[Pages S3613-S3647]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PRAYER

The Chaplain, Dr. Barry C. BLACK, offered the following prayer:
Let us pray.
Lord of creation, You established day and night and the orderly
movements of the seasons. That same providence orders the lives of our
Senators, our Nation, and our world.
As our lawmakers seek to do what is right, give them the wisdom to
discern what is best. Show them the pitfalls to avoid and the
opportunities to seize. Lord, keep them from becoming weary in their
pursuant of Your purposes as they remember Your promise to bring a
bountiful harvest. May they cling to the enduring principles of Your
truth that will lead them to Your desired destination.
We pray in Your wonderful Name. Amen.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will continue reading.
The assistant bill clerk continued with the reading of the amendment.
(The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore assumed the Chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The majority leader.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would like to start by just taking a
moment to thank the clerks who stayed up all night reading the
amendment and getting us to this point. I know it was a long night and
that we are not finished yet, but I want them to know that the Senate
appreciates their dedication, their stamina, and their service.
In just a moment, I am going to make a point of order against the
substitute amendment that I offered on behalf of Chairman Graham. I
believe the Chair should rule that there is no point of order against
the amendment because, under the Budget Act, the Senate looks to the
Budget Committee to assess the budgetary effects of an amendment.
Basically, this has to do with the current policy baseline that we
decided to use in the budget resolution for this bill and how we handle
points of order related to it. This is an issue that, I think, we need
to deal with right off the bat.

Point of Order

Therefore, I make a point of order under section 313(b)(1)(E) of the
Congressional Budget Act against substitute amendment No. 2360.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the Congressional Budget Act and the
precedents of the Senate, the chair must rely on determinations made by
the Budget Committee in assessing the budgetary effects of the
amendment.
Section 312 of the Budget Act states:

For purposes of this title and title IV, the levels of new
budgetary authority, outlays, direct spending, new
entitlement authority, and revenues for a fiscal year shall
be determined on the basis of estimates made by the Committee
on the Budget of the House of Representatives or the Senate,
as applicable.
Unless the Budget Committee, speaking through its chairman,
asserts that the amendment causes a violation of the Budget
Act, the Chair will not so hold.

The point of order is not well-taken.
The Democrat leader.

Appealing the Ruling of the Chair

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I appeal the ruling of the Chair, and I
ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
The yeas and nays are ordered.
The appeal is debatable for 1 hour under the Act.
The Democrat leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, let me thank everyone who stayed
overnight to take part in the reading of this bill--my colleagues, the
cloakrooms, the floor staff--everyone who made it possible.
I would say this to the cloakrooms and, particularly, to our great
floor staff: You are all amazing. You are the unsung heroes of what
goes on here. Without you, none of us could do our work. So thank you
for your dedication, your excellence, your perseverance, your strength.
Senate Democrats will now commence with four parliamentary inquiries
to show the hypocrisy of what Republicans are trying to do here in the
Senate and to expose how they are trying to hide the true costs of
their billionaire giveaways to the American people. I thank my
colleagues who will speak momentarily, as well as all of my colleagues
who have come to the floor, as we debate this bill before vote-arama.
Before I yield to them, I just want to hammer home exactly what is
going on here in the Senate for the people back home.
Republicans are about to pass the single most expensive bill in U.S.
history to give tax breaks to billionaires, while taking away Medicaid,
SNAP benefits, and good-paying jobs for millions of people. The CBO,
just this morning, said it will explode the debt by $3.3 trillion, and
they said it will likely cost more than that over time--closer to $4
trillion. Rather than being honest with the American people about the
true costs of their billionaire giveaways, Republicans are doing
something the Senate has never, never done before: deploying fake math
and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of their bill.
Look, Republicans can use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want to
try and make the math work on paper, but you can't paper over the real-
life consequences of adding tens of trillions to the debt--sky-high
interest rates, higher borrowing costs for cars, for homes, for credit
cards. Americans are going to feel this, unfortunately, everywhere they
look. Americans' household wealth will be permanently hobbled. There
aren't enough budgetary gimmicks in the world to change that fact. And
for what? Why are Republicans doing this? So that billionaires can pay
less in taxes while tens of millions lose their healthcare benefits and
pay more for everyday expenses.
I yield to my colleague from Oregon for the first parliamentary
inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, a parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry.
Mr. MERKLEY. When the House bill was first laid before the Senate,
was the operative baseline under which it would be considered the
current law baseline under section 257 of the Balanced Budget and
Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
The Democrat leader.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise for a parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state his inquiry.
Mr. SCHUMER. Has the Senate ever used a baseline other than the
current law baseline under 257 for the enforcement of budget points of
order, including under section 313 of the Budget Act, during the
consideration of a reconciliation measure?
Has it ever been used?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. No.
The Senator from Oregon.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, what the Republican majority is doing right
now on the Senate floor is hiding trillions of dollars in handouts to
corporations and the wealthy--trillions of dollars. If you measure this
bill the way we measure every other reconciliation bill, it simply
doesn't comply with the rules. The Republican majority has figured out
a trick that allows them to sidestep the Parliamentarian, violate the
Congressional Budget Act, and lift the filibuster for Trump's entire
legislative agenda in one fell swoop. It is fakery. The budget numbers
are a fraud, but the deficits will be very real. The prospect of a
catastrophic death spiral is very real. The hardship this terrible bill
is going to inflict on tens of millions of Americans will be very real.
So my parliamentary inquiry will proceed now: Does the score of the
finance title of the Senate substitute, which the chairman asserts
complies with its instruction, rely on the use of two distinct
baselines: current policy for taxes and current law for health
provisions like Medicaid?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
The Senator from Washington.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, a parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will state her inquiry.
Mrs. MURRAY. Are the remaining nine titles of the Senate substitute
scored by the CBO using a current law 257 baseline?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes
The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have been here a long time. Not only
have I been the Budget chair but I am the longest serving Democrat on
that committee, and in my 33 years here in the

[[Page S3614]]

U.S. Senate, things have never, never worked this way where one party
so egregiously ignores precedent, process, and the Parliamentarian, and
does that all in order to wipe away trillions of dollars of costs for a
bill that could just be the most expensive legislation this body ever
passes.
Forget Senate procedure for a minute. Math has never worked that way.
I taught preschool, and I will tell you, even our littlest kids know
the difference between a trillion and zero. It doesn't take a
preschooler to tell you they are using magic math or that you can't
just ignore the rules you don't like.
How many times have my colleagues cried about the debt? How many
times have they told me: I know you want to invest in childcare, Patty,
but we have got to get this budget under control?
But now that it is tax cuts for billionaires and corporations,
suddenly, the budget doesn't matter anymore. Suddenly, the rules do not
matter anymore. Suddenly, a couple trillion goes away with a sprinkle
of fairy dust, and bypassing the Parliamentarian and precedent isn't
really bypassing if you just close your eyes and just pretend real
hard.
Have you no shame? If you think you can look the American people in
the face and tell them we have to bring down the debt after passing
what might be the most expensive bill in history--if you think you can
do that and then be taken seriously, well, do you know what? If you
believe that, maybe you are foolish enough to think that zero and a
trillion are the same.
I can't believe this is what we are doing today, because I can tell
you right now, if this happens, we will all laugh you out of the room
because we have never seen anything like this, not in my time here in
the Senate, not in my time on this planet. We are not going to let
anyone forget that you are trashing the rules in order to pass this
egregious bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want to share a couple comments with my
colleagues, my Republican colleagues, because I have made these remarks
on the floor. Generally, the floor is empty, but you are here now.
In 1974, 100 Senators agreed on reconciliation as a fast track,
filibuster-free, but only for one purpose: reducing the deficit. It had
three pillars: first, reduce the deficit over a 10-year period; second,
reduce the deficit in each and every year after that 10-year period in
each title of the bill; and, third, use honest numbers.
In 1996, the Republican team was in the majority and decided on a
nuclear option to allow that reconciliation process to be used to
increase deficits in the 10-year window. That was unfortunate because
it destroyed the agreement all 100 Senators had agreed to in 1974.
But now, today, if we proceed with this current policy baseline,
there are two other pillars that you are destroying of the architecture
to create fiscal discipline. The second pillar was no deficits after
the 10-year period. That has been destroyed. The third was to use
honest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office on a current law
basis comparing each provision in the bill as compared to the provision
not being in the bill.
So here we are, taking a step that is as significant as it was in
1996. All three pillars will be brought down not by Democrats but by
Republicans. It is not necessary to do this to get what you want within
the 10-year period. Why tear down these additional two pillars of
honesty about the numbers--of no more smoke and mirrors--and creating
deficits after the 10-year period? It is extremely unfortunate if you
press forward with that vision in this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to pick up on the point that my
colleague from Washington State touched on.
Everybody ought to understand that this is the nuclear option. It is
just hidden behind a whole lot of Washington, DC, lingo. The only
difference is, instead of pressing a big nuclear button right at the
beginning of the Congress, Republicans decided that they would hide
behind the cloak of Senate procedure and go nuclear for every
individual bill they want to pass on party lines.
I just say to my colleagues: There is going to be a lot of horrendous
messes to clean up after this legislation.
But my colleagues need to understand that the move, as my colleague
from Washington State has said, cuts both ways.
I yield the floor.

Unanimous Consent Agreement

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrat leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask that debate time come off the bill
unless otherwise advised.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. I yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.

H.R. 1

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in this place where big money now
rules and in which fakery is now the order of the day and numbers no
longer have to be real, there is one point that stands out, and that is
that the fakery on the floor is belied by the language of the bill. If
these assertions were true, they would not need to raise the debt
limit.
All of these fun and games, all of this parliamentary mischief that
is happening right now crashes into the fact that, in real markets, in
the real world outside of this fakery, the debt limit is actually a
real thing.
I will take a moment to read from page 754 of this midnight
monstrosity, what it actually says, where it collides with the real
world.

Subtitle C--Increase in Debt Limit.
SEC. 72001. MODIFICATION OF LIMITATION ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.

Line 20:

The limitation under section 3101(b) of title 31, United
States Code, as most recently increased by section 401(b) of
Public Law 118-5 (31 U.S.C. 3101 note) is increased by
$5,000,000,000,000.

