important public purposes--funds
that have been appropriated by the Congress and signed into law.
The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars of
investments to support public services in communities all over America.
The latest count is they are holding up about $430 billion that was
appropriated by the Congress.
You know, just this morning, we had a hearing in the Senate
Appropriations Committee about the Trump administration's freezing and
cutting of funds for NIH, the National Institutes of Health. There was
lots of powerful testimony from witnesses, including from a mom who was
there with her daughter who had suffered through childhood cancer. And
because of past research at NIH, her daughter's cancer was, thankfully,
in remission, gone away. But she was there--the mother was there--to
say she wants other families who have kids with cancer to have the same
opportunities and that those opportunities only exist if we continue to
do research into lifesaving cures and treatments. And yet, the Trump
administration is sowing chaos at NIH and has frozen some clinical
trials.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies are taking a chain saw to
the Federal Government and are destroying the ability of the Federal
Government to deliver reliable services to the American people, like
the damage they are doing at the Social Security Administration. First
they say there is no more phone service, use the internet. People
couldn't get through on the internet. Go to the local Social Security
offices. We are closing the local Social Security offices, and, by the
way, we are also firing thousands of people so there won't be anyone in
those local offices. And then they say: Oh, well, maybe we better turn
the phones on again.
This isn't about government efficiency. This is about rigging the
government for people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else.
This is an issue that should concern every Member of Congress because
it is a direct attack on article I, and it is an attack on the American
people and their rights to have these investments made when their
elected officials direct them to be made on their behalf.
And yet, just yesterday, the head of the Government Accountability
Office, as we know by GAO, testified before a Senate appropriations
subcommittee that the Trump administration was stonewalling GAO's
efforts to investigate this illegal withholding of funds. Gene Dodaro,
who is the Comptroller General, testified that the Office of Management
and Budget ``has not been responsive'' to GAO's questions about the
freezing of billions of dollars in funding Congress had already
approved.
Now, this is not the first time we have seen a Trump administration
violating the Impoundment Control Act. The last time President Trump
was in office, he illegally withheld funds that the Congress had
appropriated for helping the people of Ukraine, and he refused to spend
those funds--Donald Trump did.
So, back at the time, I wrote a letter to the GAO, asking them to
investigate that withholding to see if it violated the Impoundment
Control Act. That is a statute of the United States of America. In that
case, the GAO found that, yes, the Trump administration--the first
round--had illegally withheld those funds. It was an illegal
impoundment. So that is what we are seeing right now, and they are not
even working too hard to show that they are violating the Impoundment
Control Act.
When the head of OMB--the Office of Management and Budget--Russ
Vought, was before the Senate Budget Committee for his nomination, at
his confirmation hearing, I asked him about the Impoundment Control
Act, and I asked him about the past violations of the Impoundment
Control Act because, guess what, he also was the head of OMB at the
time of the earlier violation, and Russ Vought is back at it again as
the head of OMB. So when I asked him about the Impoundment Control Act
at his hearing, I got this answer. I asked him about President Trump
and the Impoundment Control Act. Here was his answer at the hearing:

Senator, the President ran against the Impoundment Control
Act.

My response to him:

Mr. Vought, I know what the President did. He wants to
change a lot of things. He can submit legislation to do that.
But you are going to be the head of OMB, and here today, at
this hearing, you are refusing to comply--to commit to
comply--with the Impoundment Control Act; is that right? Are
you refusing to commit to complying?

This dance went on and on, and never did he commit to comply with the
Impoundment Control Act.
So that is what we are witnessing right now--a violation of the
Impoundment Control Act.
We, the Senate, were supposed to get the Trump administration's
spending plans for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 a few days ago.
For many Agencies, we haven't seen them yet. So we don't know what they
say their plans are, but we do know that, as of now, they are
withholding about $430 billion of appropriated funds.
Finally, I want to talk about another area where Donald Trump is
violating the law to the detriment of our economy, and that is in the
area of tariffs.
Now, Presidents, of course, have some authority to apply tariffs, and
I have supported targeted tariffs in the past for strategic purposes.
But a number of small businesses around the country and others have
filed lawsuits against the Trump administration for their illegal use
of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
I see the ranking member of the Finance Committee on the floor here,
and he has spoken to this many times, and I want to thank him for his
leadership.
I do want to read directly from the complaint that has been filed
because the complaint--and this is one.
Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to
counter external emergencies, not to grant Presidents a blank check to
write domestic economic policy.
They go on to point out that, yes, we have a fentanyl crisis in
America--all of us agree with that--but using this statute, which is
for economic emergencies, and using the statute in the way the Trump
administration is doing is a gross violation of the President's legal
authority.
As we can see by the downturn in the economy--we just learned that we
are seeing the economy contract; we are seeing consumer confidence
plunge--President Trump's illegal use of that statute is causing
incredible economic pain across the country.
So I want to end with this: When you see this kind of massive
lawbreaking going on--violations of the due process clause, violations
of the First Amendment, violations of article I and the Impoundment
Control Act--I mean, you can just take a marker through the
Constitution and cross out those provisions, right? The 14th
Amendment--cross it out. The First Amendment--cross it out. Cross out
article I. That is what everybody in this body who is not standing up
to the President is complicit in right now.
What bullies do--and make no mistake, President Trump is a bully.
What they do is they try to pick on people they think are weak. If the
rest of us don't stand up for the rights of those people, then it is a
very fast and slippery slope to losing the rights of everybody who
lives in America.
So I hope that, as we review this first 100 days and the massive
lawbreaking that is going on and the tearing up of the Constitution and
the tearing apart of the government and the tearing down of our
economy, we will all wake up because the American people are waking up.
They understand what is going on, and they don't like what they see. So
we had better do our jobs here in the U.S. Senate, and I hope, starting
today, all 100 Senators will begin to do exactly that.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.

Trump Administration First 100 Days

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, yesterday did indeed mark the 100th
day of President Trump's second term, and I think, if you were to pick
four words that really describe his first 100 days, it would be
promises were made, and promises are being kept. That is precisely what
he has done.

[[Page S2687]]

If you want to go through some of these, let's start at the southern
border.
Under President Biden, criminals, terrorists, and traffickers were
flowing across that border, but because President Trump on day one took
Executive action to secure that border, illegal crossings are at their
lowest level in decades. This is something the American people wanted
to see done.
In March, those crossings were down 95 percent from the last
administration. I understand that this past weekend, they had the
lowest number ever--a 99-percent reduction. They had three people who
were apprehended.
When you look at deportations, the Trump administration has already
removed more than 100,000 criminal illegal aliens. This number has
included suspected terrorists, members of violent gangs like MS-13 and
Tren de Aragua, and we know that more of those deportations are going
to take place.
President Trump is fulfilling the promise he made to make this Nation
safe again, to make our communities safe again, and to get these
violent gangs and criminals off our streets.
Now, even though these efforts have been very successful and are
widely supported by the American people, we have seen some powerful
institutions in our country try to block the will of the people and
what they wanted to see done. This includes some of our Nation's social
media companies. According to reports, Facebook is allowing a black
market to thrive on its platform where illegal aliens can buy ride
share and delivery driver accounts from credentialed users. In effect,
what this black market does is help illegals avoid background checks
and be able to work in our country illegally using someone else's name
and credentials.
This is not something that is a new problem. Last year, I led a probe
into the account security of food delivery services after we had
received reports that showed illegal aliens were buying access to the
accounts of legitimate users. Thankfully, companies like Uber Eats,
DoorDash, and Grubhub implemented stronger driver verification
processes after we began this investigation, but Facebook's black
market really helps illegals to bypass those protections.
There is one Facebook group that has been out there, and here is the
name of it: ``UBER ACCOUNT FOR RENT WORLDWIDE.'' This account tallied
22,000 members who bought and sold delivery credentials.
While the social media platform has taken that specific group down,
what we did find is there are now 80 similar groups that are active on
Facebook.
This black market not only runs afoul of the law, but it also poses a
serious public safety threat, especially for women, children, and the
elderly. Just in February--and this is a case in point--there was a
lady in Massachusetts. She was allegedly raped after ordering an Uber
Eats delivery to her home. The app indicated that a woman would be
delivering her order. Instead, an illegal alien with horrific
intentions is who showed up on her doorstep.
Last week, I sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, demanding
answers about what his company is doing to eliminate this black market
from Facebook. He has until May 6 to respond to the questions.
I will continue to press this issue of accountability and public
safety with the big tech giants.
While President Trump has worked to secure our border and our
communities, he has also focused on making our economy stronger than
ever before. In the last 100 days, he has slashed Democrats' far-left
regulations, has unleashed American energy production, and has secured
trillions of dollars in investment to support American workers and
industry.
Now, in Tennessee, we have seen some of the benefits of that, and we
have seen millions of dollars in investments. The candy company Charms
is investing nearly $100 million to expand its production plant and
distribution center in Covington, TN. Mount Juliet was included in a
$700 million nationwide investment by Schneider Electric to boost
domestic manufacturing and energy infrastructure. Electronics company
ABB is investing $80 million in Selmer, TN, to expand manufacturing and
to create new jobs.
Later today, I am going to be joining President Trump at the White
House as he welcomes many CEOs of these companies that are making these
investments in our Nation.
As the President works to usher in a new golden age, we are already
seeing incredible results.
In March, our economy added 228,000 jobs, beating expectations by
almost 100,000 jobs.
That same month, falling energy costs pushed inflation down to 2.4
percent. That is tied with the lowest inflation rate since February
2021. That was 1 month after President Biden took office and ushered in
the worst inflation crisis since the 1970s.
President Trump and my Republican colleagues believe that Americans
should have more money in their pocketbooks, not less, which is why we
are working to extend the President's 2017 tax cuts. These tax cuts
delivered historic growth for the economy, and if we fail to extend
them, families and businesses will face the largest tax hike in
history. It would be a $4 trillion tax hike.

That is why, earlier this month, Republicans in Congress passed a
budget resolution that will enable us to extend these expiring cuts. At
the same time, we are advancing other tax priorities that are
championed by the President, including his proposal to cut taxes on
Social Security.
By taxing Social Security, the Federal Government is taxing a tax. It
makes no sense. Social Security recipients have paid into this program
for decades. They deserve the full sum of their Social Security income.
However, nearly 66 percent of retirees are paying taxes on their Social
Security benefits because Bidenflation pushed seniors' benefits into
higher income brackets.
To address this, I have introduced the RETIREES First Act. It would
lower the tax burden on Social Security benefits for seniors by raising
the provisional income threshold from $25,000 to $34,000 for single
filers and from $32,000 to $68,000 for married filers.
In effect, this legislation would eliminate income taxes for many of
our Nation's retirees, leaving them with more money in their paychecks.
As we work on these tax provisions and more, I am looking forward to
working with President Trump to deliver relief for hard-working
Tennesseans and, indeed, all Americans.
We are the greatest Nation on Earth, and with strong leadership back
in the White House, we can get this Nation back on track.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.

S.J. Res. 49

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, later this afternoon, Senators Wyden,
Kaine, and I will force a vote here in the Senate to put an end to
Donald Trump's stupid and reckless trade war. I thank Senators Wyden
and Kaine for their leadership on this issue.
We will have now more than 3 hours of debate on it, and that begins
now.
Our resolution presents Republicans with a choice: stand with Donald
Trump or stand with American families hurt by his trade war. The dismal
GDP numbers today should be a wake-up call to Republican Senators now
more than ever.
Four Republicans joined us last time to pass a resolution blocking
tariffs on Canada because they knew how bad those tariffs were for
people back home. Many more Republicans should join us today as the
disastrous economic consequences of Trump's reckless trade war gets
worse every single day.
If the Senate passes this bill, Speaker Johnson and House Republicans
should immediately drop their opposition or else they will be complicit
in pushing America into a recession.
One thing is clear, Donald Trump's tariffs have been a total failure.
Instead of isolating China, Donald Trump's tariffs are isolating us.
Instead of spurring American manufacturing, Trump's tariffs are raising
costs and driving us into a recession.
There is no strategy with Trump's tariffs, only chaos. One day,
Donald Trump says yes to tariffs; the next day, no to tariffs; one day,
tariffs on this country; the next day, tariffs on that country. Even
Donald Trump's own policy advisers are struggling to explain his flip-
flopping.
The only thing Donald Trump's tariffs have succeeded in is raising
the

[[Page S2688]]

odds of recession and sending markets into a tailspin.
I have talked to business owners in New York. I was in Suffolk County
at Tandy's, a well-known dress seller there. Her costs are going up 30
percent because of tariffs, and she is faced with two awful choices:
raise prices or lay off employees. And she doesn't want to do either.
Small businesses, medium businesses, big businesses--they are all
frozen because they don't know what Donald Trump will do next. They
can't plan for the future. Their costs are rising. They can't hire new
workers. It is happening all over America.
Senate Republicans know deep down that Donald Trump's tariffs are
awful for their States. So today they have to choose: Stick with Trump,
or stand with your States and the people of America.
I thank my colleague and yield to the Senator from Oregon, the
ranking member of Finance, who has done such a great job on this issue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I just want to
thank Leader Schumer for all the help. We are going to be focused today
on something that really matters to people, and I thank him.
Mr. President, we are beginning, as you can tell, to discuss the
resolution to repeal the global tariff emergency.
As is becoming routine under this President, Americans were greeted
with grim economic news this morning. After 3 years of strong growth
and rising job numbers, the U.S. economy actually shrank in the first 3
months of 2025. The trade deficit hit a record $162 billion. The United
States added only half as many jobs this month as expected.
A major culprit is unquestionably Donald Trump and his senseless
global tariffs. If this continues to be our tariff policy, every major
economist and forecaster is, unfortunately, predicting recession, job
losses, and the misery that was all over our news feeds this morning.
The U.S. Senate cannot be an idle spectator in the tariff madness.
The Congress has the power to set tariffs and regulate global trade,
and Members can vote today--not do something in a month or some other
time--but Members can vote today to put an end to Trump's global
tariffs and the economic disaster they are creating.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump slapped new 10 percent taxes on
nearly everything Americans buy from overseas, 125 percent tariffs on
nearly everything from China, and he promises even higher taxes in July
on products from nearly five dozen countries. That is just the latest
plan.
I think we all understand goldfish have memories that last longer
than Donald Trump's tariff promises. Before these global tariffs, there
was the on-again, off-again trade war with China and Mexico; tariffs on
steel, aluminum, and cars; and ad hoc exemptions for things like
electronics and fertilizer. When the public outcry was so great, Donald
Trump had to backtrack.
Donald Trump imposed his global tariffs by declaring an economic
emergency under a law call IEEPA. No President has ever imposed tariffs
under this law. In my view, Trump's actions clearly go beyond what the
law allows, which is why Senators Shaheen, Kaine, and I have offered a
bill to make it clear that this law does not allow the President to
issue tariffs.
Members can vote today to repeal the so-called emergency Trump
declared and end the harmful global tariffs.
Now, I am going to talk for just a few minutes with respect to taking
stock of the economic carnage that Donald Trump's trade chaos has
already inflicted on our country. We are going to examine the
administration's own claims about what their plan is and make the case
for why every Member of this body should vote to assert the powers of
Congress to trade and to end the tariffs, and they should do it no
matter their party or which State they represent.
I already mentioned the shocking economic news this morning. By every
single forecast, by every measure, Donald Trump's self-defeating
tariffs are actively making Americans poorer, and they are doing it now
and for years to come.
Economic growth, gone. Inflation, rising. Unemployment projections,
up again.
Experts estimate Trump's tariffs will cost average families about
$4,000 a year. Many products from China won't even be available soon,
and that is thanks to the tariffs. For the products that are still
available, prices are going up--a fact that Donald Trump flails about
trying to hide.
When Amazon was rumored to list the impacts of tariffs on prices,
Donald Trump threw a fit, reportedly threatening Jeff Bezos and calling
it a hostile act. God forbid that Americans actually know what the real
costs of his tariffs are.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Republicans are charging ahead with plans
to go forward with their tax bill, which features more bailouts for
billionaires, paid for by kicking millions of people off their health
insurance and gutting programs that kids and families rely on to stay
safe and healthy.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, puts higher taxes on groceries, clothes, and
cars for working families, while he puts his extra time in to pass tax
cuts for the wealthy. That is his agenda.
My state knows how Donald Trump's tariff chaos is already hurting
real people, and we know how it is drying up markets for ``red, white,
and blue'' products. About one in five jobs in Oregon depends on trade,
and the trade jobs often pay better.
Speaking with small businesses and workers all over Oregon--I did it
just last week--every single one warned of damage from tariffs, and
soon.
Bob's Red Mill, for example, sells delicious flour and grains, mostly
made from wheat and other crops in Oregon. But some of their
ingredients--like coconut or tapioca, which just aren't grown here--
come from outside the country. The cost of those products goes up
because of tariffs.
Worse, foreign markets for Bob's goods are drying out. That is
because other countries put their own tariffs on Bob's flour and other
Oregon ag products in retaliation for Trump's aimless war.
Oregon grass seed growers estimate that about half of their exports--
nearly $200 million in sales--are being canceled, thanks to the global
tariffs.
Donald Trump and his advisers claim there is nothing to worry about.
They say the economists and the pundits are overreacting, and
everything is going according to plan. Secretary Bessent is on cable
news so often, trying to calm investors, that it is a wonder that he
has got any time to do a bit of negotiating.
But, as usual, it is not clear at all what the plan is, what their
tariffs are supposed to accomplish, or when, if ever, American families
and workers will see the relief.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump claimed he would have 200 deals
completed within 3 or 4 weeks. Then he said: No, that is ``physically
impossible'' to have all of the meetings needed to seal the deals. He
should have thought of that before he started a trade war against the
entire world.
Now, he claimed that he was already negotiating with China to lower
tariffs and calm trade tensions, but China and Secretary Bessent said
that talks have not even started.
This weekend, the Agriculture Secretary said 100 countries had
reached out to start trade talks, and almost at the same time,
Secretary Bessent said there are actually 18 so-called priority
countries, and those talks would take about 90 days.
If nobody in this administration can even agree on what is happening
right now, how can they negotiate smart trade deals with nearly every
nation on Earth?
Anonymous White House aides continue to say that Donald Trump is
working to deescalate his trade war, but Donald Trump doesn't sound
like he is willing to admit he got it wrong. He told Time magazine that
if tariffs are at 20 percent or even 50 percent a year from now, that
would be a ``total victory.'' So, once again, no one can tell what his
administration wants or what the end game is.
I believe it is hard to see how any foreign country right now would
make concessions to Donald Trump. That is because he has proven himself
to be both untrustworthy and incapable of sticking to a position on
tariffs for more than a few weeks at a time.
One foreign diplomat told the press that countries are worried that
any