Five trillion dollars--that is the real number here. That is where
the rubber hits the road in real life.
The maneuver that is being pulled right now to avoid that fact--the
fact that the debt limit has to be increased by $5 trillion so the
Republicans can give immense tax breaks to billionaires--has not been
used for this before.
I used it once. In the year 2000, a deal had been struck on how to
score activities of the Power Marketing Administration. Does anybody
really know about the Power Marketing Administration? It is a small
thing.
Over the years, the Congressional Budget Office started scoring the
program differently than the Senate had agreed to in 2000. So in 2023
and 2024, the Senate Budget chair--me--and the House Budget chair,
Jodey Arrington, on a bipartisan basis invoked this section to have CBO
return to the original Senate agreement and not the variation that they
had created.
This is what section 312 has been used for--to resolve technical
ambiguity to advance a bipartisan appropriations deal, not to create
Senate floor fakery, belied by the $5 trillion debt limit hike that
Republicans are obliged to pass to make good on this huge billionaire
blowout we are forcing through the Senate floor now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I am using and yielding time off the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the debate and eventual voting on the Big
Beautiful Bill has begun. Hallelujah. It has taken a while for us to
get here, but we are going to have a debate worthy of a great country.
We will have what they think and what we think, and we are going to
vote on this bill in the coming days. I am excited about that. I have
worked a long time with my colleagues to get to where we are today.
So, to the American people, the debate is beginning right now
regarding the Big Beautiful Bill. I will tell you why that is good news
for you, but let me take a little bit of time to talk about current
policy versus current law.
I know everybody is on the edge of their seat at home, but here is
what I would tell you about numbers and Budget chairmen. I am not the
first Budget chairmen. There have been those who came before me. In
2008,

[[Page S3615]]

Chairman Kent Conrad--a really nice guy from North Dakota--used a new
baseline in the budget so he could get the farm bill in the budget.
Judd Gregg--a really smart guy, a former Budget chairman--said:

The chairman of the Budget Committee declared the new
baseline under a new budget. . . . The Budget chairman has a
right to do that.

That is what I am doing. I am setting the numbers. The
Parliamentarian said that is my job as Budget chairman.
The resolution we are operating under to get us here--we voted to
make that the case. So we are not doing anything sneaky. We actually
voted to give me the authority to do this, and it passed.
Again, I am not the first chairman to change a baseline for different
reasons--one, to get the farm bill in, and on another occasion, Senator
Sanders changed the baseline in 2022, when he was Budget chairman,
under budget reconciliation to issue a budget rule allowing the numbers
to change to get more money for Head Start. So Senator Sanders, as
Budget chairman, directed that a new rule be written to get more money
for Head Start.

So don't tell me you have never done this before in terms of changing
the baseline as Budget chairman.
The Budget chairman, under 312, sets the baseline. This has been
acknowledged by Republicans and Democrats. The baseline has been
changed in the past based on the Budget Committee chairman's desire,
one, to get a farm bill in, and the other, to change the numbers--a new
rule--to get Head Start spending. So this has been done before.
But I will be the first to say that what we are doing here is
historic in a good way.
In 2017, we passed the Trump tax cuts. They are due to expire in
December. Why is that? Before I got here, current law was the way to
score or implement tax policy. After 10 years, the tax cuts expired--
current law.
As Budget chairman, I have decided to use current policy when it
comes to cutting taxes. If you use current policy, they never expire.
So the policies that were created in 2017 would not end in December;
they would continue. That is a good thing for the American people, and
that is a good thing for the economy because it gives you certainty.
So I made a decision as Budget chairman, working with my colleagues,
to look at tax cuts as something important for the country, to give
certainty to businesses and individuals, and make sure that after 10
years, they don't arbitrarily go away and have a cliff. I made that
decision, my colleagues backed me up, and that is in the budget
resolution governing the debate we are here for today.
So why do we want to make the tax cuts permanent? Because if they
expire in December, the average family of four in South Carolina will
have a $1,700 increase. I don't want that, and I bet you people at home
don't want that. So we have to deal with that. That cliff is coming,
and not only do I want to avoid that cliff, I don't want to put us in
that position ever again.
The tax cuts have generated more revenue for the government than CBO
estimated in 2017.
The one thing about our friends at CBO--I appreciate all your hard
work; you have worked really hard--when it comes to taxing, they always
get it wrong about how much revenue is to be collected.
When you look at the years that have passed since 2017, on the
corporate side and on the individual side, the revenue to the
government has actually grown because of those tax cuts, and that is a
good thing. So cutting taxes means more money for you and your family.
Our friends on the other side, if you are waiting on them to cut your
taxes, you are going to die waiting. They are never going to do it. Why
are we doing it? Because they won't do it. We could never get 60 votes
for this.
The bottom line is, we are going to make these tax cuts permanent.
That is a good thing for businesses. Expensing will be allowed, so you
can invest in growing your business. You can buy new equipment. You can
write it off sooner. That will get more activity in the economy. It is
not me saying that; there is a track record.
Mr. President, you have been in business. This stuff works. They
don't like it, but it works. If you are in business, and the Tax Code
encourages you to invest in your business, you will.
This stuff literally works, and they hate it because it is money that
could have gone to the government but went back into the economy. What
they don't realize is, actually, the government gets more money. They
just keep spending it. We could do better on the spending side, and we
are going to do better on the spending side.
So this bill makes the 2017 tax cuts permanent. It avoids a tax
increase for your family that is coming in December if we don't act
now.
It secures the border. One of the reasons there are more of us than
our Democratic friends is how you screwed the country up for the last 4
years. We went from secure borders to completely open borders, absolute
chaos. That is why we are winning, and you are losing.
You want to take us back to open borders. We are not going. We are
not going back to your policies that allowed 8.3 million encounters at
the border, 1.7 million ``got-aways,'' and chaos in cities and
communities.
We are not going back to the policies that led to Laken Riley's
murder in Georgia, where the man convicted of murdering her was
captured several times, released because there was no detention space
to hold him in Texas and he left--a free man--went to Georgia, and
killed this lady. That has happened too many times, and it is going to
stop.
Now, what are we doing to secure the border? We went from lawless
borders to the most secure borders in 6 months because of President
Trump.
President Trump, you should be exceedingly proud--Homan, the whole
team. You have locked that border down. But we want to do it in a way
that it will stay locked down for the President after you and beyond.
So how do we secure the gains made by President Trump and his team?
We are going to, in this bill, hire more ICE agents to expedite removal
of people who shouldn't be here, particularly criminal elements, people
who are dangerous. We are going to finish the wall. Not one Democrat--
maybe one--no way would we get 60 votes to hire more ICE agents. No way
would we get Democratic help to finish the wall. We are going to go
from 40,000 detention beds to 125,000. This securing the border is
about $175 billion. New technology along the border and fiber cable so
we don't go back to the days of open borders--this is in the bill.
To those of you who voted for us and President Trump to secure the
border, we are delivering through this bill. And they would never do
what we are doing. I will be the first to admit, when it comes to
securing the border, they are never going to do what we are doing. We
are hiring more ICE agents; we are finishing the wall; and we are
increasing more detention beds so we don't let people out that can go
and murder.
I am very proud of this. I wrote this part. This is money well spent.
This will secure that border in perpetuity.
President Trump, this is your bill. It is in our bill. Well done.
To my friends on the other side, you had your chance, and you screwed
it up big time. That is why we are in charge.
Revitalized our military. The world is a dangerous place. We have
$150 billion in this bill to help build out the Golden Dome, to help
improve the quality of life of the men and women serving the military
by improving their barracks and housing. They need the money--more
weapons--to send this bill, and we didn't have to get extorted to buy a
bunch of butter to get $150 billion.
We reduced government spending over a decade by $1.6 trillion. We are
running a deficit in our national debt of $37 trillion. So what have we
done here?
In the last 5 years, from 2020, basically, to now, Medicaid has grown
by 50 percent. So what has happened is that Medicaid was originally
intended for children and poor families--children--and people who were
disabled and couldn't work to provide healthcare.
Count me in for that. Makes lot of sense.
Along comes President Obama. He expands Medicaid to include able-
bodied adults for the first time. And what he did was he incentivized
States to include these people in Medicaid. For every new able-bodied
adult, you get 90 percent of the cost from the Federal

[[Page S3616]]

Government, 10 percent from the States, and Medicaid has grown 50
percent. It is going to take over Medicare because of what President
Obama did.
So what are we going to do? We are going to try to deal with that in
a responsible way.
What about this idea: If you are not a child, if you are not
disabled--if you are able-bodied and you don't have any children under
14--we are going to have a 20-hour-a-week work requirement for you to
stay on Medicaid.
That is a good thing. It is a good thing for the individual involved
to be working. It is a good thing for the taxpayer for them to be
working. But that seems to be a crime on the other side to ask somebody
to work that can work.
How many people out there listening to this--I don't know how many
there are--but are you working every day? Are you going to work with
kids? A lot of people do that, by the way.
So one of the reforms in this bill is to introduce a work requirement
to the additional population that President Obama put on Medicaid that
was never intended under the original purpose of Medicaid. This work
requirement is going to save a bunch of money.
Finally, we are addressing the biggest scam I have seen in a very
long time. Somewhere along the line, somebody figured out at the State
level, if you tax doctors and hospitals and medical providers on the
funds they get and take that revenue, you can actually get more
Medicaid money. This is a money laundering scheme. It needs to come to
an end as we know it.
States have gone up to 6 percent of a provider tax. They take that
tax revenue, and they use it to get more money from the Federal
Government. The hospitals and doctors don't lose. They get the money
back. The State doesn't lose. They get more money. The only group that
loses is the Federal Government, and we are deep, deep in debt.
So we are going to reform the provider tax system that I think is
abusive--very abusive.
As to Medicaid, it is on a growth trajectory that will overtake
Medicare. Now is the time to put commonsense reform in place not only
to slow the growth--and we are not talking about cutting Medicaid, we
are slowing the growth--but try to create some sense of fiscal
responsibility.
So to our chairman of the Finance Committee, you have constructed a
package better than 2017. You have included some growth elements in the
package that will allow the economy to grow because it will be in
business's interest to invest, and I want to applaud you for this
growth package.
Now what does this all mean? Current policy, current law.
If you do what I have decided to do, make the tax cuts permanent and
you implement these reforms to Medicaid in other areas, you will, over
the next 10 years, reduce the deficit by $507 billion. That is CBO, not
me.
Now, how do you do that? You grow the economy, and you begin to
control spending in a commonsense way. Most people can relate to that
because they do it all the time. People at home sometimes have to work
extra to meet the needs of their family, and they have to tighten their
belt. So what have we achieved here in the One Big Beautiful Bill?
We are going make your border as secure as it possibly can be and
never go back to open borders. We are going to put in place border
security measures to keep it secure. We are going to make the tax cuts
permanent so your taxes do not go up in December of this year, and we
are going to add additional pro-growth policies to help our economy.
We are going to reform Medicaid in a way that makes sense, deal with
the waste, fraud, and abuse of that program so that there is more money
for the disabled and children because the more money you give the able-
bodied who can work is less money for children and people on
disability.
And one of the most perverse things about what President Obama did is
that the reimbursement rates to States are higher for able-bodied
adults than they are for disabled people and children--90 percent. So
President Obama created a system to entice States--lure them in--to add
people to Medicaid that are not disabled, not poor children, because
his goal was to put everybody in the country under government-run
healthcare. And the government reimbursement is higher for an able-
bodied person than it is for a poor child or a disabled person.