[[Page S2689]]

deal they make with the Treasury or Commerce Secretaries will be
contradicted by Trump. Other trading partners said they don't want to
make a deal now only to have Trump decide on a unilateral tariff in the
future.
Donald Trump has trashed America's credibility.
He hasn't just made it unlikely for his administration to get a good
deal for American workers. My view is he has hurt every future
president who wants to strike a good trade deal.
The best way to restore our Nation's good name is for Congress to
step in and assert, finally, our constitutional authority over trade.
Article I, section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress power ``To
regulate Commerce with foreign Nations'' and ``To lay and collect
Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.'' In other words, this is our job.
It is not always pretty, but Congress can provide stability and
certainty on trade that last beyond a single President's
administration.
This body has already signaled bipartisan support for reversing
pointless tariffs. We did that when we passed Senator Kaine's bill to
end the tariffs on Canada. Today, the Senate can take another powerful
step--a powerful step in the right direction--by voting to repeal the
global tariffs on a bipartisan basis.
I would just close by saying: Listen to your constituents. Listen to
what you are hearing from home, because what I heard was,
overwhelmingly, Oregonians and the people I ran into in airports and
the like said it is time to bring some certainty and predictability
back to making these urgently needed trade policies.
I urge this body to vote for jobs and prosperity rather than unending
trade conflict that leaves our country as a loser. I urge every Senator
to support this crucial resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to support everything that my
colleague, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, just said about
these tariffs.
I want to make two points about the tariffs--one, the tariffs
themselves, and then second, the congressional failure to assert its
own authority on policies that it has the constitutional responsibility
for when our failure results in economic pain and insecurity for the
American people.
First of all, the tariffs. When the history of this decision is
written, President Trump's imposition of these wild and reckless
tariffs is going to be seen as one of the greatest economic blunders in
a century. It is that bad.
What is happening in Vermont is happening in every State across this
country. First of all, these tariffs are a tax. Second, they are paid
for by consumers, by manufacturers, and by producers. Third, it is
having a negative impact on trade and on our economy already. Today's
information about the gross domestic product shrinkage is evidence in
and of itself.
In Vermont, Trump's tariffs are estimated to cost Vermont households
more than $1 billion. More than 18,000 Vermonters work in industries
that are targeted by retaliatory tariffs, but virtually every Vermonter
is going to be impacted by increased costs--inflation--as a result of
the tariffs.
As an example, food, fuel, energy--all of these things are going to
be impacted and really affect people in their day-to-day and month-to-
month budgets.
We get a lot of our electricity, a lot of our home heating fuel, and
a lot of our petroleum from Canada, especially in the northern part of
our State. Those costs are going to be increased, especially with the
expected retaliatory tariffs that are imposed on us by countries
subject to the arbitrary action of President Trump.
Farmers are really hit hard. Most of our farmers in Vermont import
their fertilizer from Canada. There is about a 25-percent increase that
they are going to be paying. And these are farmers, as the Presiding
Officer knows, that operate on the thinnest of margins in the most
uncertain of activities, subject to weather and price fluctuations and
so many other things that make our farmers courageous entrepreneurs.
But why add 25 percent to the cost of fertilizer when that input cost
is already so high? It is mind-boggling to think that this is a
voluntary action by the President.
Canada, by the way, happens to be our biggest trading partner, and 34
States have Canada as their major trading partner. In these tariffs--in
Canada, we are a 2.1 billion import partner with Canada--20 percent
tariff. China--a lot of input from China that our manufacturers use--54
percent tariff, plus who knows how many more tariffs depending on the
day and how President Trump feels when he wakes up. Trinidad and
Tobago: 81 million, 10 percent tariff. Germany: 75 million. Mexico: 77
million.
Very frustratingly for all of us, the sweeping global tariff order
unnecessarily increases prices and taxes on countries that have trade
surpluses with America.
I recently heard from a Vermonter who imports coffee and has a niche
business that has become extremely successful. The tariffs on Colombia
have resulted in this: A container that cost $700 last month--that
container now costs $13,000. How do you deal with that? A hit to the
margin is--no business can absorb that.
Vermont is also home to one of two businesses in the world that
produce these unique snow globes, and they have been in business for 25
years. It is a modest business, but it is one that was created by a
Vermont entrepreneur, and it has been really successful. They are going
to have to close their doors at the end of the summer with these
increased tariffs, basically, on China.
A second point that I think is relevant to these tariffs is the
arbitrariness of their implementation and the arbitrariness of how and
who is affected. We have a situation where we supposedly have these
tariffs on China. Apple Computer, quite understandably, was upset. It
was going to increase the cost of iPhones. Well, no problem. Tim Cook
was at the inauguration, sitting on the throne of honor, and he had the
telephone number, made the call, and the tariffs on iPhones vanished.
You know that snow globe manufacturer that I mentioned from Vermont?
She does not have Howard Lutnick's phone number. She does not have
Scott Bessent's phone number. She does not have President Trump's phone
number. She is out of luck.
So now, with these tariffs and the way they are being implemented
without any congressional engagement whatsoever, we are turning our
economy from one where it is based on a good product, really good
service, where you compete in the marketplace and if your product is
better and your service is better, you succeed, to an economy that is
more based on access. Do you know Lutnick? Do you know Bessent? Do you
know the President?
Oh, and by the way, if you contributed a couple million dollars to
the inauguration, you probably do know them and they give out the phone
number.
That is absolutely outrageous. People work hard. They produce a good
product. They give good service. Shouldn't they be entitled to the
reward for the labor that they have done; whereas, what we are seeing
now is that if you are connected, you can be rewarded regardless of how
good your product is or how lousy your service is. That is offensive--
and should be--to every single one of us here, and that is absolutely
what is happening in the White House.
Another thing is there is a casual disregard for how hard it is for
everyday families in the Presiding Officer's State and mine and in the
ranking member's State to pay the bills because inflation has been
here. Instead of arguing about who is at fault for that, let's solve
the problem, not aggravate the problem. And these tariffs aggravate the
problem. There is absolutely no denying that. This is just the wrong
thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

Another element of this is, what is the purpose of these tariffs?
President Trump won't give a clear answer. It is to make us rich. They
will pay; we won't. It is to bring manufacturing back here. Or it is to
punish folks that he deems unworthy. It depends on the day, and it
depends on who is asking. So there is no coherent rationale connected
to the imposition of this enormous economic pain and cost increase that
is being imposed on American businesses and American consumers.

[[Page S2690]]

The other question here that is profoundly important for this
institution--every single one of us is proud to be a Member of the U.S.
Senate, and I think our pride is about our pride in the Constitution as
citizens where, under the Constitution, this Congress plays a role as a
coequal branch of government. And I think every single one of us here
is wary of the accumulation of excessive power in any one person or in
any one institution.
Congress has steadily over the years been ceding much of its
responsibility and authority to the executive branch. There is no
authority greater than the power to tax, and that is why, in the
Constitution, the power to impose tariffs resides in the House of
Representatives and the Senate. And shouldn't it be that way? Because
in the imposition of the tax, there has to be a decision that--in
asking our citizens, who we represent, to turn over hard-earned money
to the government, we have to be able to justify the purpose for which
those funds are being expended.
By allowing the President to take over, in effect, the taxing
authority that occurs when the tariff is imposed, we have ceded that
responsibility to him or that authority to him, and we have abandoned
our responsibility to look our constituents in the eye if and when we
say a tax should be imposed. None of us like to do that, but a
government has to collect revenues for the common good. We have
delegated that authority to the President, and it is wrong of us to do
that.
So we can have different views about whether there should be a tariff
or what the rate should be, but we have a collective responsibility to
do everything we can to maintain the constitutional structure of three
independent branches of government, each a counterweight to the other.
That is not just an abstract concept; that is the wisdom that has
served us well for well over 200 years, that those checks and balances
give all our citizens an opportunity to have a seat at the table when
major decisions about their lives and their futures are being made.
So that is why this decision that we are about to make is not just
about the tariffs. It is not just about, in my view, how recklessly
they are being applied and imposed. It is not just about how they
infect our economy with corruption, where it is who you know rather
than how hard you work that is going to get you ahead. It is about the
basic structure of our constitutional order, and every single one of us
has the responsibility to protect that because that is not about us. It
is not about who we represent. It is about how our country can operate
with a democratic system where every single person, through their
representatives, has a seat at the table.
So I urge all of us to take a look at what our constitutional
responsibility is. Whether we agree or not on so many different issues
of vital concern to the future of this country, we each have a
responsibility to act in a way that protects the constitutional system.
That means that we exercise authority over tariffs; we don't give that
away to an executive branch decision.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, as the American people can clearly see,
President Trump's new tariffs have become a massive tax hike on
consumers--a tax on the food we eat, a tax on the clothes we wear, the
cars we drive, every cup of coffee we have in the morning.
These rising costs are not just hurting consumers, actually; they are
hurting American businesses and our workforce too. We are already
seeing the impact. It is not a hypothetical.
I call your attention to my home State, the great State of
California, home to two of the largest ports in the Nation in southern
California alone, the neighboring Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,
that truly power our Nation's economy.
It is not an exaggeration. The Port of Los Angeles, which is the
largest port in the United States, expects imports to drop by 35
percent in just 2 weeks' time, as Trump's tariffs and his manufactured
chaos bring global trade to a halt. The Port of Long Beach is expecting
similar declines.
Take a minute to think about the magnitude of that drop in cargo
volume. That decline, at the end of the day, will mean empty shelves
and higher prices.
The over $300 billion in cargo coming through what we know as the San
Pedro Bay port complex is tied to nearly 1 million jobs in the region
alone and 2.7 million jobs across the country. That is nearly one job
for every four containers.
When the richest President in history decides on his own, unlawfully,
to haphazardly apply an across-the-board tax on goods--because that is
what these tariffs are--the goods-moving industry is going to take a
hit. It will mean fewer jobs for port workers, for truckers, and for
communities across the country. It will mean more Americans out of
work.
While the western port communities may be the first to feel the pain,
it won't be long before the effects of these tariffs reach the east
coast and the gulf coast.
As I mentioned, this isn't just bad news for American consumers who
rely on imports. It is also bad news for U.S. farmers and businesses
that rely on the export of goods to other countries.
Trump's tariffs are already damaging important supply chains in ways
that will be difficult and very expensive to reverse. And, in the
meantime, China and others are all too happy to fill in the void.
I just had a group of growers from California in my office, just
yesterday, and they were sharing with me their very specific
experiences--fears--that are playing out. You see, U.S. companies, not
just agricultural companies, depend on markets in China and elsewhere
in Asia, India, and Europe for sales, for profits that they can, in
turn, invest in their own companies and hire more employees.
Now, when those markets are shut off to them and those countries
respond to these unnecessary tariff wars provoked by President Trump,
they don't stop consuming. Whether it is fruit, vegetables,
electronics, or otherwise, they just find somewhere else to get it.
When those other countries, those other markets, find a replacement for
their supply, they are not going to give it up in 2 months, maybe, if
Donald Trump wakes up in a better mood and sees the error of his ways
when it comes to these tariffs--because there is that deadline, right?
We are in a 90-day postponement of a lot of these tariffs, but we don't
know what is coming on day 91.
Tariffs are imposed. Tariffs are not imposed. More significant
tariffs are imposed. I hope it has nothing to do with his poll numbers
because the American public will continue to feel more pain.
My point is this. Other markets and consumers abroad who have
purchased from the United States are going to purchase elsewhere, and
they are not going to revert immediately back, even if we get the
President to make the right decision in the next couple of months.
Now, like I said, Americans are already feeling the pain. It is going
to get worse. Just this morning, the Commerce Department reported our
Nation's gross domestic product for the first quarter. The results: Our
quarterly GDP declined by 0.3 percent. It wasn't a reduction in growth.
It was a decline of 0.3 percent in his first 100 days alone.
Donald Trump's reckless policies actually shrank the American
economy. Is that what he bragged about? Is that what he campaigned on?
Is that what people voted for?
This shrinking of the economy, by the way, follows 3 years of robust
growth of our economy under President Biden. I don't think our
Republican colleagues will recognize that, but it is true. The numbers
do not lie.
So 100 days of chaos, increased costs, and corruption are shrinking
our economy. To my Republican colleagues: Are you hearing this? Are you
listening? Are you prepared to act?
American businesses are going to be forced to take on some of these
higher costs for materials, to cut back on production, to try to make
ends meet, to delay investment. That is the opposite of what we need.
We need more investment, not to delay or postpone investment because of
tariff uncertainty. And, certainly, they are going to raise prices,
because, again, when American companies have to import, it is American
companies that pay the tariffs. It is not other countries, as the
President

[[Page S2691]]

would like you to believe, and those costs get passed on to the
consumer.
Meanwhile, the world is moving on without us, as I explained a minute
ago.
So let's be clear about the stakes of what we are debating today: A
vote against this resolution is a vote to maintain Trump's tariffs that
are so clearly devastating our economy already. It will move us closer
to a recession solely of Trump's doing. You can't blame it on anybody
else. And it is a vote against the American worker, a vote against the
American economy, a vote against American competitiveness. Is that what
you want to go back and tell your constituents?
Colleagues, I urge you to listen to your constituents, to small
businesses in our respective States, the State and local governments.
It is not too late to turn back.
Support this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, President Trump took a strong American
economy and broke it in less than 100 days.
Right now, Republican Senators are at a crossroads. Will they vote to
stop Trump's chaotic tariffs and save our economy, or will they
continue bending the knee to Donald Trump? That is the vote that we are
forcing tonight.
When he ran for office, Donald Trump promised, over and over and
over, that he would lower costs on day one. Those were his words: Lower
costs on day one. In fact, he said after he was elected that it was one
of the main reasons that he won. But as soon as the election was over,
he ignored that promise.
Instead of working to lower costs on day one, he has decided to start
the dumbest trade war in U.S. history, which is already increasing
costs for American households and damaging our economy.
So let's take a step back and talk about what has happened since
Trump started this trade war.
The stock market took the biggest plunge since the early days of the
pandemic, sinking millions of Americans' retirement accounts.
Businesses have begun hiking prices and laying off workers. Americans
are worried that they won't be able to survive a cratering economy.
And, just today, Americans woke up to the news that Donald Trump
single-handedly shrunk our economy in 3 months and raised the cost of
their groceries.
The warning lights are all flashing red. We have seen this before,
but this time our economy is teetering on the edge not because of a
mortgage meltdown or a one-in-a-century virus but because of one man
alone: the President of the United States.
Unless we reverse course quickly, many economists believe that a
recession is inevitable. And like in all recessions, the pain will fall
hardest on working families. Many Americans will face the one-two punch
of job losses on top of overwhelming debt burdens. A cascade of
defaults and foreclosures and personal bankruptcies could follow.
With so many indications that American families are in serious
trouble, our government should be throwing them a lifeline. Instead,
President Trump is throwing them an anchor, while he carves out
exceptions for a few well-connected billionaires who have bent the
knee.
This is the moment for Congress to step up. And where are the Senate
Republicans? Watching? Waiting? Hoping it doesn't get worse? Hoping
that maybe somebody else will step up?
Well, I am here to say: It is up to us in the U.S. Senate. No one
else is coming to save us. We are the ones who have to act.
If Republicans care about the American people, they will vote yes on
our resolution today and turn off the fake emergency that Donald Trump
is using to impose his on-again, off-again red-light, green-light
tariffs--the tariffs that are pushing our economy off a cliff.
Let me repeat: Congress can end this economic threat today. All we
need are some Republican Senators to join us to vote down the
President's abuse of emergency authorities.
Unless we take action now, millions of people will lose their jobs,
families will be destroyed, and our economy will take years to recover.
But this time, it will be the President of the United States who
destroyed our economy, and it will be congressional Republicans who
helped him do it because they didn't have the spine to stand up to
Donald Trump.
So I say to my Republican colleagues: Let's get this done. You have a
choice. You can either continue to enable Donald Trump's tariff chaos,
or you could actually stand up for our constituents. It is truly that
simple.
The chaos and corruption of Trump's first 100 days can be curbed. The
President is no King, and he only has as much power as Congress is
willing to let him keep.
It is time for us--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--to step
up and head off a crisis before millions more American families are
hurt. We have the power. We just need the courage to use it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, the Constitution of the United States puts
two powers clearly--clearly--within the hands of Congress: the power to
tax and the power to conduct trade policy, including the imposition of
tariffs. These are powers for Congress, not the Executive. But
President Trump finds Congress an inconvenience, and he has decided to
take both of these powers onto his own shoulders by imposing a national
sales tax--that is what his global tariff regime is--without any vote
in Congress, purely on his own say-so, and to engage every nation in
the world in a trade war on his own say-so without involving Congress.
President Trump has said in the past: ``I alone can fix it,'' and we
know that that statement is false. No one alone can fix the big
challenges facing our Nation. But I think if he were to say, ``I alone
can break it,'' the results of the last 100 days would have proven him
correct.
President Trump, on Inauguration Day, inherited the strongest economy
on the planet Earth--not a perfect economy but the strongest economy,
the envy of other industrialized nations. That is what he had just 100
days ago. And we know this morning that strong economy, which was
growing for 3 years at a very solid pace, is now contracting.
It is not only the contraction of the economy, it is chaos in the
stock market; it is declining consumer confidence; it is projections of
recession by Federal Reserve districts and major economists.
All of this is happening because Donald Trump has pursued a three-
step strategy of his own: massive layoffs of employees, contrary to
congressionally passed appropriations bills, massive slashing of
Federal spending programs, including those relied upon by everyday
Americans in contravention of congressionally appropriated spending
bills, and the waging of a tariff war against the entire planet.
And as my colleagues have said, it is a tariff war that gets
announced and then suspended and then delayed and then announced again
and then exceptions might be granted if we like you or not. It is
chaos.
Last week, I traveled around the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I
talked to businesses everywhere in my State. And they talked about the
layoffs and they talked about the spending cuts and they talked about
the tariffs and they added those three together and said what those
three add up to is chaos--the chaos of unpredictability.
Many businesses told me that they want to make investments. They want
to make investments to grow their businesses in Virginia, but they are
unwilling to make a decision to invest as long as the rules of the road
are chaotic and up in the air.
Businesses that import natural products to turn into finished
products have to pay a tariff on the import. Businesses who sell their
product abroad are losing markets as nations put retaliatory tariffs on
the United States. And so these businesses are pausing their investment
decisions.
Businesses in Virginia that are connected to multinational businesses
are saying that their headquarters are deciding, well, we can invest in
the United States or we can invest in another country. It is not wise
to invest in the United States when everything is so chaotic.
Let's be clear, and I spoke about this with my colleagues when I
talked