We are going to stop that because that is not fair. It is not fair to
the taxpayer. It is not fair to the population that we are trying to
help.
So we are going to control spending in a commonsense way; we are
going to revitalize our military at a time of great need; we are going
to secure the border; and we are going to make the tax cuts that expire
in December permanent so we don't have to deal with this every 10
years.
It is a big beautiful bill if you believe in cutting people's taxes,
securing the border, having a strong military, and controlling
government spending.
It is a nightmare--this bill--for those who want to raise taxes, who
want open borders, who want a weak military, and never want to control
one dime of Federal spending.
This bill is your nightmare if you are for open borders. This bill is
your nightmare if you want the government to grow without any
limitation. This bill is your nightmare if you want a weak military
because it is going to give us a stronger military.
So why do we have this debate? That is what they--through years of
effort--have done. The military is always the last thing that gets
funded when they are in charge. When they are in charge, you have no
border--completely broken, millions of people running through our
country lawless.
When they are in charge, there is no limit to growing the government.
They entice everybody to grow the government. And when they are in
charge, they are never going to cut your taxes in any meaningful way.
The tax rates since 2017--the top rate has been 37. If these tax cuts
expire, your taxes--if you are a family of four--will go up by $1,700,
and we will go back to the 49.6 rate.
Here is a question for the country: How much should the Federal
Government take of anybody's income? What is a fair share?
Thirty-seven percent seems pretty damn fair to me--over a third of
what you make, and that doesn't count State and local taxes.
The number they would pick is probably 90.
So is 37 percent fair? I think yes. Most Americans think 25 percent
is fair. You know, Jesus wants 10 percent. There is no number they
won't embrace. So somewhere between 90 and 10--37 is fair.
This is not rewarding the wealthy; it is creating a number that makes
sense. Thirty-seven percent going to the Federal Government is a fair
share. It is over a third of what you make. That doesn't count State
and local taxes.
This has been long. It is been hard, but we are about done. In a
couple of days, we are going to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill.
President Trump is going to sign it. Mike Crapo and his staff deserve
at least one day off.
I cannot thank you enough for what you and your team have done. To my
budgeteers, you have been terrific. You have worked really hard. To CBO
and Joint Tax and all these people, hats off to your efforts to get us
a quality product.
To all of my colleagues who have rode the boat with us, we are about
to reach the shore. And when this boat comes ashore, every family in
America can heave a sigh of relief. Your taxes will not go up this
December. You will get a Christmas present of not having a tax
increase.
To those who have been yearning for a secure border, it will be
secure. To those men and women in the uniform, you are going to get
some help. You desperately need it. To those who think we should do
something about the government's growth in a commonsense way, we have
achieved that.
I am very proud of this bill. I am very proud of President Trump. I
am very proud of the Republican team that has gotten us to this point.
To my Democratic colleagues, we will work together where we can, but
nobody over here ever expects you to do anything about the border
because you have proven you can't. Nobody over here believes you are
ever going to reduce the size of government because you don't want to.
The bottom line is, we are about to make history, Mr. President. This
is your first term. I don't know what comes later for you. I hope you
are

[[Page S3617]]

here for a long time if that is what you want to be. You are a great
Senator. You are a good businessman. You made a real success story:
family from Colombia, created a lot of job opportunities.
I doubt if you will ever do anything more important than this.
Senator Crapo, you have been here a while. You are one of the
smartest guys I have ever met. Everything you have done in all your
life has led to this moment. This is what you were built to do. This is
what you were meant to do. You are the right man at the right time to
do what this country desperately needs to stay on track to be safe and
prosperous.
To all my colleagues who are going to vote for this bill, you should
be proud, and you should talk about it because it is going to make us
all safer, and it is going to make us all more prosperous.
My being Budget chairman is a quirk in the history of the Senate.
This is not my thing normally, but I have really gotten into it. And I
have learned a lot thanks to my colleagues, and I am proud to have the
honor of being Budget chairman at a time I think it matters the most.
Mr. President, with that, I yield to my good friend.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the use of calculators,
whatever they are, be permitted on the floor of the Senate during
consideration of the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, first of all, let me thank my colleague
from South Carolina Senator Graham for his very kind words. I return
the same kind of compliments to him for his great work in helping to
build this bill and get us moved to this point.
I am going to make just a few remarks right now in response to some
of the allegations and mischaracterizations that my colleagues on the
other side have made about how this bill has been structured in terms
of its evaluation and its scoring. And then, later, I will come and
give a much longer speech--I am sorry, sir--on the bill itself.
Mr. President, the things that were said this morning just have to be
responded to. First of all, it was said that the reason that we are
going to increase the debt ceiling in the bill is because we are
spending so much money and driving the deficit up.
Well, first of all, our bill drives the deficit down, not up; and,
secondly, the reason we are dealing with the debt ceiling in the bill
is because, under the previous administration's operations, the debt
ceiling has already been breached. It was breached on January 2, and we
are limping along with extraordinary measures--that is what we call
them here in Washington--to try to keep the government funded until
Congress can extend the debt ceiling.
This has nothing to do with President Trump. It happened before he
even was sworn into office. It has nothing to do with this bill. It has
to do with the profligate spending that drove us into a breach of the
debt ceiling on January 2.
Secondly, my colleagues on the other side tried to characterize our
choice of the current policy baseline as a gimmick and said it has
never been done before.
Well, they should have been more careful in their words because the
current policy baseline is currently utilized in the current CBO
baseline for many spending programs. In fact, many spending programs--
about $2.5 trillion of spending programs--are measured under the
current treatment which the Democrats have been using for decades to
make it so they don't have to count spending increases as an increase
in the deficit.
They are correct that that policy has never been applied to taxes
before, because it was not intended to apply to taxes. That ruling and
that system that was set up was intentionally designed to favor tax
increases over spending cuts and to force Congress to increase taxes
and increase spending. It was a strategy to achieve what we all know as
tax and spend.
And no matter how they try to cover it over, today, in their debate,
it comes down to this: They are furious that we refuse to raise taxes
in America by $4.3 trillion on Americans; and they claim that our
refusal to raise your taxes, America, is going to run up the deficit
because they can't get $4 trillion more of your tax revenue into their
pockets.
Well, the first failure of that rationale is, if you believe that you
give them $4.5 trillion by letting them raise your taxes again, if you
believe they are going to use that to pay the debt down, let me tell
you, there is not a tax increase that I have seen in this Congress, in
my lifetime, that was used to pay the debt down. It was used to
increase spending. It is called tax and spend, and it is that bias in
our scoring system that we are fixing today. We are fixing it so that
current policy is how you treat taxes, just like you treat $2.5
trillion of spending this year in your scoring system. We are evening
the balance board between taxing and spending, and America should
breathe a sigh of relief that, finally, we are fixing our scoring
procedures so that we don't have a built-in drive to increase taxes.
Let's put it another way. One of my colleagues said that even
children can understand the difference between a trillion dollars and
zero dollars. I think they can also understand that if you don't raise
taxes, you are not changing the Tax Code; you are making it bring in
the same revenue that it brought in before. You are not increasing the
deficit; you are protecting their wallets.
The bottom line here is very simple. I think every American--at least
90 percent of them--intuitively understand that the refusal to let your
taxes go up by $4 trillion is not a deficit increase. You are not
responsible. Us keeping your money in your pocket is not making you
responsible for increasing the deficit. Deficit increases come when
Congress keeps spending your money and never ever controls its
spending. The problem is not a lack of revenue; it is too much
spending.
So let's make it clear. This is not a gimmick. The gimmick is the one
that has been used for all these years. We are making a balance between
the treatment of tax and spend so that those taxpayers in America have
at least a fair chance against the rules of this Chamber.

Now, one other point that I think needs to be made here is there was
a lot of talk on the other side--and then I will stop and bring in my
longer speech later. One other point that needs to be made here is that
it was suggested that this has never been done before, even on taxes.
Well, there is a President named President Obama, who faced a similar
situation like we face today. Only, then, he was President when a huge
tax cut that President Bush had accomplished was expiring. And all of
those tax cuts that President Bush had been able to achieve were going
to go away, and everybody's taxes were going to go up. And President
Obama said: No, I am not going to let that happen.
So he put a bill out on the floor to stop those tax increases from
happening. And he was attacked, actually, for increasing the deficit by
not letting taxes go up. And President Obama, through his OMB Deputy
Director, said that keeping tax policy current should be scored under a
current policy and that his act in letting those tax increases be kept
in place should be scored as current policy, not as a tax increase.
So you have got one of your own Presidents from the Democratic Party
saying that letting existing tax law stay in place and protecting
against huge tax increases on the American people is the appropriate
approach to take; that current policy--and those are their words--is
the way we should treat tax policy.
So I say to everybody in America who has been hearing all the
politics of fear about what we are doing here in running up the
deficit: You need to remember that only in Washington, DC, is the
refusal to raise your taxes an increase in the deficit. And we are not
going to let that happen.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. If no one yields time, time will be charged
equally to both sides.
The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the widely
irresponsible legislation that is before us now. Although our
colleagues are calling it the Big Beautiful Bill, this bill would
instead be a betrayal to our economic future, hard-working American

[[Page S3618]]

families, and some of our most vulnerable seniors, children, and people
with disabilities.
This bill will blow up our national debt, kick millions of people off
of their healthcare, and take food off of families' tables, while
cutting food assistance.
And for what? What are our colleagues mortgaging our country's future
for? What are they slashing healthcare and food assistance to pay for?
Well, they are doing it for tax cuts for billionaires.
So before my colleagues rush to pass this irresponsible, reckless
legislation, let's take a moment to go through exactly how much harm
this bill will actually cause and hear from the people in my State who
will suffer if this bill becomes law.
To start, this bill will blow up the national debt. Since President
George Washington gave his Farewell Address, our Nation's leaders have
warned against the dangers of accumulating a national debt. Fifteen
years ago, ADM Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, stated:

The most significant threat to our national security is our
debt.

The national debt is at an alltime high--$36.2 trillion. And just in
the last 16 years, it has tripled. Our annual deficits frequently
exceed $1.5 trillion, including a record $3.1 trillion deficit in
fiscal year 2020 during the Trump administration.