[[Page S2692]]

about the Canada tariff provision that we successfully rebuked the
President on a month ago. A tariff is nothing more than a sales tax. It
is a sales tax on the products that everyday Americans use, especially
groceries and clothing and building supplies, for farmers, the cost of
fertilizer that they need as they are engaging in spring planting.
Trump's worldwide tariffs are nothing but a new sales tax.
And the analysis, as this chart shows, of who the tariffs raise taxes
on, like every other form of sales tax, tariffs are regressive. They
hit lower income people the most. The average tax change as a share of
income if the Trump tariffs are implemented, it is essentially on the
poorest 20 percent of the American population, the equivalent to an
additional 6.2 percent sales tax. For the next wealthiest quintile up,
it is a 5.5-percent increase on the sales tax. For the next, it is 5.0,
all the way up to the richest 1 percent will see their effective sales
tax rate go up by 1.7 percent. This is a sales tax on everyone in the
country, but it is a sales tax that, as all sales taxes do, fall
hardest on those who can least afford it.
The new sales tax is affecting retirees particularly. So from NBC
News:

Retirees `stunned' as market turmoil over tariffs shrinks
their 401(k)s.

We have a Social Security system that is a good foundation for
retirement so long as this administration doesn't mess it up, but it is
not sufficient for retirement. And what you need for a dignified
retirement is Social Security plus private savings, in most people's
case, 401(k)s. The turmoil in the market driven by tariff uncertainty
is hammering retirees more than just about any other group of people in
this country.
The new sales tax is also a drag on economic growth--we saw this in
the announcement this morning--but not just economic growth in the
United States. I am on the Armed Services Committee, and I had a chance
to go visit 2 weeks ago with the new government, incoming government in
Germany.
Germany is a great ally. More U.S. troops are on the ground in
Germany than any nation other than Japan outside the United States. We
are security partners in Ukraine and in European security generally.
The new German Government was just elected, the Chancellor will be
installed in the first week in May with a mandate to restore the German
economy, which has been in the doldrums since about 2019.
And as I talked to German leaders, military leaders and leaders in
the civilian government, they said this is going to be the most pro-
American, pro-transatlantic Chancellor you will have seen for a very
long time, but he is coming in with a powerful mandate to grow the
German economy so that we can be even better security partners, so that
we can work better together on the manufacture of the F-35 and to help
Ukraine in its defense.
But the Trump tariffs are standing directly in the way of this new,
pro-American government being able to achieve what they need to be able
to achieve. And that is why the IMF said that the Trump tariffs, this
new sales tax, will be a drag not just on U.S. economic growth but on
global economic growth.
This is a story from less than a week ago. U.S. manufacturing was
already slowing before the GDP numbers came out today. A larger share
of manufacturers are reporting declines in new orders rather than
increases. Some of those declines are driven because of the price
effect of tariffs, the price effect of retaliatory tariffs, but some
are also being driven by the uncertainty.
There is a chaos penalty on the economy. When you are not sure what
is going to happen, you slow your investments, and that is why you see
a decline in manufacturing.
The Trump new sales tax, again, as proof from Reuters, ``Trump
tariffs would harm all involved, U.S. trade partners say.''
This is not just something that is hurting everyday Americans--those
are those to whom we have a responsibility in this body, but this is
affecting the global economy in a way that is shocking.
And China, Japan, South Korea--a company from South Korea just
announced a huge investment in Virginia yesterday in the clean energy
space. Japan and South Korea, especially, are countries that do a lot
of foreign direct investment in the United States. Japan and South
Korea are two of our strongest partners, but even they are responding
in a hostile way to U.S. tariffs. In fact, you see China, Japan, and
South Korea starting to cooperate together to ward off some of the
negative economic effects of U.S. tariffs. The last thing we want to do
is encourage Japan and South Korea to work closer with China. We want
Japan and South Korea to work closer with the United States. But the
Trump tariffs are chasing allies into the arms of adversaries. How
foolish is that?
And then we end up with the chaos argument that my colleagues had
mentioned before. From the New York Times last week: ``With Only Bad
Options, Businesses Scramble for a Tariff Chaos Playbook.''
A tariff chaos playbook.
When the cost of your imports is going up, when your export market is
shrinking, when you don't know what the end of the story will be, the
options that you have are very murky. Businesses want to have
predictability. They want to be able to look into a crystal ball, and
if they don't completely know the future, they want to be able to make
enough of a prediction about the economic climate that would justify
sizable investments.
And in a time of chaos, those investments are not going to be made,
and that raises the danger that this first quarter economic contraction
will be followed by another, which would be the textbook definition of
a recession.
So how did we get here? From an economy on Inauguration Day that was
the strongest in the world, when President Trump stood 50 yards from
here and said it was a golden age, to an economy that has nothing but
red lights and question marks all over it, we got here because one
individual decided to bypass Congress and take both the taxing power
and the trade power into his own hands without a debate, without
committee hearings, without deliberation, without considering what the
people thought about the plan, and that one man and his decisions have
taken a chain saw to the American economy.
We must turn this around, and the good news is the Senate has the
ability to turn it around. When the Congress passed the IEEPA law
decades ago, it recognized the potential that an Executive can overuse
the emergency power, and that is why Congress did something rare in
IEEPA. They gave the power even to a single Senator, even to a single
Senator in the minority party to say: Wait a minute, Mr. President, you
have declared an emergency and, guess what, you are wrong. And even at
the request of a single Senator, this body is put on the board to have
to declare whether we own the policies of the President, this Trump
madness, or whether we disown it and urge him to take a different path.
All the economic trends are pointing in the same direction. We should
take a different path on the economy before this gets worse. The vote
we will have later today gives the Senate, the greatest deliberative
body in the world, the chance to stand up and say: Let's take a
different path.
I thank my colleagues for their work together on this important
resolution and urge a favorable vote on the resolution that we will
have later today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, you know, there was an old-fashioned
conservative principle that believed that less taxes were better than
more taxes; that if you taxed something, you got less of it, so that if
you place a new tax on trade, you will get less trade.
There was also this idea that you didn't do taxation without
representation. That idea goes not only back to our American
Revolution, it goes back to the English civil war as well.
It goes back to probably Magna Carta. I mean, for hundreds of years
the English were arguing of the supremacy of Parliament, that
Parliament would be able to have the power over the King. So when we
were leading up to the Revolution, the cry from James Otis was,
``Taxation without representation is tyranny.''
These were the words of James Otis, but they still ring true today.
It should not come as a surprise that in a country founded on a tax
revolt, one person

[[Page S2693]]

is not allowed to raise taxes. Our Founding Fathers saw this and said:
No, we want to make sure that the authority of taxation begins not only
in Congress, that it actually originates in the House, the body closest
to the people.
Our Constitution forbids taxes from being enacted without the
approval of Congress, and yet here we are.
An emergency has been declared, as the Senator from Virginia
remarked, everywhere. There is an emergency everywhere. Sounds like an
emergency everywhere is really an emergency nowhere. But despite the
constitutional restraints or constraints on executive power, Americans
have now been ordered to pay higher taxes in the form of tariffs but
without the consent of Congress.
The tariffs we discuss today are global tariffs. Just about every
country in the world is subjected to at least a 10-percent tariff, to
say nothing of the dozens of countries whose imports will be taxed at a
much higher rate.
Congress didn't debate these tariffs. Congress didn't vote to enact
these tariffs. The tariffs are simply imposed by Presidential fiat, by
proclamation.
Government by one person who assumes all power by asserting a so-
called emergency is the antithesis of constitutional government. It was
Montesquieu that our Founding Fathers looked to in setting up the
separation of powers.
And Montesquieu said that when you unite the legislative power with
the executive power in the body of one person, that no liberty can
exist. They worried about this. They fretted about it. They worried
about having too much power with the President, and so they severely
constricted the power of the Presidency. They said the President
couldn't take us to war; only Congress could. They said the President
couldn't spend money; only Congress could. They said the President
couldn't tax people; only Congress could.
These were the very bedrock and still are the very bedrock of our
constitutional principles. Yet, people--particularly on my side--are
looking away and saying: Oh, whatever. We will just let the President
do whatever.
Look, I supported President Trump. I still support President Trump on
many things. But I am not for a country run by emergencies. Even if the
person was doing what I wanted and was, you know, making every day my
birthday, I would not be for that unless we deliberated upon that.
There are constitutional processes that are incredibly important.
The Constitution doesn't allow the President of the United States to
be the sole decider. Even the President must abide by the proper limits
of Executive power.
Thankfully, our Constitution does more than merely hope that our
Chief Executive will remain within the confines of the Constitution;
our Constitution explicitly limits the power of the Presidency. Our
Founders led a rebellion against a King precisely over this. They went
to great lengths to circumscribe and limit the power of the Presidency.
Devoted as they were to the preservation of individual liberty, the
Founders divided power among three branches of government. But more
importantly, those three branches were to check and balance each other
to prevent one branch from accumulating too much power.
Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the Constitution was to
pit ambition against ambition. The natural ambition of men and women to
accumulate power was to be checked by other branches of people who
would say: You can't have that power. It is our power.
That pitting of ambition back and forth was to constrain government.
It was to constrain government from running away and power from being
run away with one person.
The Founding Fathers empowered Congress with tools to ensure that the
liberties of the people would not be threatened by one-person rule. The
Founders would not be surprised that the Executive would attempt to
aggrandize power at the expense of the legislature. They would have
expected it. Indeed, they did expect it. But they would be surprised--
the Founders would be shocked that Congress would voluntarily and
recklessly and fecklessly give up their power to the Presidency, to
submit to emergency rule. The Founders would not have expected the
House of Representatives to become so craven as to refuse to even allow
a vote on ending the emergency.
The law says that the vote we will have is mandatory. It is
privileged. The Senate will adhere to the law.
The House will not have a vote. The House, in its haste to give away
its power to tax, actually passed a rule to prevent a mandatory vote on
ending the emergencies. They prevent it because the rule says that days
no longer exist. They declared that legislative days will not exist
despite the legislature continuing to meet each day.
The House has essentially ruled that days are not days and they are
not to be counted as days until such time as the House again agrees to
allow days to be counted as days. Does that sound absurd? Absolutely.
It is absurd. It is craven. It is cowardice at its best, and it is
dishonest because a rule of the House is preventing a law from being
obeyed. I didn't know we could pass a rule to prevent a law from being
obeyed.
When the emergency powers were granted to the President in 1966, the
Emergencies Act was meant to constrain the Republic. We were already
worried about too many emergencies. Many on my side have actually
cosponsored bills that say emergencies should automatically end unless
affirmatively approved by Congress. Many of those people now are
looking the other way. They are looking the other way and saying: Well,
it is our President now.
I had a reform of the Emergencies Act under the previous President, a
Democrat. I had the same bill under a Republican. This should not be a
partisan issue.
The Founders would not have expected the upper chamber, the Senate,
to let the novel use of a statute traditionally used to sanction
adversaries to become used for tariffs to tax American people and to
let it go unchallenged. This is not constitutionalism; this is
cowardice.
Our system of government cannot work when Congress abdicates its
legislative authority. Madison said we would pit ambition against
ambition, but what if we have Presidential ambition and we have
congressional acquiescence? we have congressional timidity? we have
congressional nonentity, choosing to become a nonentity, not
participate, do whatever you want? It is a recipe for disaster. Madison
and those of the revolutionary generation would have expected Members
of Congress to jealously guard their authority from the imperial
pretensions of the Chief Executive.
To endorse governance by emergency rule is to fail to live up to what
the Constitution demands of us, and failure to do our constitutional
duty is an invitation to further emergency rule.
I know some Republicans like the idea of taxing trade, but what if
there is a next President who is a Democrat who says: By emergency
rule, I decree there will be no gasoline-using cars. We will have only
electric cars.
That is what we are preparing ourselves for. Every distortion of the
checks and balances of powers gets worse. Every time a party changes
hands, they say: Well, you guys did this, so we are going to leapfrog
and do this. And it goes back and forth until the individual citizen
knows nothing other than the loss of liberty.
Even President Trump didn't try to argue that this law called IEEPA,
which is normally used for sanctions--he didn't act upon it in his
first term. He makes a claim today, though, likely because the
appropriate trade laws on the books require months to be implemented,
and he can't wait. And the Republicans go along, and they say:
Emergency? No problem. Constitution? What? Constitution? Forget about
it.
Members of his political party will stand by his assertion. Some may
cast their actions today as an exercise of party loyalty. Some may even
be praised by Pennsylvania Avenue. But for those who care to listen
closely, within that praise will be heard a touch of disdain.
It is no secret that Congress lacks the fortitude to stand up for its
prerogatives, and this is bipartisan. Presidents in both parties
routinely exceed their power because they know that Congress has
weakened itself to such an extent that it cannot challenge and will not
challenge Executive overreach.