Unfortunately, these are the first of many grave financial milestones
that we face. Within the next decade, our country will spend more on
servicing the debt than we do on any other Federal account outside of
Social Security.
Our fiscal house is basically on fire, but if our Republican
colleagues jam through this bill, it is not going to pour water on that
fire, it is going to pour gasoline on those flames.
Democrats have tried to make efforts to pay down that debt in recent
years. In fact, under the Inflation Reduction Act--a law that this bill
attempts to actually gut--we reduced the deficit in that bill by nearly
$250 billion. In 2023, we passed the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility
Act, which responsibly addressed the debt ceiling and had the potential
to reduce deficits by up to $1.5 trillion. But, unfortunately, the bill
before us basically wipes all of that away.
I have always said that I am open to making smart cuts to spending,
but those cuts should be matched with increases in revenue. Doing so
would put us back on a sustainable financial path. Our Republican
colleagues are doing the exact opposite. They are making drastic cuts
to revenue, and according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on
Taxation, the tax provisions in this bill alone would decrease revenues
by $4.2 trillion and add--yes, add--$3 trillion to our national debt.
This is a recipe for disaster. If we face another emergency like a
pandemic or global financial crisis, we will be too hamstrung by our
debt to respond effectively.
We are on the brink of a financial disaster, and passing this bill
could push us over that edge--all so my Republican colleagues can cut
taxes for billionaires. At the same time, our Republican colleagues are
not making smart, sensible spending cuts to cover the costs of those
billionaire tax cuts. Instead, they are gutting healthcare for millions
of Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Michiganders. It is
reckless, and it is wrong.
Medicaid is a lifeline for people in every single community across
this country. It ensures that millions of Michiganders and Americans
can have access to quality, affordable healthcare.
Right now, folks across my home State of Michigan are scared--are
scared about what this bill will mean for their families.
I have heard from thousands of my constituents from every corner of
the State of Michigan on how these cuts are going to hurt them. So
today, I just want to tell you, through my constituents' stories, just
how detrimental this bill will be for most Americans.
Take Isaac from Lansing for example, who says Medicaid is the only
lifeline he has to pay for the medicine that literally--literally--
keeps him alive.
We have also seen how more and more Michiganders and people all
across our Nation have shouldered the burden of serving as a primary
caregiver for an aging parent. It is the ultimate gift that we can give
to the people who have raised us. But the cost of critical nursing home
and assisted living care continues to rise. Medicaid has become an
essential way for our aging seniors to pay for the care they need.
Take Gwen from Grand Rapids, who says that she wouldn't be able to
pay for an assisted living facility for her grandmother without
Medicaid.
Many of us know someone or maybe even love someone who lives with a
disability. Thanks to Medicaid, people with disabilities can get the
care that allows them to live healthy and independent lives. That is
the case for Wanda from Westland, who takes medication for an eye
condition. Without Medicaid, she would not be able to afford her
medication, and she could actually go blind.
As too many of us know from personal experiences or from friends and
loved ones, our country is facing a mental health crisis. Medicaid has
become a saving grace for those who desperately need mental healthcare
but simply cannot afford it.
Take Allen from Fort Gratiot, who says that losing Medicaid would
feel like losing the life he has been given back through mental health
care through Medicaid.
Under this bill, rural communities will be especially impacted by
cuts to Medicaid. In some counties in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, there
is only one healthcare provider, meaning some Michiganders will have to
travel up to 50 miles to get routine or emergency care. Medicaid helps
keep these hospitals open. If this bill passes, people in these rural
communities are going to be cut off from basic health services.
Medicaid also plays an essential role in making sure that children
across Michigan get the care they need. I heard from Gladys, a mother
from Flint, who says that Medicaid is the only reason her kids can get
their asthma medication or have regular health checkups. Expecting
mothers also reached out to share their concerns. While she is busy
preparing to welcome a newborn baby into the world, Chelsea from
Fennville is now afraid that she will lose her access to both pre- and
postnatal care under this absolutely disastrous bill.
I simply can't understand how my Republican colleagues would leave
thousands--thousands--of people across Michigan without the care they
need, all so they can give a tax break to billionaires.
On top of that, my Republican colleagues are also proposing deep,
harmful cuts to food assistance delivered through SNAP. SNAP serves as
an absolute lifeline for millions of Americans, including children,
seniors, people with disabilities, and working families.
So, simply put, if this bill is passed, it will mean people in
Michigan and all across our country will go hungry. They will not be
able to put food on the table, while billionaires pay less taxes. That
is just wrong. But it also makes no economic sense, either. Every
dollar in SNAP benefits generates more than $1.50 in economic
activities. This supports local grocery stores, farmers all across our
country, and the entire food supply chain. So on top of jeopardizing
families' ability to put food on the table, to feed their children,
these proposed SNAP cuts would also hurt businesses and jobs,
particularly in rural America and in low-income areas.

This bill produces the most amount of pain for the least amount of
gain of any legislation I can remember in all the years I have had the
privilege of serving here in the Senate. I can't believe that we are
standing here debating this reckless, irresponsible bill. The harm this
bill will do to the American people and to the people in my State of
Michigan who are counting on Medicaid for healthcare and on food
assistance to help feed their families is absolutely reprehensible. The
damage this bill will do to our Nation's economic security is not only
reckless, it is unconscionable.
This is not what our constituents want us to be focused on. They want
us to help make their lives better. But instead of focusing on that,
here we are on the brink of passing a bill so irresponsible that it
will destroy our country's economic health, harm millions of
Americans--all so a handful of billionaires, the wealthiest of the

[[Page S3619]]

wealthy, can have another tax break. I will never support such a
reckless and catastrophic plan.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
MR. CRAPO. Mr. President, I am here to talk now about the centerpiece
of this reconciliation bill: making the 2017 tax cuts permanent. The
One Big Beautiful Bill prevents the largest tax hike in history and
provides groundbreaking new tax relief for middle-class workers and
families.
This legislation permanently extends the Trump tax cuts, which
proportionately benefited the middle class the most. If these tax cuts
were allowed to expire, taxpayers in all income groups would see
massive tax hikes. A point that my colleagues on the other side seem to
consistently forget or ignore is that the vast majority of them--$2.6
trillion worth of those tax increases--would fall on taxpayers making
less than $400,000 per year, and the vast majority of that is on
taxpayers making and earning in the middle and lower middle income
categories.
But before I go on to discuss what would happen, I want to address an
issue that is just a constant, constant theme on the other side, and
that is that this bill is going to be a huge increase in the deficit.
Now, here is a quick, handwritten chart that my colleague from South
Carolina made quickly to respond to that.
You heard the previous speaker say that CBO has scored this bill to
have a huge, multitrillion-dollar deficit increase. The fact is that
CBO has scored this bill to have a $507 billion deficit reduction--you
heard that right: a $507 billion deficit reduction. Later on in my
remarks, I will point out that that score doesn't even take into
account the growth in the economy and the revenue that will come to our
Treasury from revitalizing and giving a boost to our economy.
So now let's go to the next chart. What will happen if we don't do
this? What will happen if we do what the Democrats are demanding that
we do, and that is to let this tax increase happen so that they can say
they are going to use it to pay the deficit down? The average family of
four would see a tax hike of $1,700, and their child tax credit would
be cut in half. Twenty million small business owners would face massive
tax hikes, with some of them facing rates as high as 43 percent. The
standard deduction, which simplifies tax filing for 90 percent of
Americans, would be cut in half. Small businesses and farms would see
their debt exemption cut in half.
The Council of Economic Advisers warns us that this $4 trillion tax
hike would also lead to an economic downturn and potential recessionary
headwinds, noting that the impacts would disproportionately fall on
young people, minorities, and workers without college degrees.
We have been working for more than a year on legislation that
prevents that outcome and provides an opportunity for us to have
additional tax relief--additional tax relief that is specifically
targeted to benefit low- and middle-income families and workers.
Despite the rhetoric of fear, the rhetoric about tax cuts being for
billionaires and corporations, the reality is that this legislation
prevents a massive tax hike across the board and overwhelmingly
benefits middle-class households and job creators.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this bill provides more
than $600 billion--that is $600 billion more--of new tax relief for
hard-working Americans. How does it do that? There is $73 billion in
inflation tax relief targeted at income brackets below $100,000 per
year; $205 billion in tax relief to the 90 percent of taxpayers who
claim the standard deduction; $93 billion in additional tax relief for
seniors through a $6,000 bonus exemption; $124 billion in investment in
children of low- and middle-income families, in addition to the
permanent, doubled child tax credits. I am going to say that again: the
permanent, doubled child tax credit.

The significant tax relief we are providing to hard-working families
includes: permanent lower tax rates, letting Americans keep more of
their hard-earned money; permanent increased and enhanced standard
deduction, claimed by over 90 percent of taxpayers.
On top of making that doubled child tax credit permanent, we are also
increasing it for tens of millions of families.
There is tax relief for seniors in the form of a $6,000 bonus
exemption for low- and middle-income seniors, slashing their tax
burden; no tax on tips for millions of tipped workers, like waitresses,
barbers, hairstylists, and taxi drivers; no tax on overtime for
millions of America's hourly workers who work overtime and keep America
running; no tax on auto loan interest for new cars made in the United
States, allowing the hard-working families of America to fully deduct
auto loan interest on American-made cars; enhanced 529 education
savings accounts, making education expenses more affordable and
accessible for families; new Trump savings accounts for newborns and
children set up, up to the age of 18, building financial security for
the next generation.
We make childcare more accessible and affordable for working families
by enhancing the child and dependent care credit and the dependent care
assistance program.
The list goes on and on.
We extend the paid family and medical leave credit and expand health
savings accounts for healthcare expenses.
We repeal onerous IRS reporting requirements on gig workers, reduce
the paperwork burden for small businesses, and much more.
And all of this is just on the individual side of the code.
The business side of the Tax Code has the potential to generate
phenomenal economic growth. When my Republican colleagues and I began
talking about how to best extend and enhance the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,
we agreed that one of our top priorities was to make it permanent--the
reforms we made in 2017--including lower rates for corporations and
small business owners, along with the international tax reforms,
increased domestic investment, boosted economic growth, and increased
take-home pay.
A growing economy powered a strong labor market. Workers saw record
wage growth, and the unemployment rate fell dramatically to the lowest
in 50 years, at 3.5 percent.
Corporate inversions, which we used to debate and debate endlessly--
or businesses leaving America--became a thing of the past. They
literally ended, and America became the place to do business again.
Capital formation exploded in the United States.
Restoring these critical business provisions and making them
permanent is a key to driving additional growth and investment in the
United States.
For businesses that spur investment and economic activity across the
country, this bill makes the 20 percent small business deduction
permanent, enabling job creation and spurring local economic activity.
It restores and makes permanent full expensing for domestic research
and development, encouraging domestic innovation; restores and makes
permanent full expensing for new capital investments, like machinery
and equipment, boosting domestic production; restores and makes
permanent interest deductibility, helping to finance critical domestic
investments and keeping America globally competitive.
It includes full expensing for new factories and factory improvements
to accelerate domestic manufacturing; permanently renews and enhances
the Opportunity Zone Program, driving a hundred-plus billion dollars of
investment to rural and distressed communities.
According to the Tax Foundation, ``permanence for the [bill's] four
cost recovery provisions,'' which I have just reviewed, ``would more
than double the long-run economic effect.''
The National Association of Manufacturers predicts that $248 billion
in economic growth will come from the manufacturing sector alone, along
with over 1 million jobs and over $100 billion in new wages.
The National Federation of Independent Business says that making the
small-business deduction permanent will create 1.2 million jobs over 10
years, growing to 2.4 million jobs in the long run. That growth also
means more Federal revenue created right along the way.
And the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that the tax
legislation alone--this tax legislation alone--will drive more than $2
trillion in offsetting

[[Page S3620]]

deficit reduction, thanks to permanent provisions that power economic
growth and incentivize investment. Over a 10-year window, with this
legislation in effect, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that
debt as a share of GDP will fall to 94 percent, compared to 117 percent
if the Trump tax cuts expire.
And this chart is important to look at. This is what happens to our
deficit if we pass this tax legislation and grow our economy.
And this is what happens if we don't. The red line is what happens if
we don't.
Over a 10-year window, with this legislation in effect, as this chart
shows, the estimate is 94 percent compared to 117 percent if the Trump
tax cuts expire.
So while my colleagues on the other side complain and complain that
we will not let taxes go up, this is what will happen if they do go up.
Far from adding to the deficit, this legislation will finally put us
on a sound financial footing as we power growth and curb spending.
For those who claim that this bill will add over 4 trillion to the
deficit, it bears repeating: Preventing a $4 trillion tax hike is not
the same as deficit spending.
And for those who say that we should let a $4 trillion tax hike go
into effect to pay down the national debt, every tax increase that
Congress has adopted, for as long as I can remember, was not used to
pay down the national debt. It was used to increase spending, and that
is exactly what is going to happen if the Democrats have their way and
force this tax hike to happen. It was used by Congress to spend more
money, not to reduce debt.
Extending current tax policy means that tax revenue as a percent of
GDP will remain relatively unchanged. We do not have a revenue problem
in America. We have a spending problem. That is why we asked JCT to
score this legislation under a more realistic scenario, using a current
policy baseline.
The Council of Economic Advisers estimates that making the Trump tax
cuts permanent, combined with other Trump administration pro-growth
policies like regulatory reform and so forth, will increase Federal
revenues by more than $4 trillion, far more than offsetting any deficit
estimates.

When combined with the $1.6 trillion in spending reductions, this
bill represents historic savings for taxpayers, far exceeding the
spending reductions in the past by hundreds of billions of dollars.
And I want to look at this chart. I have talked a lot about tax cuts
and protecting against tax increases, and the economic growth that
happens from that. But reducing spending is another critical priority
that we must address, and in addition to the pro-growth tax policy that
I have just described, we cut spending by $1.6 trillion.
This chart shows how other bills have tried to take a shot at
reducing spending in the past. We far exceed any spending reduction
bill that Congress has ever passed. We are paying attention to the
revenue side, and we are paying attention to the spending side.
To achieve this record level of savings, we are slashing President
Biden's Green New Deal spending and promoting an ``America First''
energy policy. We are eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars of
the Green New Deal subsidies, including ending wasteful credits like
the EV tax credit. We stop penalizing fossil fuels in favor of
unreliable and expensive green energy, and instead support consistent
energy sources, making energy affordable again.
We are also rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal spending
programs, as my colleague from South Carolina mentioned, like those
that we have identified in Medicaid. This will not reduce benefits for
those who are qualified and for whom Medicaid was intended. It will
reduce waste, fraud, and abusive scams that are being used to get the
American taxpayer to funnel money into States or into other programs.
This program was created to help pregnant women, children, and
seniors in America and those with disabilities. We are continuing to
protect them. They will not lose benefits. And the politics of fear
that you hear constantly are simply false.
But in recent years, the Democrats have incentivized Medicaid to
enroll healthy Americans and illegal immigrants, driving up costs for
taxpayers and risking the program's sustainability for those who need
it the most.
This is what has happened. This is what is happening to the
enrollment and the spending in Medicaid.
The fate of this expansion is an unsustainable path and puts the
future of the program at risk, including the U.S. Federal debt.
As spending has surged, so have inappropriate payments and ineligible
enrollments, along with gimmicks and loopholes.
People are alarmed by these statistics, but official reports indicate
that the Federal Government made $543 billion in inappropriate Medicaid
payments from 2015 through 2024. Some experts think that that number is
closer to $1 trillion.
That is what we are addressing in this legislation. We have the
responsibility to ensure that programs like Medicaid work efficiently
and effectively and remain financially viable for those whom it was
designed to help.
For months, my Democrat colleagues have engaged in the politics of
fear, warning that Republicans are going to rip this critical program
from those most in need. Let me be clear: This legislation does not
take Medicaid away from any recipients whom the program was designed to
help. Children, the elderly, the disabled or infirm, adults caring for
children, and elderly relatives are protected by this bill. We would
not be honoring our obligation to these recipients if we allow the
program to continue to balloon, forcing vulnerable populations to
compete for available resources with able-bodied adults who refuse to
work.
One father recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Medicaid was created to help people like my son. He is 17,
has severe autism and epilepsy and needs constant attention.
Yet thanks to Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, he is stuck on
a multiyear waiting list for in-home care because able-bodied
adults are competing for the same resources.

CBO estimates that over 1.4 million illegal aliens are receiving
Medicaid benefits. I am talking about those who are not U.S. citizens
and are not legally in the United States, receiving Medicaid benefits
and pushing those like this man's 17-year-old son out of his
opportunity to get access to those benefits.
Brett Guthrie, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in
the House, correctly notes:

Every dollar misspent on illegal immigrants and ineligible
individuals in the Medicaid program means less money going to
our children, our pregnant women and mothers, individuals
[and others] who are disabled, and seniors.

Republicans are committed to preserving and strengthening Medicaid
for the people Medicaid was intended to serve. That starts with making
commonsense reforms to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the
program.
This bill targets rampant fraud in the program by removing illegal
aliens, deceased recipients, or those enrolled in multiple States. It
eliminates wasteful spending by ensuring that Medicaid payments align
with levels in Medicare and other spending programs and increases the
frequency of eligibility checks. It requires more personal
accountability and promotes pathways to work for able-bodied adults.
The work requirements proposed in this legislation are simple. Many
people are amazed that they are so easy to meet and yet so rigorously
opposed. If you are an able-bodied adult without dependents, you can
qualify for taxpayer-funded Medicaid by spending 20 hours per week
working or participating in work training or going to school or
participating in community service or volunteer work.
The majority of Americans agree that these rules are responsible
guardrails to protect a program that was designed to protect America's
most vulnerable Americans.
The bill also corrects abusive practices by freezing and reducing
provider taxes, a financial gimmick used by States to increase Federal
spending that they receive.
For those concerned about funding for rural hospitals, during the
transition back to responsible funding levels, the legislation creates
a bridge funding system to help stabilize rural hospitals and enhance
that long-term financial solvency.

[[Page S3621]]

And while Democrats claim Republicans are slashing Medicaid spending,
the reality is that even with these reforms, Medicaid spending is
projected to continue to grow by billions of dollars over the next 10
years. Only in Washington is a smaller increase in spending considered
a cut. In reality, these reforms will improve, protect, and preserve
Medicaid for the most vulnerable Americans.
We have had a very robust debate over how to best deliver on
President Trump's agenda, and I am proud of what we achieved in this
legislation. The tax provisions in our bill--from the permanent
extension of the lower tax rate to the increased child tax credit, to
the permanent tax relief for businesses--will deliver financial
security for American families and grow our economy. The healthcare
provisions will protect and preserve Medicaid for the Americans that
the program was designed to serve.
And while more work remains, this bill's economic growth, combined
with deficit reduction that we have in it, finally puts our country on
a much better fiscal trajectory.
Speaking of work, I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to
thank the excellent staff from the Joint Committee on Taxation, the
Congressional Budget Office, and the Senate legislative counsel for the
hard work and countless hours they have put in to get us to this point.
Some of them have been working with us on these provisions for years,
and we greatly appreciate your partnership in this effort.
I ask unanimous consent to have these individuals' names printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Joint Committee on Taxation

Thomas Barthold--Chief of Staff, Chris Giosa--Deputy Chief
of Staff, Emily Acker, Lillian Aston, Azeka Abramoff,
Jennifer Blouin, Nick Bull, Tanya Butler, Chia Chang, James
Cilke, Angel Clarke, Matthew Comey, Taylor Cranor, Elena
Derby, Clare Diefenbach, Connor Dowd, Tim Dowd, James Elwell,
Brian Gallagher, William Gorman, Adam Gropper.
Sylvester Gunn, Sameh Habib, Jason Hayman, Mark R. High,
Caitlin Hird, Nicholas Hoffman, Deirdre James, Damion
Jedlicka, Sally Kwak, Andrew Lai, Paul Landefeld, Joseph
LeCates, Jeremy Lent, David Lenter, Martin Lopez-Daneri, Bert
Lue, Kathleen Mackie, Jamie McGuire, Debra McMullen, Rhonda
Migdail, Katie Mikulka, Sanjay Misra.
Rachel Moore, Sidney Moorer, Jake Mortenson, Matt Muma,
Merrick Munday, Jonathan F. Newton, Dennis Ortega,
Christopher J. Overend, Brandon Pecoraro, Zachary W.
Richards, Cecily W. Rock, Taylor Rose, Kristine Roth, Natalie
Rudman, Chris Simmons, David Splinter, Sarah Trebicka, H.
Brenton Trigg, Tracy Watkins, Tommy Willingham, Lin Xu.

Congressional Budget Office Staff

Chad Chirico, Lara Robillard, Sarah Sajewski, Hudson
Osgood, Austin Barselau, Robert Stewart, Carolyn Ugolino, Amy
Zettle, Aaron Pervin, Emily Vreeland, Jessica Hale, Cyrus
Elkland, Ryan Greenfield, Ezra Cohn, Allison Percy, Ben
Hopkins, Caroline Hanson, Claire Hou, Eamon Molloy, Nianyi
Hong, Sean Lyons, Towo Babayemi, Rajan Topiwala, Noelia
Duchovny.