Congress delegates its legislative authority to the President so that
the

[[Page S2694]]

laws we live under are, in reality, written by bureaucrats who the
people do not know, will never meet, and cannot hold accountable
through elections.
But I don't want to let off both parties on this. The powers that
have been given to the President over trade have been given to the
President by Congress over many decades. Congress acquiesced. Congress
said: Here. We don't want to deal with it. You can have it.
Congress today can scarcely be bothered to even consider individual
appropriations bills. By consistently waiting until the last second to
pass a massive funding bill and threaten a government shutdown, the
leadership deprives Congress of what Madison called its most complete
and effectual weapon: the power of the purse.
We just put it all in one bill, and then they say: If you don't for
it, you are for shutting the government down.
You can't shut the government down, so you have to vote for the
massive bill, which includes more pork than you can probably ever
imagine.
Congress has--unique among the three branches--unilaterally disarmed
and demonstrated itself unable and unwilling to check the Executive.
If Americans are to live under this emergency rule, it will not be
because the President sought too much power; it will be because
Congress let it happen.
If Americans are to live in a country where the President alone
decides what is to be taxed, at what rate, and for how long, it will be
because Congress is too feeble to stand up for the interests and bank
accounts of the people.
If Americans live in a country where their elected representatives in
the legislature cannot or will not speak for them, it will be because
those representatives silenced themselves. They gave in. They did not
stand up and do their duty.
We can show the people that the constitutional principle of the
separation of powers still means something and that we can successfully
challenge the Presidential attempt to raise taxes without the consent
of Congress.
Tariffs are taxes, plain and simple. Tariffs don't punish foreign
governments; they punish American families. When we tax imports, we
raise the price of everything from groceries, to smartphones, to
washing machines, to just about every conceivable product.
Voters in the last election indicated they were fed up with high
prices. Every time Americans went to the grocery store, they were
reminded that inflation and putting food on their family's table was
more difficult and left them with less money for other necessities.
Many pundits say the 2024 election hinged on promises to reduce
inflation and lower taxes. Does it make any sense to impose a tax on
imports that will make all Americans worse off? Shouldn't we learn from
our success?
We should ask ourselves a fundamental question: Is trade good? Well,
trade is simply capitalism. Trade never occurs unless you want a
product more than you want your money. Has anyone ever made a trade, a
voluntary trade, where you thought you were being ripped off? No. You
buy stuff only because you think you are making a good deal.
Those who say that, oh, no, we are being ripped off--it is a fallacy.
It asserts that one of the parties must necessarily lose or be taken
advantage of. The argument belies a fundamental misunderstanding of
trade. By definition, every voluntary trade is mutually beneficial.
Trade is good. That isn't an opinion; it is a fact. For at least the
last 50 years, as trade rises, so does wealth. And people say the
middle class has gotten smaller? Slightly but only because it moved to
the upper class.
These tariffs will make Americans poorer, and they will make the
defenders of those tariffs pay. Tariffs bring us closer to the day when
the people are ruled by a czar of industrial policy. When that day
comes, we will wish we had defended the Constitution when we still had
the power to do so.
We cannot afford to stand idly by while the constitutional principle
of the separation of powers is eviscerated. Legislators who stand aside
and abdicate the power to tax will one day rue the accumulation of
power in the office of one person.
I stand against this emergency, I stand against these tariffs, and I
stand against shredding the Constitution.
I have no animus towards the President. I voted for him and support
his administration.
I come to the floor today not because I want to but because I am
compelled to. I love my country and the principles upon which it is
founded. The oath I took upon taking this office is to the Constitution
of the United States and not to any person or faction.
I want to preserve the divisions of power that protect us and our
children from the rule of one person. That is why I will today vote to
end this emergency. I will vote to reclaim the taxation power of
Congress, where the Constitution properly places it, and I urge the
Members of my party to do the same.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the
resolution. Before I get into my prepared remarks, let me just make it
clear. What we are doing here today is following a law, IEEPA, which
gave authority to the President of the United States to declare an
emergency and gave Congress the authority to reject that declaration of
the emergency by a vote in Congress.
The President has declared that emergency under the authority of that
law, and this resolution has been brought to reject the declaration of
that emergency. That is what we are debating today, and that is what
the vote in Congress is about.
I appreciate that many of us in this Chamber have heard from
constituents concerned about the economic impact of the tariffs. All of
us are watching this issue closely and working with the administration
to find ways to minimize its impact on Americans.
We should also be working with the administration to address a shared
objective: more opportunities for Americans in foreign markets and an
end to discriminatory practices in foreign markets against Americans,
against our farmers, and against our businesses.
The President's decision to pause the full reciprocal tariffs for 90
days, other than for China, was a prudent move in that respect. It
helped mitigate the impact. It discouraged retaliation but also
continued the serious negotiations by our trading partners to address
longstanding trading barriers faced by Americans in foreign markets.
I don't believe there is anybody in Congress who would deny that for
decades, nations around the globe have put unjustified tariffs on
American producers, on American products. We should not undermine these
negotiations by the President at this critical juncture. The
administration has shared that serious negotiations are proceeding with
18 countries at a minimum now and with more to follow shortly.
In the coming weeks, the U.S. Trade Representative will meet with the
Senate advisory group on negotiations and the Finance Committee to
discuss these negotiations in detail. I encourage my colleagues to
trust the President, at least until they have had the opportunity to
hear from his trade team about their efforts.
As the White House recently argued in its statement of administrative
policy, this resolution, if we passed it, would signal to U.S. trading
partners that they can continue to discriminate against U.S. exports
with impunity and would signal that the United States is not serious
about addressing structural imbalances in the global economy and the
conditions giving rise to the threat to U.S. national security and
economy.
Disapproving this emergency will undercut the serious negotiations
that are underway, which are also yielding results. For example, India
has already suspended its digital services tax on U.S. companies. The
President is a good negotiator, and he deserves more time and our
support.
Ending these negotiations at their inception benefits only one actor:
China. China will see its full reciprocal tariff limited immediately
without offering any concessions to addressing longstanding, bipartisan
grievances. Moreover, China will benefit because its trade negotiations
will continue, while ours will sputter out.
For these reasons, I encourage my colleagues to vote in opposition to
this resolution.

[[Page S2695]]

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

H.J. Res. 75

Mrs. MOODY. Mr. President, I rise today on the 100th day as a U.S.
Senator--in fact, Florida's newest U.S. Senator--to urge my colleagues
to support H.J. Res. 75, a Congressional Review Act resolution to
rescind burdensome energy efficiency requirements on commercial
refrigerators and freezers that were imposed by the Biden-Harris
administration at the 11th hour just before President Trump's
inauguration.
The Biden-Harris administration, as we all know, in many of these
agenda-driven regulations pushed out of Agencies, was a disaster for
American families, businesses, and industries across our Nation. Their
reckless regulatory agenda prioritized Green New Deal virtue signaling
over good fiscal stewardship and the interests of the American people
by exposing manufacturers and other stakeholders in our industries to
regulatory uncertainty and forcing American families to shoulder the
burden.
As Florida's attorney general, I was proud many times to lead the
fight against regulations that made no sense and were driven by
partisan, unelected bureaucrats by filing challenges against these
regulations in court.
While it is regrettable that the Biden-Harris administration ignored
our concerns and the complaints by Floridians and, instead, forced
these harmful regulations into our States and into our industries in
the waning hours of their administration, I am proud to now be here in
the Senate to help continue the fight against these sprawling, harmful,
nonsensical policies that were pushed by these Agencies at the very,
very last minute of the Biden administration.
If this regulation were allowed to remain on the books, Biden's
shortsighted harmful energy standard would force commercial fridge and
freezer manufacturers to discontinue product lines and close factories
in the U.S. The results would be layoffs and open the door for other
foreign competitors to step in instead of those here in our own
country.
Food producers, distributors, wholesalers, grocery stores, consumers
would be severely impacted by a sudden unavailability of these
commercial-scale appliances at the center of America's food supply
chains. That would expose yet another critical supply chain risk
associated with foreign dependence and this would be a disaster.
We need to focus right now on prioritizing American businesses,
reducing costs for American people, and we need to be focused on
opening factories in America, not closing them, especially for such
critical products as these that allow for large-scale food distribution
and storage.
The government should be making it easier to plan and establish food
distribution chains rather than undermining them with harmful
regulatory uncertainty.
We saw time and time again in the last administration the attempt to
force costly and burdensome regulations onto the American people and
businesses in an effort to advance a partisan ``green new scam''
agenda. The effects of prices on American families and businesses were
devastating.
I firmly believe Biden bureaucrats gave no thought to the effects,
jumped right in. And the motto became, frankly: Above everything else,
politics first, Americans last. I am proud to take this fight head-on
to ensure that Americans are not shouldering the cost of the last
administration's regulatory state.
I would like to thank Congressman Craig Goldman of Texas for leading
this effort in the House, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate to
vote for this resolution. I look forward to the legislation heading to
the President's desk to become law.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am here today to defend the standards
for our appliances that save energy, that cut climate emissions. They
reduce costs for American families and businesses. Yet Trump and his
Republican allies are attacking these commonsense appliance efficiency
standards.
This morning's vote overturned the Department of Energy's updated
energy labeling rule that would have made it easier for appliance
manufacturers to test, to certify, and to label their products in a way
that consumers can understand.
Energy labels are like food nutrition labels but for your electricity
bill. They empower consumers to choose cheaper, more efficient
appliances. They drive competition. They create certainty. They help
the American people make informed choices and avoid confusion.
The rule that Republicans overturned was not a ban. It was not a
mandate. The rule didn't even change underlying efficiency standards.
This vote comes after two additional votes earlier this month where
Republicans repealed the Department of Energy's updated efficiency
standards for gas-fired water heaters and walk-in coolers and freezers.
Let's be clear: These votes are not about appliance freedom. They are
about fossil fuel fascism. This is about corporate lobbyists putting
profits over people and destroying decades of bipartisan energy
efficiency progress. Having the information to make an informed
decision about your appliance that your family wants to buy is about
choice--your choice. Not Big Oil's choice, not Big Gas's choice--your
choice.
Here is the information. Make up your mind. Do you want one that is
more efficient? There it is right in the middle of Best Buy, right
there in the middle of the store. Pick that one.
Donald Trump's ridiculous culture war against energy-efficient
appliances is a war against saving families money. The more efficient
the appliance, the less money people pay in their electricity bill. The
fact is that Federal appliance efficiency standards are one of the most
successful climate and consumer savings programs in American history.
And these standards have been around for decades.
Back in 1987, I wrote the law. I am the author of the law that gave
the Department of Energy the authority to set binding energy standards
for appliances in America, which are supposed to be updated every 6
years. That is my law. It was signed into law as the National Appliance
Energy Conservation Act.
Now, I am going to be honest with you, Ronald Reagan vetoed it the
first time because the oil and gas industry wanted him to veto it. And
that law ultimately did pass, and it covered 13 major appliances--
kitchen refrigerators, dryers, air conditioners, and, yes, commercial
refrigerators. And since then, the number of appliances has more than
quadrupled.
Here is the way you should think about it. We need big electrical
generating facilities all across the country. Everyone knows right now
that AI is now going to be a huge drain on all of the electricity that
we have in our country. So how do we handle that problem? Well, one of
the ways of handling that problem is to say that refrigerators have to
be more efficient in the amount of electricity which they consume.
Light bulbs have to be more efficient. Air conditioning has to be more
efficient.
For example, in Texas, in the summer, 80 percent of peak demand for
electricity is air conditioning. So if you increase the efficiency by a
third in air conditioners, you are dramatically reducing the need to
have to build more electrical generating facilities in the country. Or
maybe there is more electricity left over for the AI industry if you
are working in a way that is trying to maximize American ingenuity.
That is who we are. We make things that are smarter.
Now, a lot of people--I would say the natural gas and oil industry at
the top of the list--they don't want there to be progress. Why is that?
Because the less efficient something is, the more energy, the more
electricity that has to be consumed. That is their profit. But what
does it do? It says to the consumer: You have to pay more for more
electricity. It says that you cannot have new options that make it
possible for you to ensure that your family has the most modern, the
most efficient air conditioning or lighting or refrigeration or stoves.
No, we are going to lock you into 10-years-ago technology. We are
going to lock you into 20-years-ago technology. That is a dream for the
oil and gas industry--a dream. But for the consumer, no, they are the
big loser because what

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we are seeing over the years is after my law passed in 1987, the number
of appliances which have been covered has quadrupled--four times as
many are now covered.
Former President Biden updated more than two dozen standards that
have been delayed under the first Trump administration on behalf of the
oil and gas industry. These updates were estimated to save households
nearly $1 trillion annually over 30 years and save the average family
at least $100 per year in lower utility bills. They were also estimated
to cut approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon emissions over
30 years. That is the equivalent of taking over 18 million gasoline-
powered automobiles off the road each year for 30 years.
That is bad, by the way. That is bad for the oil and gas industry,
with fewer greenhouse gases going up, and less oil and gas being
consumed. All of that is part of a very bad equation for the oil and
gas industry, but it is catastrophic for families. It is catastrophic
for our planet that the industries are allowed to dictate policies here
on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
These appliance standards have also driven progress in States like
Massachusetts, where strong State-level appliance efficiency programs
are projected to cut energy costs by $13 million each year by 2044 for
families and small businesses, while fighting climate change. Let's not
forget that these rules have support from industry, but now they are
the target of political theater out here on the Senate floor.
It is not too late to act. We have one more appliance efficiency
Congressional Review Act vote ahead of us. This is why I am urging my
colleagues to vote no to overturn the Department of Energy's efficiency
standards for commercial refrigerators and freezers.
These standards update the minimum efficiency levels for new
refrigerators and freezers at restaurants, grocery stores, and
convenience stores that run 24/7, 365 days a year. This rule alone--the
one we are going to vote on--would save businesses up to $4.6 billion
over 30 years. These are savings that restaurants and grocery stores
could pass on to their customers. And if you have ever worked in a
kitchen, you know the importance of reliability and cost savings.
Eliminating this rule would only inject further uncertainty into the
market, punish forward-thinking manufacturers, and raise prices on the
very businesses--especially small businesses--we say that we want to
support. Energy efficiency isn't just an environmental solution; it is
an economic one. It cuts costs for renters, for seniors, for small
businesses, for schools, and municipal buildings.
Make no mistake about it. Eliminating these standards is climate
sabotage. Overturning even a few of them jeopardizes that future. It
locks in dirty fossil fuel use. It worsens pollution in frontline
communities that are already burdened by asthma, heat, and high energy
bills. We cannot slam the brakes on progress just for fossil fuel
profits.
A vote on this next resolution to overturn the updated standards for
refrigerators and freezers is a vote against lower bills, against
climate progress, and against consumer choice. We need to be investing
in the future, not resurrecting the past.
When my mother got disappointed in me when I was a boy--when I was 10
years old--my mother would just say: Eddy, you have to learn how to
work smarter, not harder. Otherwise, your father and I are going to
donate your brain to Harvard Medical School as a completely unused
human organ.
Ah, and what did she mean? She meant that you just had to be smarter
and think the problem through.
That is what energy efficiency is. It is working smarter, not harder.
It is making the refrigerator, it is making the air conditioner, and it
is making everything that we use more efficient so we need less
electricity, because that is all our nuclear powerplants, our coal-
burning plants, and wind and solar are. They are just ways of providing
electricity for the air-conditioning, for the lighting, and for the
heating. That is all it is. If we make it 25 percent more efficient,
then, all of a sudden, we need 25 percent less electricity which is
being generated and 25 percent less pollution that goes up into the air
and into the lungs of the children in our Nation. That is what we are
debating here today.
Once again, the Republicans are going to side with the oil and gas
industry, and they are going to say: America can't figure out how to
improve the efficiency of appliances in our Nation.
That is what they are saying, but they are also saying the same thing
about our automobiles: No, we can't figure out how to make them more
efficient.
That is what they are saying about wind and solar: No, we can't
figure out how to deploy it in our country as an alternative to oil and
gas.
By the way, the story always comes back to that one issue--oil and
gas and their money inside of this system--but the price is being paid
by consumers who have to pay higher bills, and it is going to be a
price that is paid by our planet, as it gets more and more dangerously
hotter.
My mother would always say that the planet is running a fever, and
there are no emergency rooms for planets. That is where we are. It is
the young generation who is leading us. It is the young generation who
is saying: You must do something about climate change.
It is the young generation who is saying: We must figure out a way of
reducing this pollution that we are sending up into the atmosphere.
Once again, the Republicans are bringing up another bill on the floor
of the U.S. Senate that is going to dramatically increase pollution,
and that is going into the lungs of every child, of every pregnant
mother in our country, and it is absolutely irresponsible and
absolutely unnecessary, except for the role that the oil and gas
industry plays in the politics of the Republican Party.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

SAVE Act

Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I rise today with a number of my
colleagues. I will speak for the next, probably, hour-plus on the topic
of election integrity and the seemingly constant attacks on our
election integrity by Donald Trump and our Republican colleagues.
I am joined by a number of my friends and colleagues in our remarks
here for the next block. Senator Welch will be speaking next, our
colleague from Vermont, and then Senator Blumenthal, Senator Merkley,
Leader Schumer, Senator Klobuchar, and Senator Bennet. And it will be
wrapped up with my partner in organizing this group of Senators,
Senator Reed, who is not only the ranking member of the Armed Services
Committee but is the ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee
overseeing funding for this space.
I rise today, with my colleagues, out of grave concern for the future
of our democracy.
I currently serve as the ranking member of the Senate Rules and
Administration Committee. I also, as many of you know, am the former
secretary of state for the State of California. So I have seen
firsthand, not just through the last 4 years but for the last 8, 9
years, the growing threats to our democracy and the threats to the
public confidence in our elections.
Sadly, the truth in the year 2025 is that it is not just foreign
actors who are trying to undermine our elections and the people's
confidence in the elections. It is also so many Republican officials
here at home, not just in the Capitol but in statehouses across
America--but, yes, even here in the Capitol.
I think of the old horror movie where the person on the phone would
say that the call is coming from inside the house. In State
legislatures, in the Capitol, and in the Oval Office, radical
Republicans are working hard--actively working hard--to make it harder
for eligible Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.
We see it in the endless lies and conspiracy theories about massive
voter fraud. We see it in the new barriers being erected that would
make it harder for eligible Americans to simply register to vote. And
we see it in the Trump administration's firing of the hard-working and
dedicated security officials who are tasked with protecting our
elections.
So, yes, over the next hour, with my Democratic colleagues, we will
peel

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back the curtain on the tactics being used to undermine our Federal
elections, because our fundamental democracy is at stake.
In Rochester Hills, MI, Republican clerk Tina Barton worked hard to
help administer and uphold a free and fair election in 2020. But for
her dedication and hard work and professionalism, 1 week after the 2020
election, Tina received an anonymous phone call--not a phone call
thanking her for her service but a phone call threatening her life. The
voice on the other end threatened to come after her family, to hold a
knife to her throat, and to kill her.
As shocking as threats like that may be, Tina represents just one--
one in every three election workers who has reported receiving threats,
harassment, and abuse. So, for Tina and so many others, that harassment
grew worse with every lie spread by the Trump campaign about a so-
called stolen election, with threats against election officials
continuing in subsequent elections.
There was no stolen election. That is a farce. But for those selfless
election workers, Donald Trump hasn't even tried to lower the
temperature of political rhetoric or combat the disinformation that
leads to the threats and harassment. Instead, he has, actually,
actively made it worse for those who are administering elections. Think
of the election workers and all of the volunteers who work polling
places to help our elections in our democracy thrive. He has made it
worse for voters. He has fired Federal workers who combat election
misinformation and disinformation.
Why would he and his administration and Republicans in Congress who
support him want to make it easier for people to interfere with our
elections?
I am at a loss. I am at a loss for an answer. What I do know is that,
by failing to counter, by failing to elevate the truth, Republicans in
Congress have become complicit as they just sit back instead of pushing
back.
Believe it or not, there was a time, not that long ago, when even
Republicans had the moral courage to speak out against Trump's attacks
on our democracy.
I do think back a few years to my days as the California secretary of
state when, during the first Trump administration, he created a
commission to investigate these unfounded claims of ``voter fraud''--
without evidence, baseless claims--but for him, it was important enough
to set up a commission to investigate and uncover the truth. The
commission set out to collect sensitive, private voter information from
every State, demanding that States hand over not just the names of
every voter on the voter rolls but their dates of birth, their voting
history, their Social Security information, and more.
It was a blatant power grab, long before Elon Musk started tapping
into Federal servers, by the way. It was a blatant power grab which was
responded to: 44 States, both Republican and Democratic, said no.
Republican and Democratic elections officials throughout the country
joined together to reject Donald Trump's demands under his first term.
Even in Mississippi--hardly a woke, Democratic bastion, folks--even in
Mississippi, then-Secretary of State and now-Lieutenant Governor
Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, was outraged. He was so offended by the
power grab that he responded to the White House's request with ``Go
jump in the Gulf of Mexico,'' saying, ``Mississippi is a great state to
launch from.'' Good for him.

So you can imagine my disappointment when, fast-forward to this past
March, Trump announced yet another anti-voter Executive order that
would empower DOGE to access sensitive voter data--very reminiscent of
the request from that first term but now on steroids.
And what did so many of our Republican colleagues here in the Senate
and the House of Representatives say? Nothing.
But it is not just that the Republicans have gone silent, they have
actually become Trump's enablers here in Congress by forgoing their
responsibility to serve as a check and balance on the executive branch.
Any day now here in the Senate, we could see Republicans take up the
SAVE Act--the measure that recently passed the House of
Representatives, a bill that, I should say, scapegoats immigrants
simply to justify new barriers to voter registration. Not only is that
wrong, it is un-American. And, again, it is based on a lie.
I bring to this body my 6 years of experience administering elections
not just in any State but the most populous State in the Nation, with
the largest number and the most diverse number of voters in the Nation.
I understand the complexities of both keeping our elections free and
fair but also secure. And I am happy to take time to meet with any of
you to walk you through the security measures that are in place to
ensure the integrity of our elections.
I can tell you this, in case you didn't know already: It is already a
crime for noncitizens to vote in our elections. To propose it as a new
law is misleading. It is already against the law. And, by the way, it
is also extremely, extremely rare.
But if our Republican colleagues were to have their way, American
citizens--American citizens--would feel the impacts of the SAVE Act,
from the Active-Duty servicemember who has to move for a new deployment
and has to work so much harder than they should have to, to update
their registration with the new address at the local elections office,
which could be hours and hours from the base where they are assigned,
to think of a married woman who chose to change her last name when she
got married, and now the name listed on the birth certificate and the
name on their ID no longer match. They will have some explaining to do
and hurdles to jump over simply to register to vote.
These are just two small examples that impact millions and millions
of Americans, should the SAVE Act pass.
And if you make it harder to register, guess what, you have made it
harder for eligible citizens to vote. That would be the result of the
SAVE Act.
Here in the Senate, I want people to know that together with my
Senate Democratic colleagues, I will do whatever it takes to kill this
bill, to stop it from passing, to keep it even from coming up, if we
can, because we owe it to our constituents to fight every Executive
order that undermines our democracy and to keep demanding answers on
the firing of Federal workers entrusted with safeguarding our
elections.
So over the course of the next hour, Senate Democrats will lay down a
marker. We will stand strong against the rising tide of attacks on our
democracy. And I will keep leading the fight to stop this cynical and
dangerous bill and to stop Trump and Republicans' attempts to undermine
our voting rights.
I yield the floor to my next colleague.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank the senior
Senator from California not just for his leadership on protecting the
voting rights of all citizens in this country but for his work as the
California Secretary of State, where he gained a nationwide reputation
for running free and fair elections.
Senator Padilla, thank you so much for your work there, and thank you
so much for your leadership here.
I want to stand here in solidarity with my colleagues to push back,
oppose, denounce President Trump's March 25 Executive order, which
claims to preserve the integrity of U.S. elections. It does no such
thing. And, by the way, the idea that the President, who spent years
denying the outcome of the election he lost gives him absolutely no
credibility when he is speaking about his commitment to free and fair
elections.
Like my colleagues--all of us--I am committed to safeguarding the
security of our elections and working with anyone and everyone in the
Chamber to advance that objective. All of us revere the right of
citizens to make the decision about who their leaders are.
Unfortunately, many of our colleagues in the House, Republicans in
the House, have fought to gut the election security grants our States
depend on. I say that--usually, these are not partisan issues on
voting, but it is turning into that. And we are seeing a one-sided,
one-party approach, particularly out of the House, that goes to the

[[Page S2698]]

heart of our electoral process and the right of each of our citizens to
make their decision and their vote be the one that counts.
At the same time, despite the political violence at home and rising
tensions abroad, the Trump administration has taken an ax to CISA. As
we know, that is the Agency that works to curb emerging cyber security
threats. And that threat, those threats, are a threat to the election
integrity that is so essential to the well-being of our democracy.

The Executive order makes an assumption that noncitizen voting is a
problem. The assertion that noncitizens are voting is alarming.
Fortunately, it is not true. Also, Federal law already bars noncitizens
from voting in congressional and Presidential elections.
So this is not a question of whether there is some backdoor effort on
the part of one party to allow noncitizens to vote. It can't be done.
It is illegal now. This Executive order would not change that.
Study after study has also shown that the rate of noncitizen voting
is incredibly small, almost too small to measure--roughly 0.0001
percent, according to a reliable estimate. Obviously, that error is so
small that it is hard to measure and would not have any material impact
on our elections.
If you don't believe me, ask folks over at the libertarian Cato
Institute, a very conservative organization. They have labeled
President Trump's claims about noncitizen voting as ``bogus''--their
word, not mine.
The order of the President also raises significant constitutional
issues. The Constitution entrusts our States--and in the case of
certain core rules of conduct, Congress--with the authority to regulate
elections, not the Executive.
The Executive order President Trump has signed flips that framework
and purports to vest the President with expansive new powers that he
does not have--not just him but any chief executive.
It attempts to enact through Executive fiat what the Trump
administration seemingly believes it cannot achieve through the
legislative process, through an act of Congress; namely, Senate
consideration of the SAVE Act, many provisions of which are contained
in the President's Executive order.
I ask my colleagues to join me in focusing our attention on the very
real problems that confront our Nation and are pushing back against the
Trump administration's usurpation of the Senate's constitutional
prerogatives.
President Trump is attacking the right to vote with respect to
dismantling of the Department of Justice organization of attorneys who
are being punished for their efforts to protect that right to a vote.
That organization within the Justice Department is being actively
dismantled.
And the President has currently used the Department of Justice as a
tool to enact his--my view--very extreme policy positions, and that
includes the Civil Rights Division at the Department whose mission
includes protecting the right to vote.
According to press reports, all career supervisors in the voting
rights section have been reassigned to other positions completely
outside their areas of expertise. In other words, it is about
destroying the Civil Rights Division.
The Assistant Attorney General, Harmeet Dhillon, surely, at the
direction of the White House, is punishing career attorneys. This is
outrageous.
Also, reportedly, political appointees at the Department of Justice
have ordered the dismissal of all active cases and the closing of all
active investigations by this section.
Our Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice has a
revered history for standing up for the rights of all citizens and
their constitutional rights to be enforced and protected, and that
brazen attack on the Civil Rights Division will leave it totally
unable--as the President, apparently, prefers--to defend the democratic
right of our citizens to vote.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the President's Executive order.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, of all the thrills of living in a
democracy, none is more meaningful than walking into a voting booth and
casting a ballot. I can remember the first time I did it when I came of
age.
I can remember, always--and I see it again and again and again--new
citizens walking out of the courtroom after the naturalization
ceremony, with their certificates of citizenship in their hands and
handing it to the League of Women Voters person who is doing voter
registrations. It is the thrill of their lifetime to be registered.
Of all the rights we have, voting is perhaps the most meaningful and
the most practiced. It is foundational to all the others. It is the way
we preserve the others. And that is why the fight for voting rights--
and blood has been spilled in the effort to secure it--is a storied
bedrock of our American history.
And, now, again--as there has been throughout our history--there are
efforts to suppress that right for political reasons, for political
gain. That is what we have in the SAVE Act, an effort to erect
obstacles and to require documentation that, very simply, Americans--
many of them--don't have.
This measure is a solution--supposed solution--in search of a
problem. There is no widespread voter fraud. Undocumented people,
noncitizens, almost never try to vote. And I am using the word
``almost'' because I am tempted to say ``never.'' But, of course, you
can't rule out a negative. You can't prove it.
But the fact of the matter is, widespread voter fraud, even
significant voter fraud by noncitizens, is an imaginary, delusional
issue. Some 21 million U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote don't
have the requisite documentation that would be required under the SAVE
Act. To solve the delusional nonproblem, the SAVE Act would deprive
real citizens of the real right to vote--21 million of them. Married
women, younger voters, voters of color--they are the ones who are going
to be impacted. I don't know how they would vote in Connecticut or
elsewhere, but they have a right to vote, and we should not be fooled
by this wolf in sheep's clothing, a measure that masquerades as
preserving democracy.
We should not let our voter rolls be purged by a measure that has
false pretenses. We must protect the right of every eligible citizen to
vote. The best way to do it is to say no to this bill, and I ask my
Republican colleagues to join me in saying no because this issue is
larger than any one of us.
I hear again and again and again from my constituents in Connecticut
about their concern that the right to vote may be restricted. I say to
the people of Connecticut right here and now: I will fight this bill
because it is wrong, because it eviscerates voting rights, and because
it threatens our democracy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our Constitution starts out with the
three words ``We the People,'' and they are written in supersize font
to tell you that that is what the core of our democracy is all about--
or, as Lincoln so well summarized, government of, by, and for the
people.
There are several things essential to make this happen: the freedom
of speech, for one; the freedom of assembly, for another. But perhaps
nothing encapsulates the opportunity of a citizen to participate in the
direction of their own country more than the ballot box, more than the
right and opportunity to vote.
Yet that sacred opportunity at the heart of our Constitution is under
assault because there seems to be one party that has decided it is
about suppressing citizens' rights rather than empowering and honoring
citizens' opportunity to participate in our government. And they have
this bill that is all about voter suppression.
Well, we have gone through some serious voter suppression. Some of it
was written into our original Constitution. Despite the lofty goals, we
didn't allow people of color to vote; we didn't allow women to vote; we
didn't allow Native Americans to vote; we didn't allow the enslaved to
vote. But we have worked toward that lofty vision that we knew was
right.
We remedied slavery, ending it in 1865 with the 13th Amendment. We
passed the 15th Amendment to ensure the right to vote shall not be
denied by race or color or previous servitude. And

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then, some 50 years later--it took 50 additional years before the right
to vote was guaranteed to women in the United States of America.
After the Civil War, reconstruction collapsed in about 1877. There
was kind of an evil deal that was worked out all over the election of
Rutherford Hayes. And that ended reconstruction; and, quickly, a series
of measures were passed by States to suppress the opportunity of Black
Americans to vote in the South. These included poll taxes; they
included literacy tests; they included civics exams--rigged so that
only White Americans could pass. But we remedied that situation. We
took it on. It took a long time, unfortunately.
In the 1960s, Members of this Chamber and Members of the Chamber down
the hall said we are ready to end that discrimination that we knew all
along was wrong, those barriers erected for citizens to vote.
But now we have one party, the Republican Party, which was founded on
the vision of ending slavery, that wants to suppress the vote of
Americans once again. That is incredible. But we are going to stop that
bill.
My own State has pioneered the ability to vote by mail, and that
provision has spread across the country to States like Utah, a red
State. Blue States, red States are saying this makes sense because it
ends the corruption on election day where officials stop people from
voting by relocating the voting booths to a new location, by putting
equipment in there that malfunctions, by understaffing it, by putting
out false information about where the voting will be held.
Vote-by-mail ended all of that corruption on election day, utilized
so often to stop people from voting who lived in the inner city, who
lived in poorer communities, who lived in communities of color--a
modern-day version of the suppression that followed the collapse of
reconstruction. We stopped it, and blue and red States have adopted
those reforms.
But the SAVE Act is about going the other direction. What a name--the
SAVE Act--as if it is saving something important as opposed to
destroying the opportunity to vote.
So we will absolutely not let our colleagues across the aisle take us
backwards to voter suppression.
Under the SAVE Act rules, my mother would likely not have been able
to vote. The most common documents to prove citizenship are a birth
certificate or a passport. And when my mother married my father, she
changed her last name from Collins to Merkley. My mother never had a
passport. She couldn't have used a passport. Her name was different
than that on her birth certificate. Betty Lou Collins became Betty Lou
Merkley. And Republicans want to stop women across the country from
voting once again because their name doesn't match their birth
certificate. That is pretty extraordinary.
More than half of Americans today who don't have a passport--my
mother would have been in that category. She wouldn't have been able to
register to vote.
Let's not go backward into the realm of voter suppression. Let's go
forward into full voter empowerment. If you believe in this
Constitution, then honor it; don't put it in the wood chipper.
Folks today are able to register in a variety of ways. Some say:
Well, isn't this opening the possibility that noncitizens are voting?
The answer is no. That is not happening.
The Secretary of State of Georgia, in 2022, led a massive examination
of the history of voting in Georgia, and the Secretary of State says he
could not find a single noncitizen that had cast a ballot in Georgia in
25 years. So don't tell me that your so-called reform is about
integrity at the ballot place. We know what it is about. It is about
manipulating the vote on election day to stop people from voting, and
we are not going to let that happen.
In another case, the Brennan Center examined, in 2016, the behavior
of 23 million voters, and they found it was roughly equal to the risk
of being struck by lightning that a noncitizen would vote. And we know
that in some cases where those have happened--I mean, it is so rare--it
has happened because the bureaucracy screwed up and sent them a ballot
when they weren't supposed to.
So let's be clear. Our journey toward the vision of citizen
empowerment in voting has been imperfect. It has been long. It has been
slow. It has seen setbacks like after the collapse of reconstruction.
But we have worked steadily toward that vision, that ideal that every
citizen should have that full opportunity to participate in the
direction of their Nation.
So should the SAVE Act ever be brought to this floor, which itself
would be a massive corruption of our responsibility as U.S. Senators, I
am voting hell no, and everyone else should as well.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
standing up for the right to vote and the critical need to ensure that
that right is protected.
I want to thank Ranking Members Padilla and Reed for their leadership
on this issue and in organizing this floor block. Senator Padilla, a
former Secretary of State himself, understands to a core how important
the right to vote is.
The right to vote is sacred to our democracy. It secures all of our
freedoms. As Congressman John Lewis once said, voting is the most
powerful nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect Union.
But in recent years, from the January 6 insurrection--I just came
from a spotlight hearing in which Officer Dunn and in which former
prosecutors were speaking out about their work on that day. I remember
that day because, at 3:30 in the morning, it was Senator Blunt and Vice
President Pence and I that were here on our own in this very Chamber
and made that walk, which in the morning had been a big celebration of
our democracy; but this time we were walking over broken glass, we were
walking by marble pillars spray-painted with racist vulgarities. But we
made that walk, and our democracy prevailed.
But in one of President Trump's first acts, he pardoned the violent
offenders who had struck police officers, who had injured over 100
police officers. That is what he did.
And from that January 6 insurrection to dangerous rhetoric and
baseless election conspiracies, to other actions taken by this
administration over the past 100 days, we have seen unprecedented
attacks on the freedom to vote and our democracy.
Nowhere are these attacks more clear than at the Department of
Justice. The Justice Department was founded in 1870 with the very
purpose to enforce civil rights. This includes voting rights guaranteed
by the 15th Amendment. And since the passage of the Voting Rights Act,
the Civil Rights Division has been responsible for enforcing that law.
Today, the work to protect voting rights is as urgent as ever. In
2023 alone, over 19 States enacted laws to restrict access to voting
and to make it more difficult to vote.
In the words of Senator Warnock, what is happening is simple: Some
people don't want some people to vote.
Yet what are the words that are inscribed at the Justice Department
over its entrance?

Equal Justice for All.

Department of Justice officials would like us to believe that the
fight for equal rights and the fight for voting rights is already over.
In fact, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights has said that
the Voting Rights Act ``was once necessary to push back on Jim Crow
laws.''
At her hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee, I asked her if
she will enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme
Court of the United States, a conservative Supreme Court, just
reaffirmed 2 years ago. She didn't answer the question.
It is clear why she didn't answer--because she never planned on
enforcing it. In fact, it has been reported that the Department's
lawyers in the voting rights section have been directed to dismiss
active voting cases.
But they are not stopping--this administration--at forcing attorneys
to dismiss cases. Justice Department officials have also removed all of
the senior civil servants--civil servants--in the Civil Rights
Division. That has had a ripple effect, as you can imagine, causing a
mass exodus of experienced attorneys from the Division. And rather than
try to stop the loss of talent,

[[Page S2700]]

the current head of that Division, installed by the Trump
administration, simply told reporters:

I think that's fine.