Senate Legislative Counsel Staff

Ruth Ernst, Kelly Malone Thornburg, John Goetcheus, Davis
Riley, Bill Baird, Allison Otto, Mark McGunagle, Vince
Gaiani, Jim Fransen.
Mr. CRAPO. I also have to thank my incredible staff who have foregone
sleep over the past several months to provide timely, indispensable
insight, facts, legislative text, counsel, and so much more. Without
them, we would not be at this point and ready to deliver this much
needed growth-focused policy for the American people.
I ask unanimous consent to have the names of my entire Finance
Committee staff printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Senator Crapo Finance Committee Staff

Amanda Critchfield Blum, Communications Director; Gable
Brady, Senior Health Policy Advisor; Brian Bombassaro,
International Trade Counsel; Becky Cole, Chief Economist;
Courtney Connell, Chief Tax Counsel; Jamie Cummins, Senior
Tax Counsel; Andrew Dell'Orto, Policy Advisor; Erin Dempsey,
Deputy Health Policy Director; Eric Fejer, Deputy Press
Secretary; Michael Gould, Tax Counsel; Randy Herndon, Deputy
Chief Tax Counsel; Jared Hermann; John Kashuba, Counsel;
Phoebe Keller, Communications Advisor; Kate Lindsey, Tax
Policy Advisor; Clancy Lyles, Professional Staff Member;
Kellie McConnell, Health Policy Director; Amy Nabozny, Health
Policy Advisor; Molly Newell, International Trade Counsel;
John O'Hara, Trade Policy Director and Counsel; Eric Oman,
Senior Tax Policy Advisor; Mayur Patel, Chief International
Trade Counsel; Gregg Richard, Staff Director; Charlotte Rock,
Health Policy Advisor; Lara Rosner, Social Security Policy
Advisor; Don Snyder, Senior Tax and Oversight Counsel; James
Williams, Tax and Economic Policy Advisor; Staci Lancaster,
Staff Writer.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, even with all that and all that we
accomplish in this legislation, there are dozens of additional good
ideas, smart policies, and commonsense reforms that we were not able to
include today. I commit to working with my colleagues to advance those
goals as well as we move forward. But today's historic legislation is
more than a good start and will pay dividends for American families.
Extending good tax policy, delivering targeted relief, and reining in
wasteful spending, as achieved in this bill, is the best way to restore
economic prosperity and opportunity for all Americans. I look forward
to getting it to the President's desk as soon as possible.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Democratic whip.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we are here today debating a clumsily
assembled package--still a work in progress--that would rip away
healthcare from 16 million American families, give tax breaks to
millionaires, billionaires, and the largest corporations.
Think about that for a moment.
Republicans have decided that the best avenue to generate revenue
that they can then give in tax breaks to wealthy people is to eliminate
health insurance coverage for 16 million Americans. That is going to
have a dramatic impact on their lives. If you have ever been a young
father with a baby with a serious medical problem, and you had no
health insurance, you will never forget it as long as you live. I know;
I have been there.
The notion of losing your health insurance leaves you as vulnerable
as possible in some of the most important moments of your life. The day
we consider this provision to eliminate health insurance coverage for
16 million families is unimaginable and cruel.
Let's not act like there is a unified Republican front on this issue.
Even some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to
be here at this moment, jamming this unpopular bill through this
Chamber under arbitrary deadlines.
One of my colleagues took a look at tax breaks. You will hear them
say over and over again: If we don't act, the average family has to pay
more in taxes. There is a way around that. If we limit any tax breaks
in this bill in this effort to people making $400,000 a year or less--
$400,000 a year or less--it virtually eliminates two-thirds of the cost
of this undertaking, and it means you don't have to take away the
health insurance of 16 million families. So there are ways to do tax
breaks which make sense.
Count this Democrat in with the Republicans for helping working
families who are struggling to get by, and a lot of them are living
paycheck to paycheck. The notion that we would say to them: We are
going to take away your health insurance; we are going to raise the
cost of health insurance for you, that is no answer to their problems.
Behind closed doors, my Republican colleagues continue to be consumed
with infighting, bickering over the bill's substance, and for good
reason.
We have a process here which is almost impossible to explain to an
ordinary person of how we reach reconciliation. The Parliamentarian's
office--she is sitting here--and God bless you for what you have been
through the last several months and all your staff--have to make
decisions on a daily basis, over and over again, as to whether or not
provisions in this bill are eligible under the law that governs the
U.S. Senate.
We are in the process of debating this on the Senate floor. I see our
ranking member on the Budget Committee--the Senate Budget Committee--
the Senator from Oregon. We are in the process of still appealing to
the Parliamentarian's office on provisions in the bill. This is truly a
work in progress.

I think what they do know is troubling, and it should be. This bill
would be a disaster for hospitals. The Senate Republican bill,
unfortunately, is going to endanger hospitals all over the United
States. But if you happen to live in a small town, rural area--and I

[[Page S3622]]

represent a lot of them in the State of Illinois--you are the most
vulnerable. You are the target. When they cut back on Medicaid
Programs, these are the hospitals that will close their doors.
What is the impact of a hospital closing its door in a downstate
community in Illinois? Devastating. Hospitals are not only the center
for emergency medical care, good doctors, nurses, and such, they are
also a major economic force in smalltown America. Take away a hospital
and then try to attract a new business to your community--good luck.
This Senate bill cripples one of the main ways the States fund their
Medicaid Programs and keep hospitals afloat, especially rural and low-
income areas. It is called the provider tax. Earlier this week, a
Republican Senator--a Republican Senator--circulated a flyer to his
fellow caucus Members so they are all on notice detailing just how much
each State will lose in Medicaid provider tax funding under the
proposal.
Let's take a look at my neck of the woods, the Midwest. Iowa would
lose $4.1 billion; Missouri, $6.1 billion; Kentucky, $12 million;
Louisiana would lose $20 billion; North Carolina, $38.9 billion.
Senator Tillis and I were in a conversation yesterday, and he used
that very same figure. His analysis says if we go forward with this
bill, it cuts Medicaid reimbursement in his home State of North
Carolina by a whopping $38.9 billion.
This list of States and what they will lose was passed around by a
Republican Senator to his own caucus. They know what they are up
against here. If Republicans have their way and pass this bill,
hospitals will be forced to shrink or eliminate services. In Decatur,
IL, one of the hospitals facing a crunch time had to make a decision
whether to keep their doors open. They did, but they eliminated OB-GYN
delivering babies and all mental health and addiction counseling--two
critical areas for the hospitals.
So this bill will force hospitals to shrink or eliminate services.
Doctors and nurses will leave and, in some cases, the hospital will
close. Imagine in a rural area or remote area, an extra 45 minutes, an
extra hour in the car with somebody in the front seat you love very
much who is in a desperate situation. As it stands today, half of the
rural hospitals around the country already operate in the danger zone,
and it is the same thing for children's hospitals. If you have one in
your community you use--I do. These children's hospitals have warned us
they can't keep their doors open if Medicaid is cut as dramatically as
the Republicans want to cut it.
If Republicans have their way, we are going to see massive layoffs,
fewer nurses, technicians, and doctors, along with decreasing quality
of care.
The American Hospital Association has estimated how these cuts to
Medicaid could impact not just jobs in red State hospitals but across
the entire economy. Here is what they found. If the Republican
provision goes through that cuts Medicaid reimbursement in order to
provide tax breaks for wealthy people--Maine is an example of one
State. They would lose 5,000 jobs; Kansas, 6,200 jobs; Iowa, 11,000
jobs; Missouri, 26,600 jobs. I have talked to the administrator of BJC
in St. Louis, MO. The reason is, it is not just a Missouri hospital.
They have facilities on the Illinois side of the river. In fact, one-
third of their patients are from Illinois, and one-third of their
patients, overall, use Medicaid to run their hospital. He has told me
what is going to happen if the Republican measure goes through and
cutbacks to these hospitals.
They came up with, incidentally, the rescue fund to solve the
political problem. I want to check and make sure Senator Murray can
back me up on this. Our overall cut in Medicaid now is about $1
trillion?
Mrs. MURRAY. Correct.
Mr. DURBIN. One trillion dollars, imagine. This is Washington we are
talking: cutting Medicaid nationwide $1 trillion and the rescue plan
for the small hospitals that are in danger--the ones that I talked
about--$1 trillion cut. How big is the rescue plan? It is $25 billion.
Do the math. It is a joke. It is a joke.
If Republican leaders think this is an adequate amount to alleviate
pain, all of our Nation, through our hospitals, are going to feel like
that is trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose. This simply
won't work.
I want to conclude by saying this. We passed the Affordable Care Act
15 years ago. Of all the things that I worked on in Congress, I think
it had more positive impact to help the families across America than
anything. We found a way to make health insurance more affordable for
families 15 years ago. And to do it, we held hearings, 100 hearings on
the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare is what they called it--roundtables,
walk-throughs. Two committees spent a combined 21 days holding markups
so everyone could offer an amendment.
Do you know how many amendments were made to the ObamaCare program?
Four hundred. There were 400 votes in committee and on the floor on
amendments. One hundred forty-seven Republican amendments were
included, though not a single Republican Senator ended up supporting
ObamaCare when it was all over.
What do we have here with this measure, at the end of the day? That
legislation, ObamaCare, allowed more than 40 million Americans to gain
health insurance. Today, how many hearings have we had on the bill that
is before us, this dramatic multitrillion-dollar bill? None. Zero. Not
a single one. There are zero markups for Senators offering amendments.
There were 400 amendments on ObamaCare--none on this one until it has
come to the floor today with zero bipartisan input.

Our friends on the Republican side have said, basically, it is a big
deal. Take it or leave it.
Should this bill become law, do you know what we will have done?
Thrown 16 million Americans off health insurance and closed many
vulnerable small hospitals--all to pay for tax breaks for millionaires
and billionaires. Maybe some of my Republican friends are OK with that.
I don't think the American people are.
I am hoping that sanity and commonsense prevail. We need four. We
need four Senators to step up and say: Stop this train. We have got to
sit down and do our homework. We cannot expose the American families
and the American economy and do this in the name of preserving tax
breaks for the wealthiest people. Elon Musk seems to be doing OK in
life, right? He is the wealthiest man in the world. Do you know what
the tax break will be for Elon Musk on the bill that is before us on
the floor? It will be $346,000--a lot of money. To him, he won't even
notice it. They are giving him a tax break he won't notice and taking
away health insurance from families who will be devastated--16 million
around the country. It is an important choice, and we should make the
right one.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, in deciding whether to vote for the ``Big,
Not So Beautiful Bill,'' I have asked a very specific question: Will
the deficit be more or less next year? The answer, without question,
is: This bill will grow the deficit. The Federal Government has fancy
formulas and hundreds of wonky accountants who inform us of their
projections over 10 years, but you often can't trust these projections.
In an excellent piece written by the Foundation for Economic
Education, entitled ``The CBO's Projections Are Worse Than Useless,''
Eric Schuler writes:

Long-term analysis and language is commonplace in U.S.
national politics, but it achieves no useful outcome. It
confuses far more than it clarifies. It does not provide
accurate estimates of long-term results. It does not improve
the average voter's understanding of policy effects. And it
gives politicians a means to claim they are being fiscally
responsible without actually exercising any prudence
whatsoever.