Well, I don't think that is fine. The people who have endured voter
discrimination don't think it is fine. Those of us who have been active
in this area, who have heard the stories, as I did when I was Rules
chair and held a field hearing in Georgia--the story of the veteran who
had signed up to serve and there was no waiting line, and when he comes
home to this country and he wants to vote, he finds out that there is a
waiting line in the hot Sun for hours; he finds out that his vote in
one location, which he figures out, for the primary is different from
where he votes in the general and then is different from where he votes
in the runoff. That is a system designed to make it harder to vote.
In the election for Senator Warnock, suddenly they took down Saturday
voting when there are only a few weekends between the general election
and the runoff.
Then there were the people in camo standing to intimidate voters in
lines in Arizona.
The stories go on and on.
In Harris County in Texas, they had one voting dropoff box in a
county the size of my entire State when it comes to population.
So, no, I don't think it is just fine.
It is not just at the Department of Justice that we see an assault on
voting. President Trump also issued an Executive order to overhaul our
Nation's elections.
As a Federal judge recently made clear, the President has claimed
power over our elections that the Constitution does not give him.
If implemented, the order could disenfranchise millions of citizens,
including millions of women who changed their last names after getting
married, as would the legislation that my colleagues have just
highlighted. I heard Senator Merkley discussing the problems with this
bill.
It would make it harder for men and women in uniform serving overseas
to vote, and it would compromise--this Executive order--sensitive,
personal data, giving Elon Musk access to private information about
citizens, contained in voter files in every State.
Instead of creating barriers to the ballot box, we should be
protecting access to the polls. That is why we intend to reintroduce a
bill that I led, the Freedom to Vote Act--something that we negotiated
over months and months and months. This legislation would set national
standards to ensure that all eligible Americans can vote in the way
that works best for them, regardless of their ZIP Code. That is why I
also strongly support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to
restore and strengthen key portions of the Voting Rights Act.
But there are things that all of us should be able to agree on, like
ensuring that State and local governments have reliable Federal support
and funding to maintain election infrastructure--something that Senator
Blunt and I, when he was chair of the Rules Committee and when he was
ranking on the Rules Committee, agreed on, and I know Senator Padilla
is carrying on that torch; that we must, in our local election offices,
keep pace with new technology; that we must combat cyber security
threats.
I think about Chris Krebs, someone who I respect very much, who was
in charge of the Division of the government that makes sure elections
are protected from cyber attacks.
After the election in 2016, after that election, he declared it safe.
The Attorney General for the United States at the time for Donald
Trump, Bill Barr, echoed his words and said it was safe. Then the
President just decided at the time--President Donald Trump, in his
first term--to fire Chris Krebs.
But that wasn't even enough for this President. He comes back just a
few weeks ago and says he is going to investigate Chris Krebs. Why?
Because this civil servant had the audacity to declare our election
safe and correct, which it was, after spending his time in government
working to make sure that it was and that Russians and other countries
that wanted to do us harm would not influence our election.
We also should be able to stand by our election workers, including
volunteers, who face a barrage of threats and intimidation. We have
heard the testimony--so many us--of those who were threatened, of those
who were told--election workers just doing their jobs--that their head
would be on a stake.
Mr. President, Congressman Lewis never stopped working for our
democracy. While we are seeing daily assaults on our democracy, it is
our duty to never give up hope and to continue to fight for what
Congressman Lewis aptly called ``one of the most important blessings of
our democracy,'' and that is our Nation's right to vote.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I want to thank Senators Padilla
and Reed for holding the floor on such a vital issue to our country,
our democracy, and who we are as a people. I thank Senators Klobuchar
and Bennet for participating as well and all the others who did as
well.
Well, we know that free and fair elections are the very wellspring of
American democracy. When you ask people around the world ``What is
great about America?'' this is one of the first things they say: ``They
have elections, real elections, free elections.''
But unfortunately--deeply unfortunately--no administration has come
closer to destroying that wellspring than the Trump administration.
Donald Trump and Republicans are putting our elections in a vice grip--
Executive orders from the President on one end and dangerous
legislation from Congress on the other. They don't understand the
sacredness of elections and keeping them fair. The kind of legislation,
the kind of Executive orders which are so jaundiced, so slanted on the
side of one party, are the antithesis of democracy.

On the one side, Donald Trump recently issued an Executive order that
would coerce States to prevent millions of Americans from voting. On
the other, Republicans in Congress are pushing the SAVE Act--one of the
most destructive, dangerous voter-suppression bills in recent memory.
It is very reminiscent of Jim Crow. That is what Republicans want to
do--they want to not only restore Jim Crow in the South; they want to
have Jim Crow spread from one end of this country to the other.
It will not happen. It will not happen.
Let me be clear. I will not let this noxious bill, the SAVE Act,
become law. Every Senate Democrat, every single one of us, is united
against it. They need 60 votes. The SAVE Act is dead on arrival.
I would like to say it louder so my friends in the House and the
rightwing over here can hear: The SAVE Act is dead on arrival.
Democrats and Americans see this bill for what it is--a nasty,
vicious attack on our democracy.
The SAVE Act reads more like a how-to guide for voter suppression
rather than a serious attempt to secure our elections. The SAVE Act
would make easy methods of voter registration--like online
registration, registration by mail, and registration drives--a thing of
the past.
Massive purges would inevitably remove many American citizens from
the voter rolls, and it is already wholly unnecessary. Federal law
prohibits noncitizens from voting in Federal elections. It is done with
one purpose in mind: voter suppression.
What they have in mind is they think those that vote Democratic are
less likely to vote than Republicans if this passes. It is trying to
slant the elections away from free and fair.
Every single State already prohibits noncitizens from voting in State
elections. So Republicans are trying to strip our democracy down to its
studs, all to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
Under the SAVE Act, if you want to register to vote or if you want to
simply update your registration, it would be harder than it is right
now because on top of your ID card, you will need to provide either
your passport, birth certificate, or citizenship certificate.
So if you are one of the 50 percent of Americans without a passport
or one of the 21 million American citizens who don't have access to
your birth or citizenship certificate, Republicans wants to make it
harder--not easier, harder--for you to vote.
If you are one of the 69 million Americans who changed your name
after you got married and your certificates don't

[[Page S2701]]

match your current name or if you have currently moved recently and
changed addresses, Republicans want to make it harder for you to vote.
It is one unnecessary hurdle after another.
We know the SAVE Act is not about securing our elections. It is about
suppressing voters. It is about making it harder to vote and easier to
cheat. It is despicable. It is damaging--beyond damaging. It goes
against the very foundations of our democracy.
Democrats will never, never allow the SAVE Act to become law.
I once again thank my colleague from Rhode Island for sponsoring this
act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I, too, am here on the floor today to
oppose the SAVE Act.
Today, Americans register to vote in a variety of ways, typically set
by each State in this country, but Federal law requires that Americans
attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury.
In Colorado, you can register online; you can register in person; you
can register through the mail. It can be as easy as providing your
Social Security number and signature, which every American has, through
the secretary of state's website.
Alternatively, the SAVE Act would change that by requiring that all
American citizens, whether registering for the first time or updating
their registration, to present proof of citizenship in person, largely
in the form of a passport or a birth certificate. In other words,
government issued driver's licenses and military and Tribal
identifications would not satisfy the bill's requirements.
The SAVE Act would severely restrict online voter registration and
mail-in registration and eliminate voter registration drives
altogether. It would make it harder or even impossible for up to 69
million married American women who have changed their names, because
their last name doesn't match the one on their birth certificate.
Meanwhile, half of Americans don't even have a passport. How are they
going to register under this law? They can't.
Over 60 million Americans who live in rural areas--now they are going
to have to drive miles and miles and miles, hours out of their way, to
stand in line at a local election agency.
The SAVE Act does nothing to make it easier to cast a ballot; it only
succeeds in making it harder for Americans to register to vote and to
exercise their rights.
This is not theoretical. Kansas tried to implement its own State-
level SAVE Act in 2013, with disastrous results. The law blocked over
30,000 potential registrants in just 2 years--about 12 percent of all
voter registrations during the period. State officials acknowledged in
court that over 99 percent of affected voters were U.S. citizens.
Now, even Kansas's Republican secretary of state, who championed the
bill when he was a State legislator, has warned against it, saying:

It didn't work out so well.

I would say so. About 12 percent of the people who tried to register
couldn't.
Compare those 30,000 Kansans who attempted to register and were
denied to the 30 people--30 people--the 30 noncitizens who reportedly
voted in the 2016 election nationwide. That is about 0.0001 percent of
all votes cast.
If there ever was one, this is a solution in search of a problem, and
the only solution doesn't even work. It only makes it harder for law-
abiding Americans to register to vote or patriotic Americans to
register to vote.
Perhaps it would be better if this bill were modeled after the system
that we have in Colorado.
We have set the gold standard in my State. It is a system that
actually encourages people to vote in a fraud-free system. In Colorado,
we are the first State in America to complete a risk-limiting audit,
the gold standard for verifying the integrity of election results to
begin with, and it entails counting and comparing a representative
sample of ballots to the reported result.
To prevent hacking, none of our voting machines are attached to the
internet. We require county clerks to use two-factor authentication to
access voter databases.
And once a vote is cast, a bipartisan team of election judges in each
county checks every signature against the copy in the database for any
discrepancies.
All election officials and judges with access to the tabulation
process must pass a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check.
Colorado has spent years implementing top-tier cyber security measures
and audits to prevent hackers from interfering with our electoral
process.
We have one of the most secure election systems of any State in the
country, and because Coloradans have trust in our gold standard system,
we have some of the highest voter turnout in America. That is the model
we should be using across the country, in my view. Instead of wasting
time and taxpayer dollars on the SAVE Act, Congress should be
implementing Colorado's practices all across the country.
I yield the floor to my colleague from Rhode Island. Thank you very
much for his leadership in bringing the Nation's attention to this
issue today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today alongside my colleagues to
speak out against the attack on a fundamental right of every American
citizen: the right to vote.
I want to thank Senator Padilla for leading this important effort.
The progress, the prosperity, and success of our Nation, both as an
economic power and as an inspiration for freedom-loving people
everywhere, has been aided by our efforts to tear down the obstacles
that prevent citizens from voting.
Today, the President and, seemingly, too many of my Republican
colleagues want to throw that progress away. At the President's
urgings, they appear to believe that it is OK to turn their backs on
the work, the advocacy, and the sacrifice of women like Susan B.
Anthony who worked so zealously for the right of women to vote, and men
like Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of Americans who dedicated
themselves to opening the voting booths to all Americans.
Indeed, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are
now advancing policies that could disqualify tens of millions of
Americans from voting in elections. If adopted, these policies will
make it harder for low-income individuals, the elderly, women, and even
U.S. servicemembers deployed overseas to cast a ballot. Now, that is
very ironic.
These men and women in uniform are in dangerous locations to protect
our fundamental rights, perhaps the most fundamental right is to vote,
and yet this legislation would impair their ability to exercise that
right.
Election integrity is essential to our democracy. That is why
Democrats vigorously support Federal funding and Federal anti-cyber
interference in our elections.
But what isn't essential is breaking a system that successfully
prevents fraud and replacing it with one that makes it less likely that
American citizens can exercise their constitutional right to vote.
Yet that appears to be the Republican plan. Indeed, through a brazen,
illegal, and unconstitutional Executive order, the Trump administration
is attempting to mandate that every State change how it operates its
elections. Its starkest proposal is to throw out State rules about
voter identification requirements and require what is effectively a
national ID--while ignoring current law that already makes it a serious
crime for a noncitizen to vote.
They have introduced the so-called SAVE Act, which recently passed
the House of Representatives. It attempts to codify the President's
dubious Executive order.
Now, I can see people saying: Well, what is the big deal about making
someone show ID? Well, like many catchy sales pitches, this policy is
really a bunch of ``gotchas'' that will stand between millions of
voters and the ballot box.
According to the Brennan Center, more than 9 percent of voting-age
American citizens, 21 million people, don't have proof of citizenship--
typically a birth certificate or a passport--readily available to show
as they try to vote.

[[Page S2702]]

And 4 million Americans don't have these documents available at all--
perhaps they were lost, destroyed, or stolen--and these Americans could
be prevented from voting.
Women who change their names after getting married, and that is 69
million Americans, will not be able to use a birth certificate alone to
establish their citizenship, and they might not be able to vote.
Americans could use a passport to satisfy the Trump policy, but
according to the State Department, only half of Americans have a
passport. And it will set you back $165 to get one just so you can
exercise your constitutionally protected right to vote.
By the way, I wonder if that could be considered a poll tax, which
was outlawed through our Constitution, and we have to respect our
Constitution. We all take an oath to do that.
The Trump policy allows citizens to use a REAL ID ``that indicates
the applicant is a citizen of the United States,'' but that is a false
promise.

As 15 secretaries of state recently wrote: REAL IDs do not indicate
citizenship status. Even if the Federal laws for REAL ID were amended,
the nearly 140 million REAL IDs that have been issued over the last
decade could not be used as proof of citizenship. And these are the
experts on elections, the secretaries of state of our 50 States.
Now, some people may still think it is easy to get these documents or
register to vote in person, but if you don't have the money to spare to
get the proper documents, if you are elderly or disabled or can't
easily get to your townhall, what are you to do? Faced with these
barriers, they may just give up and not vote at all, which I believe is
the ultimate objective of this legislation.
Voter suppression is the way, I believe, that President Trump and
others believe they can succeed at the polls. What the Constitution and
the spirit of America suggests and what countless generations of
American servicemen have fought for is access to the polls for all and
enthusiastic voting by American citizens.
And what about the servicemembers who are just deployed overseas and
didn't have time to register? How does that young American report in
person--because that is what this says, in person--to establish his or
her citizenship?
According to military and veterans service organizations,
registration methods used for decades by millions of American civilians
and uniformed servicemembers abroad ``would likely become impossible
under the SAVE Act.''
We will send them to war, but we won't let them vote. Trump's policy
would also impose unfunded mandates on States. According to the Rhode
Island secretary of state who is one of the most, I think, effective
secretaries of state in the country, the State government would need to
change its voter registration systems and forms. It may need to
purchase new voting machines and equipment, and it would need to pursue
a significant public outreach campaign to educate voters about changes
in the law.
But the SAVE Act provides zero dollars to cover these costs. States
and localities will need to cover this unfunded mandate.
Well, why is the Trump administration imposing these costs and
interfering with Americans' fundamental rights as citizens to vote?
They claim it is to combat noncitizen voting, but this legislation
isn't necessary to do that.
The United States Constitution, the Rhode Island constitution, and
Rhode Island State law explicitly state that only U.S. citizens are
allowed to vote. Under Federal law, it is a felony for non-U.S.
citizens to vote. These laws are enforced, and they are a significant
deterrent.
An exhaustive study by the Brennan Center found that at least 30
cases of noncitizen voting were referred for investigation or
prosecution during the 2016 election. Trump's Department of Justice in
his first term indicted 19 people. The law was enforced, but the
objectives of this law are trivial compared to the millions of
Americans who must have the right to vote.
Now, those 19 should not have voted, but it is 19 votes out of 129
million cast. And as my colleague from Colorado pointed out, a better
mathematician than I, that is a fractional portion of the American
public.
And make no mistake, they would suffer the consequences if they did
vote illegally, these noncitizens. But we do not need a complete
overhaul of our election systems and to strip millions of American
citizens of voting rights in order to combat a problem that nonpartisan
election experts tell us is already addressed by current law.
The real reasons for this policy are to support Trump's Big Lie that
the 2020 election was stolen, even though he lost by roughly 7 million
votes, to sow mistrust in our government, to deter people from voting.
This is all in service of President Trump's insatiable desire for power
and his insatiable ego.
Efforts by his enablers to discourage absentee voting have already
disenfranchised servicemembers. In North Carolina, Republicans have
sought to cancel 65,000 votes in a judicial election--an estimated
2,000 to 8,000 of which were military and overseas voters.
We are on the brink of exporting this injustice nationwide on a much
greater scale. Senator Padilla is right to sound the alarm about this,
and I am proud to join him. We want to help our fellow citizens
participate in our elections because only their participation will
ensure that the government is truly accountable to the people it
represents. And as the ranking member of the Appropriations
Subcommittee that handles election funding, I hope my colleagues will
join me in restoring funding for election security grants to the States
to the total of $75 million. If you are serious about election fraud,
then give the secretaries of state the resources to ensure that
ineligible voters do not cast their vote.
Defunding them is an invitation for abuse. This isn't, nor should it
be, a partisan endeavor. Democrats and Republicans shouldn't be afraid
to face the voters, all voters, and compete on the basis of our ideas
and aspirations.
Trump's Executive order and the SAVE Act show that he has a different
agenda, consolidating power for himself, not the people, through
dissuading and deterring American citizens from casting their vote, one
of the most fundamental values that generations of American service men
and women have given their lives to protect, and I hope my colleagues
on both sides of the aisle will understand that.
I yield the floor to the distinguished Senator from Washington.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

El Salvador

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, over the past month, we have seen a wave
of righteous outrage across the country in response to President
Trump's completely lawless move to disappear hundreds of people to a
notorious megaprison in El Salvador, without even the barest semblance
of due process.
And as I join my colleagues in calling for the Trump administration
to abide by the Supreme Court ruling and facilitate the release of
Kilmar Abrego Garcia--a man they said in court was sent to El Salvador
by mistake--I have to emphasize that his case is one of many where
Trump has completely shredded our norms and laws.
In addition to Garcia, Trump sent off some 200 people, including
innocent people who were in our country legally, to a foreign prison
without any due process whatsoever, and they did it all on the basis of
some arrangement negotiated in secret and paid for with millions of
taxpayer dollars.
What we do know is that many of these people were sent there without
any criminal conviction. The administration actually admitted that. In
their own court filing, the Trump administration acknowledged that many
of these people have no criminal records in the United States, and yet
all of these people have now been imprisoned in a foreign country with
no end date in sight.
Unconstitutional doesn't even begin to cover that.
There are so many questions--basic questions--about this that we all
should be demanding answers to. At the barest, smallest, slimmest
minimum--and I mean as a starting point--the administration must
release more details about this secret agreement where it is paying El
Salvador with our taxpayer dollars to imprison people without a trial--
details like:

[[Page S2703]]

Who all is being imprisoned? How long is El Salvador holding these
people with Trump's orders? How many people is El Salvador going to
imprison under this agreement? What outside contact is possible for
those people? And how do we learn their status and condition? Are they
alive? Are they healthy? What are the details?
Most of the details we do have are from reporting, and news reports
say the deal was only for El Salvador to take convicted criminals. So
why did Trump send people with no criminal record?
And, importantly, where in the world is this money coming from? Does
anyone here remember voting to pass a single dollar in appropriations
to fund a torture prison in El Salvador? Because I sure don't, and the
last I checked, Congress has the power of the purse.
Do you know what else we don't know? We still don't know the names of
everyone they did this to. Think about that. We don't have their names.
That information should be released immediately--today--because there
are families who still have no confirmation where their loved ones are.
And the only list we have right now was not even released by the
administration. It was reported by the press. Some families only
learned their son was gone, their husband was gone, their father was
gone through photos of them being marched into a torture prison. This
is the first, last, and only update we have had on just about all of
those people.
We do not know if they are alive. We don't know if they are being
treated decently. We don't even know if they have been moved. Even
their lawyers can't reach them.
Here is what we do know, though: There are many names on the El
Salvador list of people who were here legally who had no criminal
record. That seems to be getting lost in the debate for some of my
Republican colleagues. This is not about any one case or any one
person. It is about a lawless system for the President to deny due
process. And when you cut out due process, you put innocent people in
harm's way.
I heard one of my Republican colleagues say last week:

I don't see any pattern here.

Well, I ask him now, and I ask everyone now, to pay attention to the
full picture because, of course, you won't see a pattern if you just
look at one case and you ignore the many, many others.
There is the case of Andry Hernandez Romero. He is a barber who came
here legally. He has no criminal record.
There is the case of Arturo Suarez Trejo. He is a musician. He came
here legally. He has no criminal record.
There is the case of Merwil Gutierrez, who--you guessed it--came here
legally. No criminal record. In fact, he was apparently grabbed by
mistake. One officer reportedly said: No, he is not the one. And
another said: Take him away anyway.
Trump sent them all to a maximum security prison in El Salvador with
no trial--disappeared. They have no contact with their lawyer, no
contact with family. We do not know if they are alive, and they don't
know if anyone is even advocating for them--how hopeless that must
feel, how dark.
So is that enough of a pattern for my Republican colleagues? Do you
still need more? Because there is also Jerce Reyes Barrios. He is a
soccer player. He came here legally. Again, no criminal record.
There is Gustavo Aguilera, a food delivery driver. Legally here, no
criminal record.
Or Anyelo Sarabia--here legally, no criminal record.
I mean, how many more before my colleagues can actually admit this is
a pattern? How many people have to be disappeared with no due process
before it becomes a problem?
Because, for me, one is too many, and the pattern isn't even over
yet.
Trump was reportedly ready to disappear even more people to El
Salvador before the Supreme Court put its foot down. In this latest
round, the Trump administration was preparing to disappear a man who
came here legally and had no record, except a traffic violation.
Another was a young man accused of being a gang member because of a
photo with a toy water gun. That is the level of so-called evidence
that gets you locked away in a foreign torture prison under President
Trump.
And I will keep saying it. Most of the people they disappeared have
no criminal records, and many were even here legally.
They came here for a better life, and Trump disappeared them based on
nothing more than tattoos that say ``mom'' and ``dad,'' or that
celebrate soccer teams or a daughter's birth or autism awareness.
And I realize I keep hammering home that many of these people are not
criminals and that many of these people came here legally. But I do
want to remind my colleagues that this question is not whether someone
who has vanished to El Salvador without a trace is good or bad. The
question is whether everyone in this country, including American
citizens, have the rights they were promised in our Constitution? At
the end of the day, it is not about who these people are; it is about
who we are--whether we are a country of due process or not, a country
of laws or not.
Trump has said where he stands. He literally said: We don't have time
to give them due process.
If the Trump administration thinks that someone is a criminal, if
they are really bad and dangerous, prove it in court. Prove it. Just
simply prove it. It shouldn't be hard. That is how this works. Everyone
in this country understands that. You can't just say: Criminals don't
get due process when due process is how you determine who is a criminal
in the first place.
I mean, in the case of one person they sent to El Salvador, not only
did the government's file against him show no criminal record, but it
also got his name wrong several times and used two different
identification numbers. Those are pretty major errors to make when you
are locking someone away, the kind of errors that due process helps to
avoid.
That is not some theory. We are seeing it happen in another case
right now. There is a couple that Trump is saying is part of a gang.
But instead of just disappearing them with no trial to speak of, the
administration was forced to prove it--to prove it in court. And do you
know what happened? The government failed. The judge found the
government's claims completely and wholly unsubstantiated and ordered
the couple to be released.
That just goes to show, if we ignore our laws, if we tear down the
guardrails that saved that couple, it is not criminals who pay the
price; it is innocent people, because due process protects them too.
Due process allows us to confirm whether people are lawfully present.
Due process lets us confirm whether Trump is about to send them to a
foreign prison. Due process lets us confirm whether people are guilty,
instead of going off how they look or what tattoo they may have. And at
the end of the day, due process means they get an actual determination
of guilt or innocence, instead of getting disappeared with a question
mark.
But no one here was told they are facing x years in a foreign prison.
There is no end date in El Salvador because there was no sentence,
because there was no trial. There was just Trump ignoring our laws,
ignoring our courts, and sending people to gulags to rot and die and
never be heard from again.
How can anyone ignore that outrageous breach of our laws, of our
values?
And as a coequal branch of this government, I want to impress upon my
colleagues: It is not just due process that is getting trampled here;
it is basic checks and balances.
Trump is imprisoning these people under the Alien Enemies Act. He is
using a war power. We are not at war. Everyone here should know that.
After all, Congress--we--have to vote to declare war.
I remember every war vote we have taken in my time here in Congress,
and I can tell you there has never been a vote on this so-called war
Trump declared all on his own.
As if that weren't enough, earlier this month, the National
Intelligence Council--the National Intelligence Council--determined
that Venezuela is not directing an invasion by gangs. That directly
undercut what Trump claimed when he announced his illegal end run
around Congress.
Here is the simple question for everyone. There is no invasion. There
is no

[[Page S2704]]

war. So why is Trump invoking a wartime authority?
But add on top of that that Trump has reached some secret,
multimillion-dollar deal to pay El Salvador to imprison these people
without a trial.
I am vice chair of the Appropriations Committee. I can tell you, we
did not include a single cent, not one penny, for running torture
prisons in El Salvador in our last funding bill.
Congress has the power of the purse, but Trump is picking our pockets
to fund his own personal gulag.
And, by the way, while we talk about checks and balances, let's not
forget how the Trump administration is arresting judges. His allies and
advisers are attacking judges publicly and calling to impeach those who
disagree with him.
And, of course, Trump is blatantly ignoring the courts. And worse
than that, the White House is in open defiance of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court wrote: The administration must facilitate Mr.
Garcia's release.
The White House wrote that he is never coming back.
The Supreme Court wrote: People being targeted under the Alien
Enemies Act must have a reasonable opportunity to file for habeas
corpus.
The Trump administration said: No. We will give them 12 hours.
Foreign policy is not an end run around the courts or the
Constitution. The President cannot just be given unilateral authority
to cut completely unethical deals with foreign nations.
What happens when a President negotiates in secret to have his
political rivals detained abroad? Is that allowed? Can he argue the
courts can't require him to call such a deal off? Or maybe he just
denies it and says any agreements are state secrets. Does that work?
If President Trump said he would pay El Salvador $6 million to
assassinate his rivals, I think we would all agree that that is
blatantly unconstitutional. And if the court said he had to facilitate
the reversal of that deal, and he said, ``Well, it is a sovereign
nation; I can't stop them from assassinating anyone,'' I think we would
all have a huge problem with that.
So do we want to say that is wrong now, or are we going to have to
wait until he tries it?
What are we waiting for? We cannot just all stand by silently as the
President pries open a Pandora's box that is altogether unprecedented
and that poses a direct threat to our Republic. And let's cut through
this BS where Trump and El Salvador are both trying to pretend there is
no way to facilitate the return of people sent there wrongly.

Here is the thing: El Salvador has already sent back people that
Trump tried to disappear. El Salvador immediately sent back a
Nicaraguan individual, and they sent back women--yes, Trump tried to
disappear women to their all-male torture prison in El Salvador. If
anyone wants to try and pretend this was some careful vetting process,
please explain that to me.
It is not like El Salvador can't send people back. They have already
done that.
The administration should be making clear, one, these people were
wrongly sent, and, two, that as with others wrongly sent, they need to
be returned.
Though I want to keep in mind, of course, that ``wrongly sent'' is
still kind of an understatement. The reality is, these people were
completely denied due process. The reality is, President Trump is not
just disappearing these people to El Salvador, he is disappearing our
most basic constitutional rights, and he is doing it in plain sight,
not just in El Salvador either, right here in America.
His immigration crackdown is upturning lives and overturning some of
our most basic values like freedom of speech. We have people who are
here legally who are being detained and threatened with deportation,
not for any crime, not for any violence, but for speech, for protest,
for things as simple, as fundamental, as writing an op-ed the
administration disagreed with--in America, the land of the free and the
land of free speech.
Is dissent the bar for deportation now? Is that what this country has
come to? What next? How far does Trump's new standard apply? Can you
get deported for saying we shouldn't invade Canada? Can you get
detained for an op-ed saying Greenland is not going to be a State? Are
you going to have legal status revoked for admitting Biden won the 2020
election? Because this seems outrageous, but it seems perfectly in line
with Trump's new policy which amounts to ``disagree with the President,
your rights are gone.'' That is fundamentally un-American.
And beyond people who are being targeted for protest, there are
thousands of students in this country that Trump is trying to push out
over minor issues: fishing citations, jaywalking, speeding tickets,
even charges that were dismissed. So far, some 1,800 foreign students
are having their visas revoked with little to no explanation, to say
nothing of due process. And that includes students in Washington State,
my home State, at U-Dub, Gonzaga, Shoreline Community College where I
once worked, my alma mater, WSU, and more. It is not clear whether
these students have done anything wrong, and it is not clear, in some
cases, what exactly they are supposed to do next because when the
administration can't revoke visas, it has been trying to remove
students' records, something courts have already ruled against.
One of the judges really put it best. I want to read this and quote
it to you:

I've got two experienced immigration lawyers on behalf of a
client who is months away from graduation, who has done
nothing wrong, who has been terminated from a system that you
all keep telling me has no effect on his immigration status,
although that clearly is BS. And now, his two very
experienced lawyers can't even tell him whether or not he's
here legally because the court can't tell him whether or not
he's here legally, because the government's counsel can't
tell him if he's here legally.

The point seems to be, if we can't deport you, we can scare and
confuse you. And to add even more confusion, DOJ announced they were
reversing course on some of this only to then say they are still
working on a plan to push out all these students.
By the way, we are only still scratching the surface of just how
inhumane Trump's immigration crackdown has become. Trump is slashing
funds to ensure 26,000 migrant kids have legal assistance, meaning more
4-year-olds are being marched in front of immigration judges expected
to make their own legal case with a plushy toy.
Trump is also trying to mass cancel protected status for people who
came here who were fleeing harsh conditions and dictators. Trump is
sending Christian refugees and women back to live under the Taliban
where they will face near-certain persecution.
Trump is sending ICE officials to elementary schools where they tried
to gain access by lying about having permission from parents to speak
with their kids. ICE officials are arresting people with maximum
violence and lawlessness, showing up without judicial warrants, since
the Trump administration says it is fine to storm into some someone's
house without one; showing up in masks, grabbing people off the streets
without any badge or identification to distinguish them from a
kidnapper; whisking people away in unmarked cars and even smashing
windshields.
Back in my home State of Washington, I heard from folks who saw that
firsthand.
Last month, ICE aggressively detained Lelo, a farmworker in my State.
And it appears he may have even been targeted because of his advocacy
for better working conditions for his fellow farmworkers. They are
still denying him bond despite no criminal charges.
I spoke with his wife last week who watched in horror as they
arrested her husband shortly after he dropped her off at work. She told
me through tears about how officers broke his window and pushed him
against the car and how Lelo wants to be free so he can take care of
his brothers and sisters and work so they can study. He wants to
continue doing his work with the community and with the union. And they
are working right now to try to get bond, something I strongly support.
This is not someone with a dangerous record. It is someone with a
record of hard work and trying to make his community better.
Skagit County is known for its agricultural industry. That industry
does not survive without the immigrant farmworkers who help power that
local economy, period. More than that, we

[[Page S2705]]

are talking about many families who have been here for decades. They
are part of our community. They are not just the people who feed this
country, these are people who work hard. They followed the law. They
should not be terrorized as if they were violent criminals.

Last week, I met with farmworkers there who told me there have been
days they have been afraid to go to work because an unmarked vehicle
was seen in their neighborhood. They are absolutely terrified of being
grabbed off the street by ICE and locked up with no semblance of due
process regardless of their legal status.
And this situation is not unique to Skagit County or even to my
State. It is happening across the country. Let's not forget, Trump is
trying to deport a cancer researcher to Russia where she fears
retaliation for protesting the war in Ukraine. Sending her away would
both put her in danger and completely upend groundbreaking cancer
research. Her colleagues say her role is irreplaceable.
But it is not just cancer research. Trump also deported a little
girl--a U.S. citizen--who was on her way to get cancer treatment. She
was with her mother, an undocumented immigrant who was forced to choose
being separated from her 10-year-old daughter or being sent away
together. What an unthinkable choice to force on a mother. What an
unthinkable thing to do to a child, a citizen--a citizen--who is
fighting cancer.
And Trump has done that twice. That is right--twice. He has deported
a mother along with a kid who is fighting cancer--a kid, by the way,
who is an American citizen.
He is doing that without giving these parents any meaningful time to
talk to a lawyer or a spouse or to figure out what is best for that
child. We know that because Trump deported another U.S. citizen last
week. That is right, another one. Trump deported a 2-year-old, an
American citizen. They refused to tell this kid's father where his wife
and kid were being held. They refused to let him talk to his wife for
more than a minute. They even forced him to hang up the phone when he
tried to give his wife their lawyer's number. And then, as the judge
put it, they seem to have ``deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful
process.''
Now we are hearing about a family in Oklahoma--U.S. citizens who
recently moved in who had their home raided by ICE. A mom and her
daughters were forced out of their house in the rain in underwear. ICE
agents seized their phones, their laptops, even their life savings, and
didn't leave so much as a number they could call to get their stuff
back. That happened to U.S. citizens who did nothing but move into a
new house.
These horror stories underscore something important--Trump's cruel
war on immigrants is hurting American citizens too. U.S. citizens are
having their spouses ripped away. Even servicemembers are seeing their
families targeted. They are having their parents ripped away. They are
having their lives turned upside down.
Let's not forget, U.S. citizens are even being detained by this
administration. We have several instances now where American citizens
have been caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown. American citizens
have been detained and wrongly locked up, even after someone showed
them their birth certificates--even for days.
Let's keep in mind, if you are a citizen who is mistakenly detained
and you are being denied due process and you can't reach someone to
show them your birth certificate, how are you supposed to get released?
What if you are put on the next plane for El Salvador before you get a
chance to set the record straight?
Let's not pretend that is farfetched, not when citizens have already
been mistakenly detained, not when the government has already admitted
it sent some people to El Salvador by mistake, not when Trump has
already disappeared some people who were here legally and many people
who had no criminal record with no due process and not when Trump has
already said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons. He
was caught on mic telling the President of El Salvador he needs to
build more jails, telling him the ``homegrowns'' are next.
What happens when you get sent there, and you can't contact a lawyer?
These are serious questions. What happens? Because if there is nothing
we can do for the people there now, what precedent does that set for
the people that are sent there next?
Mr. President, I have been speaking for a while and posed a lot of
questions. I hope my colleagues think about this carefully. I am going
to wrap it up, but I want to end with just one more. Where will
Republicans draw the line because we are well past the bounds of law,
and we are well past the bounds of basic humanity.
So I hope more of my colleagues will join me saying enough is enough
and demanding transparency, accountability, and justice from the Trump
administration.
That starts with some very basic things. First, accurate up-to-date
information on the names of people who are being detained and then
deported from ICE facilities across the country, including, by the way,
the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma, so their loved ones and
community members can at least know where they are.
And we need a clear list of every person who was disappeared to El
Salvador, along with what evidence, if any, the government has as well
as the full terms of whatever agreement the Trump administration has
negotiated with El Salvador's dictator.
But it doesn't stop there. We need to see clear, good-faith efforts
to abide by court orders and to bring back everyone wrongfully,
unjustly sent to a foreign prison. We need to have lines of
communication so these people can talk to their lawyers or talk to
their loved ones and let us know they are OK. And we need due process
with evidence, with judges, and a meaningful opportunity for people to
present a defense.
Let's be clear, we are not saying everyone is innocent. We are saying
no more than what the Constitution says, no more than what the courts
have said time and again: Everyone in the United States of America gets
due process.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Missouri.