Sometimes the predictions are off because a new Congress is elected
and changes the law. Eric Schuler writes that, for any projection of a
10-year budget to be accurate, the Congressional Budget Office ``has to
assume the law won't change for ten years, even as most of the
politicians that make the laws risk being replaced [every] two years--
and all of them advocate for changes of one stripe or another . . .''
Schuler states what few in Washington will admit:

Congress has a knack for starting any proposed cuts in the
later years, while letting spending run wild in the immediate
future.

[[Page S3623]]

Sometimes these predictions are off by $1 trillion or so because the
economy grew more slowly or more quickly than anticipated.
Bruce Thompson, a former Senate aide and Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury writes that the Congressional Budget Office ``miscalculated
the deficit [last year] by $1 trillion.''
So in deciding whether to vote for any big, monstrous bill, it helps
to ask the right question. To me, the most pertinent question is, How
will the bill affect the deficit in the next year?
Currently, our deficit is estimated to be a little under $2 trillion
this year. What will happen to the debt in 2026 if this bill passes?
Well, in using the math most favorable to the supporters of the bill,
referred to as a policy baseline, the deficit in 2026 will still be
$270 billion more than this year. So even using the math, even using
the formulas that the supporters of the bill like, the deficit will
grow by $270 billion next year. That is just not good if you profess to
be fiscally conservative.
Why will the deficit grow next year? Well, even if you argue that the
2017 tax cuts don't need to be counted in the calculation at all, the
new tax cuts add up to $234 billion to the debt next year.
In addition, the ``Big, Not So Beautiful Bill'' adds new spending of
over $500 billion--military, border, agricultural subsidies, et cetera.
That spending is front-loaded and will be spent in the first 4 years of
the 10-year window.
Legislative spending is one of the few items in the bill that is
exact. It isn't estimated. If they say they will spend $500 billion,
they are going to spend $500 billion in all of the first few years. So,
in order not to add to the deficit, the ``BBB,'' the ``Big, Not So
Beautiful Bill,'' has to have corresponding spending cuts to counter
all the new spending. Unfortunately, the spending cuts are back-loaded
to the final 5 years of the 10-year window when several tax cuts expire
and the spending increases are finished.
In addition, elections occur every 2 years and could easily wipe out
any perceived savings that might occur in the later years.
The only real certainty in this budget drama are the budget years
coming in the immediate future. It is the next year or two that are the
only things that are actually of any certainty. So, if we analyze this
bill from that perspective, we discover that the bill increases the
debt by $500 billion in the first 5 years. This is not the CBO's
projection that Republicans have not liked. This is the projection they
are using that says the debt will add $500 billion in the first 5
years. They say, somehow, miraculously, in the last 5 years, it gets to
$500 billion in savings. So it is a $1 trillion shift from year 5 to
year 10. The CBO scores it differently, not as encouragingly, and says
it adds over $3 trillion in debt.
So which is it? Does this bill save $500 billion over 10, or does it
add $3 trillion over 10?
The truth is, even for a person with a magic crystal ball, it is
anybody's guess, which brings us back to, maybe we have to judge the
effects of the ``Big, Not So Beautiful Bill'' by looking at what
happens to the debt next year.
Supporters of the bill admit it adds $270 billion to the debt next
year. That is the only thing we know for certain. We don't know what
will happen in year 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, or 10; but we know that next year,
this bill will grow the deficit by $270 billion.
In addition, the bill increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. What
does that mean? That is an admission that they know they aren't
controlling the deficit; that they know the ensuing years will add
trillions more. So we are adding $2 trillion this year, but they are
anticipating--the authors of the bill are anticipating--adding more
than $2 trillion next year.
That doesn't sound at all conservative to me, and that is why I am a
no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, joining me on the floor are experts in
the budget process, who are former chairs and ranking members: Senator
Murray, who was the Senate Budget chair from 2013 through 2015; Senator
Whitehouse, who was the Senate Budget chair from 2023 through 2025; and
Senator Van Hollen, who was the ranking Democrat on the House Budget
Committee from 2011 through 2017.
We are here to address a fundamental violation of the law--of section
313--the Senate rules for reconciliation.
To try to summarize this in the simplest words possible, 100 Senators
voted to have a special fast-track, filibuster-free pathway solely for
reducing the debt. The first principle was that no deficits could be
created in a 10-year period. Our Republican colleagues blew that up in
1996 when they wanted to do a tax bill that would create massive
deficits. Then a second pillar was no deficits in any title of the bill
in any year after the first 10 years. This bill, right now, if this
passes, blows that up. The third was to use honest numbers,
Congressional Budget Office numbers.
I have a letter here from the Congressional Budget Office, and they
say that the estimate is relative to the CBO's January 2025 baseline.
The CBO is required to construct its baseline under the assumption
specified in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and
the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act.
In response to your questions about the cost of title VII, the
question was, Would title VII increase the deficit by more than the
$1.5 trillion over the 2025 through 2034 period? The answer is, yes,
the CBO estimates that its enacting would increase the deficit by
nearly $3.5 trillion over the 2025-2034 period--$3.5 trillion.
We then asked, Would it increase deficits in the years beyond 2034,
beyond the 10-year window? The answer was yes.
But if you were to ask my Republican friends, they would say: No, no,
no. We are inventing a new theory, and that is that anything that the
2017 tax giveaway to the billionaires put into law that expired after
10 years, we are just going to assume it would have continued, and,
therefore, our continuing it doesn't cost anything.
That is a pretty crazy notion that if they didn't put it into the
bill, the law says it ends, but they say: No, no. It would have
continued anyway through some magical way; so, therefore, a tax break
for the really wealthy costs nothing.
This is exactly--exactly--the type of lying to ourselves, smoke and
mirrors that 100 Senators agreed to end back in 1974; and that piece of
it has continued in place for 51 years until this moment, in this
Senate, by this Republican majority, who says we are going to start
lying to ourselves and lying to the American people about what this
bill costs.
Well, we are not going to lie. We are going to tell you the truth.
This bill costs well over $3 trillion over 10 years and some $30
trillion-plus on top of existing deficits and debt because of the
provisions that are in this particular bill.
Our current national debt that has been run up since the Declaration
of Independence is around $36.5 trillion. This bill basically matches
that in creating that much additional debt over the next 30 years. This
is a huge assault on the programs that we have sustained as a nation
for the people of America and for people struggling to get on their
feet. So we want affordable housing programs. We want to have fair and
quality healthcare. We want to have an education system that gives
every child an opportunity to thrive. We want to create a robust
economy through investments so there are good jobs, because no
government program is better than a good job. All of those are
imperiled by this bill because the Republican leadership is lying to
the American people and lying to themselves. So we are here to tell the
truth.
First of all, we are going to turn to Senator Murray who, as I
mentioned, was the Senate Budget chair from 2013 to 2015.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon and our
other Budget chairs and ranking members from previous years because
this is really important.
There are some things you can't change with legislation despite what
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to believe. For
example, one plus one is two, and while a trillion might have a lot of
zeroes in it, it is, in fact, a much, much bigger number. Now, that
might sound obvious, but, apparently, my colleagues across the aisle
need a little reminder because,

[[Page S3624]]

right now, Republicans are pretending not to get it. It is almost
beyond belief, and it is certainly beyond common sense.
After years of complaining about the debt--in fact, at the same time
they are talking about how we need to address the debt--Republicans now
are suddenly pretending they don't know how to count. Republicans are
suddenly pretending the Parliamentarian doesn't exist if they don't
talk to her. Republicans are suddenly pretending that precedent doesn't
exist if they just fake amnesia and that norms and consequences for
breaking them will just disappear if they wish them away really hard.
My preschool students had more common sense.
Republicans should know, if they replace math with magic, if they
tear up the Senate process, if they blow off the Senate
Parliamentarian, that bill will come due--and not just the bill for $4
trillion blown on tax cuts for billionaires and corporations. The bill
will also come due for trashing this Senate process and precedent when
Republicans are no longer in the majority.
If Republicans are serious about plowing forward with rewriting or
ignoring Senate procedure and the laws of mathematics, I would just
ask: Spare me the empty excuses. Spare me the explanations that totally
ignore the reality of what you are doing. I mean, do they really think
it washes away everything to say: Oh, it is fine to break the process
in half because we say it is fine; oh, it is fine; we have the
authority to ignore math? Give me a break.
To every Republican who really thinks this is a convincing argument
and to anyone who thinks ``we can'' is just acceptable rationale for
going nuclear and pretending the most expensive bill in the history of
our country can be paid for by some magic-bean counting, here is my
challenge to you: Go back home and try that game with your
constituents. Tell them it is OK. Yes, the debt is going to be $4
trillion and higher 10 years from now. That is true, but it is fine. We
voted on it, and we get to say a trillion is actually zero. Go ahead.
See how that works for you. And you may as well tell them you are
voting against gravity next because that is just as reasonable.