Tariffs

Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I rise today to engage in this great
debate that is raging across our country. Turn on the TV, read the
newspapers, or open your phone, and you will be overwhelmed by the
back-and-forths over tariffs, trade deficits, prices, and markets.
We hear the talking heads say that America simply can't afford
President Trump's insistence on more favorable trade policies. We hear
much less about whether America can afford to continue down the road we
have traveled these past 30 years.

That is not a question that people in this city are asking. For many,
it is not a question that appears to have occurred to them at all. The
debates right now are about the future and how President Trump's
policies will shape it. That is good. These are important debates that
we should have. But, today, I rise because I want to speak about the
past.
I am speaking as an American but, in particular, as a proud
Missourian, a boy from Bridgeton. My folks--they weren't wealthy. My
grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and returned from the
war with an eighth grade education and some money he won playing craps
on the Queen Elizabeth on his way home. All of his children worked in
his butcher shop growing up. Later, I remember seeing my dad work 7
days a week on the midnight shift to put food on the table and a roof
over our heads. He worked hard and lived honestly. And, just one
generation later, look where we are.
What a remarkable story about my life--I suppose it is a remarkable
story--but the truth is, it is just how unremarkable it really is in
this country. That was the everyday magic of America--a country where
lives like ours were not just possible but common. It was who we were.
America built the modern world. Our country was forged by pilgrims,
pioneers, settlers, and explorers--men whose dreams were too big for
the low horizons of the Old World. Our ancestors settled a new
continent, tamed a frontier, raised up a great civilization from the
wilderness, and planted our flag on the Moon. It was American genius
that connected the world, first

[[Page S2706]]

through the great steam engine, spanning this continent from coast to
coast, then through the miracle of flight. We gave humanity the
telephone, the internet, the skyscraper, modern technology,
electricity, and the industrial assembly lines that built modern
civilization. Even the things we didn't invent, we perfected.
Everything that mattered happened here.
But, over the last few decades, the people in power squandered that
inheritance. They sent our children and our wealth overseas to defend
the borders of distant nations while throwing open our own borders to a
tidal wave of mass migration here at home. They shipped the good-
paying, middle-class American jobs that once were the backbone of our
economy to places like Mexico and China, transforming once prosperous
towns and cities into hollow shells of their former selves, often
defined by addiction and death. All the while, in the forgotten corners
of this land, the men and women who built this country have suffered in
silence. They watch in quiet despair as their towns crumble into
disrepair, their way of life disappears, and the country they love
slips away from them.
The political ideal of a republic is self-reliance. As our Founding
Fathers understood, the art of self-government is about people's
ability to rely on themselves. There was always trade, of course--this
is a natural and good privilege of productive surplus economies--but in
a republic, there was also trade between sovereign, self-sufficient
communities. The citizen of the classical republic had no need for
cheap trinkets, fashion, and sweatshops halfway across the globe. He
and his neighbors were the ones building their homes, growing their own
food, and when necessary, taking up arms to provide for their own
defense. People who depend on others for essential things cannot rule
themselves, and if they cannot rule themselves, they cannot keep a
republic.
Yes, times have changed. The economy of today is altogether different
than the economy our ancestors knew, but that is no excuse for standing
by as our home becomes a dumping ground for cheap Chinese goods. Are we
really still a sovereign people today? Our independence and our
sovereignty are not commodities to be sold on the global market. We
can't and won't make everything here, but we must recover the will and
the ability to make the vital necessities of our national life. Our
country now depends on foreign imports for most of those necessities.
By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, more Americans now work in government than
in manufacturing. Nearly half of our cars, more than 60 percent of our
machine tools, 80 percent of our pharmaceuticals, and nearly 90 percent
of the semiconductor chips we need for everything from phones to
fighter jets are foreign made. That is why the crisis that confronts us
today is not merely economic. It is about communism and slave labor
versus freedom. It is about who will win the 21st century. The stakes
are high. It is about the survival of our civilization. It is about the
kind of Nation and people we are and will be: one that creates and
builds or one that simply consumes.
In this city, we tend to speak of big, sweeping abstractions--jobs,
wages, deficits, growth. We talk as if these things are numbers and
graphs. We forget that every job lost to China and every factory moved
to Mexico belongs to a real, flesh-and-blood American, with a life and
a family and a home. Each and every data point is a fellow citizen, a
neighbor, a son or daughter of this great Republic. Since NAFTA,
90,000--90,000--factories in our country have closed. Think about that
and what it means to those families. For the people who benefited, this
was just an abstract externality. For the workers, the heartland
Americans, it was everything. I know these people. These are my
people--these are our people--and for too long, they have walked alone.
There is no memorial for their sacrifice, no national outpouring of
grief for their loss, no powerful interest group to represent them in
the halls of power.
Let me tell you what 30 years of so-called free and fair trade has
meant for the folks where I am from.
In the 1990s, our political class embraced a new line of thinking:
that America could become more prosperous by opening all trade barriers
regardless of how other countries treated us. The result was swift and
devastating. By 2004, according to some estimates, Missouri had lost
well over 31,000 jobs to foreign trade. By 2010, our trade deficit with
Mexico had cost us 12,600 Missouri jobs. By 2013, we had shipped 44,200
Missouri jobs off to China. By 2018, Missouri had lost more than 90,000
jobs in manufacturing alone--over 25 percent of our industrial base.
Until a few decades ago, southeast Missouri was a national hub for
garment and shoe manufacturing. In the 1970s, southeast Missouri was
home to as many as 90--90--shoe plants. The last shoe factory from that
era closed for good in 2005. It had begun as a five-story, 92,000-foot
international shoe plant in Cape Girardeau, nicknamed ``the Pride of
Southeast Missouri.'' At one point, it employed 1,200 workers, but
cheaper imports from low-wage countries began to flood the market, and
by 1990, the old factory was razed and replaced with a one-story plant
of, roughly, 300 to 500 workers. By 2001, that had dwindled down to
just 50.

Here is what one former employee told a local paper after the plant
closed for good:

Now I am working at the Lutheran Home, driving a van, and
making a third of the amount of money I made before. My wife
also has to work, and, together, we are making two-thirds of
what I made alone at the shoe plant. It is very upsetting.
You get mad, and then you get hurt, and you think about all
the jobs leaving the country and all the people losing their
jobs.

Tri-Con Industries, which makes car seat parts, shuttered its factory
in Cape Girardeau, too, and moved its production to Mexico. That was
another 200 jobs gone.
There are patriotic shoe companies that still want to build in
America. Belleville Boots took over a factory in Carthage, MO, in 2020.
There are businesses that still love America, and they want to build on
the generations of skilled craftsman in places like southeast Missouri,
but for decades, our political class has rigged the rules to punish
rather than help companies that put America first. This pattern repeats
again and again and in every industry.
Up until the end of the 20th century, Missouri still had a major
electronics assembly operation. Zenith Electronics--the last major
American TV maker--had a large assembly plant in Springfield, MO. It
had been in operation since just after World War II, and at one point,
it employed 3,300 Missourians; but those jobs, too, had started moving
to Mexico in the late 1990s. In October of 1991, Zenith shut down its
plant and shipped its operation down to Mexico, taking out 1,500
Missouri jobs in one blow. In Springfield, the average worker made
between 5 and 10 bucks an hour. Down in Mexico, it was just 83 cents.
The high priests of the global economy tell us that this is merely
creative destruction and that other, better industries will arise to
take their place of the ones that were lost. It is true that some of
the workers in Springfield went on to find new jobs, but they were
often much worse than the ones that they had before. Five years after
Zenith shut down, laid-off workers saw an average pay cut of more than
10 percent. More than half of them had held multiple jobs since being
laid off, two-thirds of them with worse benefits. Even the workers who
enrolled in job retraining programs fared no better than the ones who
didn't.
``Those people had worked there for 20 or 25 years,'' one laid-off
worker recalled. ``They were at the top end of the pay scales, and
there weren't any more TV repairman jobs out there.''
Toastmaster is a household name. Well, they were headquartered in
Missouri, and they made their stuff in Missouri, too, with factories in
small towns all across our State; but as we welcomed China into the
world economy, Toastmaster began to feel the squeeze of cheap Asian
imports. By 2001, every Toastmaster plant in our State was gone,
shipping hundreds of jobs from rural mid-Missouri to China. The last
one to go, in the town of Macon--near where I went to school--had been
in operation since the 1950s. All that remained was a toxic waste
cleanup site for the 5,500 people in the town it left behind. Although
Toastmaster continued production in certain areas of the United States,
Missouri wasn't so fortunate.

[[Page S2707]]

Boonville, a town where my grandmother went to high school, was
another place that lost a Toastmaster factory. In 2011, the town of
about 8,000 people lost its modular home manufacturing factory to the
housing crisis too. In 2012, its bread factory filed for bankruptcy. In
2013, Nordyne, which manufactured air and heating products, announced
it would be moving production from Boonville to--guess where--Mexico,
taking out another 250 jobs.
``From a moral standpoint, it was kicking somebody while they were
already down,'' the head of the local chamber of commerce said as he
talked to a local newspaper.
This is not the distant past, folks. This is the reality that
millions and millions of our fellow Americans in Missouri and across
the country live this very day.
Haldex, a brake manufacturer, packed up and left for Mexico in 2020,
eliminating the last 154 jobs left at the facility in the suburbs of
Kansas City. Layoffs began 2 weeks before Christmas. They will save
millions of dollars a year paying Mexican workers a fraction of what
they paid back home.
I will tell you one more story from the Bootheel in Missouri.
For decades, the Noranda Aluminum smelter there was a lifeline
employer for the folks in New Madrid, Marston, and surrounding
communities. These were good, decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-Earth
folks. I visited with them. The smelter was the engine for their way of
life, but in 2016, Noranda filed for bankruptcy and shut down. Why?
Because China's cheap, state-subsidized aluminum had flooded the
market, causing global aluminum prices to plunge. In New Madrid--a town
of less than 3,000 people--about 1,000 people had gone to find new
jobs, usually at much lower pay. The county government went in the red.
Local police and ambulance budgets were cut. The local school district
lost a $3.1 million tax payment, which forced their own layoffs and saw
a 10-percent drop in enrollment as families left the area.
People lost homes, the mayor of New Madrid said. People got divorced.
An American town, filled with American families, left for dead by their
own country. What did we do to our own people?
This is not to say that Missourians don't want fair exchange, one
where they can trade and grow with the rest of the world, but the
``free trade'' that transpired was not free trade at all.
The double-edged tragedy of the system is that not all these
companies wanted to leave. Some--perhaps many--wanted desperately to
stay. These people were their neighbors, their friends, their family.
But over the past three decades, we punished the companies that were
loyal to America while rewarding the ones that weren't. The businesses
that were eager to offshore got big bonuses at the American workers'
expense. The businesses that wanted to stay here found themselves
struggling to stay alive in conditions where they couldn't compete.
Now, some might argue that Americans don't want to make shoes
anymore, but we did a generation ago. The American workers of that age
knew that there was something meaningful in creating and producing.
Today, we have been taken by the idea that our social status is not
what we build or create but what we can afford to buy or consume. It is
going to take generations to reverse this thinking. The post-war order
has given birth to a shallow morality of materialism that measures
values strictly in terms of consumption. This is a poisonous new idea,
utterly alien to the traditional American way of life.
Our trade policy, like our foreign policy, failed to adapt to the new
reality of the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The
consequences were nothing short of devastating.
At the dawn of the 1990s, as America looked forward to the new
millennium, the architects of globalism beamed about the promise of the
open society--a world without barriers or borders where all nations and
cultures and economies would meld into one global economic zone.
Thirty years on, what do we have to show for it? At home, our
factories and the towns that once sustained them lie in ruin, razed by
the ruthless logic of the new global economy and cost-efficiency. The
Americans who once worked there were replaced by foreign labor
overseas. The Americans who once held on were now being replaced by
foreign labor here at home. Their children will graduate into a
workforce where nearly 1 in 10 workers doesn't even speak their own
language.
The twin horsemen of globalism--unprotected trade and unprotected
borders--have been a catastrophe for our civilization. But, in many
ways, I don't blame the illegal immigrant who wants to come here in
search of work, but we do have a country of laws, and there are
consequences. I don't blame the factory laborer in Vietnam who takes
the job that once belonged to an American. Do you know who I blame? The
people in power who allowed them to do it.
I blame the corporate bosses, the special interests, and, yes, the
politicians who sold our country out for a seat at the table of the
globalist banquet.
I blame the ideologues of the status quo, the international elites,
the so-called citizens of the world who see our country as a global
economic zone, a giant shopping mall with an airport attached.
I blame the people in cities like this one, who seem to have
forgotten the men and women in towns like Boonville and New Madrid or
their brothers and sisters, because ``American'' is not just a box you
check on a tax form but a sacred responsibility that binds us to one
another, an unbroken chain between our past and our future.
I do not know what the future holds, but I do know what the past has
meant. I know that something has to change and that President Trump is
the first politician in a generation to even care enough to try.
The 77 million ``deplorables'' who cast their lot with Donald Trump
last November were the forgotten Americans--the blue-collar patriots,
the conservatives of the heart, miners, mechanics, tradesmen, and
farmers; men and women who worked with their hands, grew our food,
built our homes, and drilled our fuel, whose labor powered our country,
whose taxes sustained our government, and whose children served and
sacrificed in our wars. They stand with this President because he stood
with them when no one else would.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up
to 5 minutes, followed by Senators Wyden and Schumer for up to 1 minute
each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

S.J. Res. 31

Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I rise today in support of my friend from
Utah, Senator Curtis, and his Congressional Review Act resolution to
overturn the final rule of the Biden Environmental Protection Agency's
review of final rule reclassification of major sources as area sources.
This misguided rule would remove a major incentive for dozens of
industries to reduce emissions. It would further saddle American energy
producers and manufacturers with regulatory costs and burdens and,
simply put, operates under a premise that is purely unfair.
Under this rule, once you classify as a major source, you are always
considered a major source even though--you would even be prohibited
from ever achieving an ``area source'' status again even if your
emissions output decreased below the applicable threshold. This tells
American manufacturing and energy leaders that no matter what you do,
you will always operate under the strictest regulatory standard
available. We should instead provide incentives for industries to lower
their emissions and keep alive the option of returning to an area
source once emissions are reduced.

Over the last 20 years, no other country has reduced its emissions
like the United States, and we do not need overly restrictive
regulations to continue this.
Giving our private sector the ability to innovate on a sensible
timeline is a different approach than the inflexible, top-down mandate
that became accustom over the past 4 years.
The good news is, every Member of this Chamber now has the
opportunity to right this wrong and reinstate the rule in place before
that, which allowed for reclassification of these sources.

[[Page S2708]]

The former rule, which was put into place by President Trump's first
administration, encourages industries to take proactive steps to reduce
emissions without increasing regulatory burdens. The results during
President Trump's first term were overwhelmingly clear: Source
reclassification reduces hazardous air pollution in our communities.
We need to take every opportunity available to rightsize regulatory
requirements prohibiting our ability to revitalize American
manufacturing and achieve energy dominance, while taking steps that
reduce emissions through innovative technologies that I have advocated
for alongside my colleagues across both aisles of this Chamber.
We need to remember that our manufacturing, energy, and environmental
policies do not need to be at odds with one another. A robust
manufacturing sector, energy reliability, and a clean environment are
not mutually exclusive.
I am proud to join in this effort alongside Senator Curtis, my
colleague on the Environment and Public Works Committee. This is an
opportunity to return to commonsense environmental policy, and I
encourage my colleagues to join us in supporting this resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
1 minute to conclude, and Senator Schumer will ask for an additional
minute as well, and we would wrap up. But I ask unanimous consent to
speak for 1 minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That order has been granted.

S.J. Res. 49

Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. President.
Senators, the devastating economic news we got this morning should be
enough for Senators to vote yes tonight.
The only winner from the tariffs is China, which is scooping up
markets and allies Donald Trump has left in the dust.
Senators, vote yes. Reclaim American trade policy, and end its
outsourcing to Donald Trump.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this resolution presents Republicans with
a choice: Stand with Donald Trump or stand with American families hurt
by the trade war.
The dismal GDP numbers today should be a wake-up call to Republican
Senators now more than ever. Donald Trump is doing with the economy and
tariffs what he did with his own business: Drive them under. It is
terrible.
We hope that Republicans will join us because the devastation of the
tariffs is apparent. Families are paying more. IRAs are going down. The
country is on the edge of a recession because businesses are paralyzed.
The only solution: Pass our legislation, have Johnson pass it in the
House, and tell President Trump his tariff policies are chaotic and
plain dumb.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will read
the title of the joint resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading
and was read the third time.

Vote on S.J. Res. 49

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Mr. WYDEN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the
Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr.
Whitehouse) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 49, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 225 Leg.]

YEAS--49

Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Wyden

NAYS--49

Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young

NOT VOTING--2

McConnell
Whitehouse

The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 49) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The majority leader.

Motion to Reconsider

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Motion to Table

And I move to table the motion to reconsider.

Vote on Motion to Table

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
Mr. THUNE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the
Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr.
Whitehouse) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 49, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 226 Leg.]

YEAS--49

NAYS--49

NOT VOTING--2

McConnell
Whitehouse

(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
The VICE PRESIDENT. On this vote, the yeas are 49, the nays are 49.
The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in the
affirmative. The motion to table is agreed to.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). The majority leader.

____________________