And don't forget: When you tell your families back home that
trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and companies are
free because you waved a wand or you said some magic words, don't
forget to tell them those are just tax cuts for the billionaires, not
for working families.
Don't forget to tell the folks back home: Yeah, I voted to say a
trillion dollars is nothing, but we still need to kick people off of
their healthcare. That is just too expensive. We still need to close
those hospitals. We have to cut costs. And we still have to kick people
off SNAP because the debt is out of control.
Don't forget to mention: No, we can't afford childcare. We can't
afford paid family leave. We can't afford to solve your problems.
Magic math is apparently just for billionaires. You all are getting
less.
Please, Republicans, send that message to your constituents. Just see
how it goes over because you can fool yourself, but you are not going
to fool the American people. They don't get to balance their budget
with magic math. They don't get to pretend $1 trillion is nothing. And
they don't get to pretend that this bill is free because at the end of
the day, regardless of what policy baseline you all want to use in DC,
those families back home are the ones who will be paying the actual
cost.
I yield to Senator Merkley.
Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator yield for a question?
Mrs. MURRAY. I would.
Mr. MERKLEY. In the time that you were Budget chair, did you ever
contemplate a situation in which you argued that renewing a tax break
that was by law expiring would somehow have no impact on the deficit?
Mrs. MURRAY. To my friend from Oregon, I never would have
contemplated it, and I never would have put it forward. I happen to
know that if I would have suggested that, my Republican colleagues
would have been all over me, telling me that breaks the rules.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Returning to Senator Whitehouse, who was Senate Budget chair from
2023 to 2025.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Senator Merkley.
I mentioned earlier the history of the section that the Republican
Budget chairman is using to perform this multitrillion-dollar magical
act of making huge, deficit-busting numbers disappear. It is called
section 312. It has been used before, but it has always been minor,
corrective, and bipartisan.
I mentioned earlier the adjustment that was made on a bipartisan
basis to the Power Marketing Administration's numbers to return the CBO
to an agreement that the Senate had previously made. That was not
enormously consequential. This is almost certainly the first time you
are hearing about it.
Again, in 2023, as Budget chair, with Republican Chair Jodey
Arrington on the House side, we made a $105 million adjustment to a
dairy program. Today, we are talking about trillions. This was a $105
million adjustment--again, bipartisan, minor, and corrective, fixing a
technical issue on a bipartisan basis.
Last year, Speaker Johnson and Leader Schumer agreed to direct CBO to
score a feed program with an OMB estimate, and they used this rule
again--collaborating on a bipartisan basis on a matter that was minor
and corrective.
Well, this is different. This is trillions, and Republicans are using
this rule to pretend that it is not.
There are a lot of ways to look at who is right. Time, obviously,
will tell, but this bill actually has a ``tell'' right in it. Page 754
of this bill is the reality check on whether or not they are running up
the debt by trillions. We know they are running up the debt by
trillions because they say so in this bill.
You can play Senate procedural fakery, you can wave magic wands
around numbers all day long, but someday soon, you hit reality, and you
hit reality in the real world of markets and selling Treasury bonds and
having a legal debt limit.
If this did not raise the debt by trillions, they would not need to
raise the debt limit by trillions.
Here is the text:

Subtitle C--Increase in Debt Limit.
Sec. 72001. MODIFICATION OF LIMITATION ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.
The limitation section 3101(b) under title 31 . . . is
increased by $5,000,000,000,000.

They are dodging the Parliamentarian's ruling by letting the Budget
chair make a trillion-dollar magic-wand maneuver because they know
pretty darn well what the Parliamentarian's ruling would be. And how do
they know what the Parliamentarian's ruling would be? Because the
answer is in their own damned bill.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator from Rhode Island yield for a
question?
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Of course.
Mr. MERKLEY. You mentioned the use of section 312, which gives some
flexibility to resolve, as you put it, minor issues on a bipartisan
basis to correct an issue, a technical issue. In those cases you
mentioned, were those on a reconciliation bill?
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Were they on a reconciliation bill? I don't believe
they were.
Mr. MERKLEY. No, they were not. In fact, that power has never been
used on a reconciliation bill because the following section, 313, gives
very specific instructions. It says each provision must be costed out
for its impact on both outlays, the spending side, or revenue, should
it be a revenue measure.
If you are saying ``Well, how do I do that?'' you say ``Well, if we
pass this provision, what will it cost as compared to not passing this
provision, not having it in the bill?'' That is a comparison to current
law.
This ability of the Budget chair--and actually the law says the
Budget Committee--to correct technical issues or narrow issues on a
bipartisan basis basically solves snarly little budgeting questions,
like on the dairy program that you mentioned. It was never used on
reconciliation, ever; never used on a broad basis, ever; never used to
create a lie about what a bill costs in this fashion.
Now, we are turning to the Senator from Maryland, who was ranking
Democrat on the House Budget Committee for 6 years, so he brings a lot
of experience and knowledge about the budget process.
Senator Van Hollen.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and the ranking

[[Page S3625]]

member of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Merkley.
I just want to start by reading a statement. This is a quote:

Anyone that says current policy baseline [is the right way
to go] is engaging in intellectual and economic fraud . . .
it's intellectually lazy. My basic mission in life is just to
try to create some honest math.

That wasn't from Senator Van Hollen or anyone on this floor; that is
from a Republican Member of the House, Congressman Schweikert from
Arizona, talking about exactly the issue we are debating here in the
U.S. Senate.
Let me read you another quote--a little more colorful--again about
this Republican accounting fraud:

This is fairy dust, and they're [just] full of crap. And
I'm gonna call them out on it.

That is Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.
They are right. This is a fraud. This is a fraud that would make the
Enron scammers blush.
I quote those House Members for a reason, because we can disagree
with what they did in their bill--and I strongly disagree with it--but
at least they used honest math, and at least they used the math that is
required by the rules here in the Senate, the honest math that
Republicans here in the Senate want to dodge because it will both tell
the American people just how big the deficits are but also because it
will screw up their whole entire plan.
Just so people listening have some sense of how these Senate numbers
are designed to disguise the real impact of their deficits, look at,
for example, the basic individual tax rates in the House bill. When
they extended those tax rates from the Trump 2017 bill, it cost $2.2
trillion under what we call the current law baseline, which is the
reality baseline because that is what it will cost when you understand
that they sunset at the end of this year, and that is what it will cost
to renew them.
So under honest accounting, it is $2.2 trillion. Under the Senate
fraudulent accounting, that $2.2 trillion deficit miraculously becomes
an $83 billion deficit.
Let's look at the House permanent extension of key deductions for
businesses. That would cost--honest accounting--$821 billion; under the
Senate accounting scam, $6 billion.
So what we are seeing here is this blatant, deliberate effort to
mislead the American people about the true costs of this bill, about
the deficit impacts of this bill, about how it will impact the debt.
We all know that when the debt goes up and we have to put more of our
costs on Uncle Sam's credit card, it puts upward pressure on interest
rates. That means Americans will pay higher interest rates on their
mortgages, on their car loans, and everything else.
So when you try to hide the deficit impact, you really are trying to
fool the American people, and we are here to blow the whistle.
Now, I just want to show our colleagues something that was put
together by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. If you look
at the blue, you can see that for each year, starting this year--2025,
2026--the blue is what Senate Republicans claim their bill will add to
the deficit. The red is how much more it will actually add to the
deficit.
So at the end of this 10-year period, what you see is that Senate
Republicans are claiming that their bill will add $441 billion, which
is still a big number, but the real number, when you do honest
accounting, when you add up all of these, is $4.2 trillion--a much
bigger number.
I do want to point something out on this chart that I think everybody
watching should understand. If you look at these orange parts--these
are the additional deficits from tax cuts--starting here, in year 2029,
2030, you will see that they actually do start going down. Why is that?
It is because the tax cut that President Trump promised for no tax on
tips--they phase those out. This is all just a make-believe ruse: Yes,
we start providing no tax on tips, but those disappear.
The tax breaks for wealthy people--they go on, and they go on not
just for this 10-year period. But the reason they violate all the rules
of reconciliation is because they keep going on after that.
As Senator Merkley said, if you look at the entire history of the
Byrd rule--that is Senator Byrd--it was designed to make sure that 51
Senators, through a vote, could not make these kinds of permanent
changes in any area, but specifically they were worried about areas
that would increase the national deficit and debt.
So what Republican Senators are doing is not only misleading the
American people, but they are violating the entire structure that
carved out this special procedure that we call reconciliation for the
budget, which was intended to lower deficits and debts, not have them
go on forever.
As Senator Merkley has pointed out, I think if you look over a 30-
year period, we are talking about $35 trillion-plus additional to the
debt, and Republicans want to hide that from the American people.
That is budget fraud, pure and simple, and it is a violation of the
rules of the U.S. Senate, this whole special structure that was created
not to blow bigger holes in the debt and deficits but to actually try
to constrain them. So shame on everybody who is part of this fraud on
the American people.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MERKLEY. Would the Senator from Maryland yield for a question?
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I will.
Mr. MERKLEY. I find it very interesting that the Senator pointed out
that these tax provisions for the middle class--that no tax on tips is
phased out and no tax on overtime is phased out.
And what the Senator is saying, I believe, is that when they put into
this bill that a tax break is ending, they are saying that it doesn't
cost any more in the following years.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. So they are simply saying--their current policy
baseline that they want us to make believe about would say that this
wouldn't cost them; in other words, if they extended this, it wouldn't
cost anything.
It is interesting to note--and not only does that expose the fraud
behind the current policy baseline, but they made a very deliberate
choice. Even though they now say that they can make these tax cuts
permanent and still comply with the rules, they decided to make the tax
cuts for very rich people permanent. But even though they say it is not
going to cost anything anymore to provide tax cuts with no tax on tips,
they are phasing those out.
And all of these areas are where President Trump made promises that
he was going to take care of some working people. Well, those go away
fast. The tax cuts for the rich, they go on for not just a full 10
years, but they keep going, which is why this is a violation of the
entire reconciliation process.
Mr. MERKLEY. So I find two things very interesting. They are saying,
if something was in the law that they passed in 2017 and it expires,
they are pretending it doesn't expire and that, therefore, extending it
doesn't cost anything. But in their own bill, when they say a provision
expires, they are saying: No, it really does die, and, therefore, we
are saving money in the years after.
How are those two things possibly consistent?
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Clearly, they are not. I mean, this is literally
magical thinking. This is why Republican Congressman Chip Roy called
this ``fairy dust'' and why the Congressman from Arizona said this was
pure intellectual and economic fraud. That is what it is. That is the
bottom line.
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I thank the Senator from Maryland for also
pointing out that President Trump--he did--when he was campaigning, say
he was fighting for ordinary families. But at his inauguration, who did
he have standing behind him? Not champions for healthcare or champions
for housing, and certainly not champions for nutrition or education,
but, in fact, a series of five or six billionaires.
And now you are telling me that, in this bill--and I want to make
sure the American people understand this--the provisions that were
sweeteners to say we were helping working people are being phased out,
but they are keeping all the tax breaks for billionaires.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, the Senator is right. It was right down this
hall, actually, that President Trump was sworn in, and he said it was
going to be a new golden age for working people. Well, as you are
pointing out and this chart clearly shows and their own budget reveals,
it is clearly a golden

[[Page S3626]]

age for billionaires and people who make a lot of money. And, in this
bill, they make sure that that golden age for very rich people goes on
forever.
They had a few little crumbs that they were throwing for a little
while, we can see, to others, but just for a little while and just
small amounts compared to the golden age for the billionaires.
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I must say, my impression is--and I hope the
Senator will correct me if I am wrong--that the Republicans are
embarrassed by the fact that they are proposing a bill that creates
over $3 trillion in debt in 10 years and over $30 trillion over 30
years and that the vast bulk of it goes to billionaires.
And so they want to say: We are so embarrassed because we mentioned
fiscal responsibility when we were running for office. We were going to
get the budget under control.
And they are doing the opposite, and they are embarrassed that they
are doing these cuts in programs to fund tax breaks for billionaires,
cutting regular healthcare--16 million people losing healthcare--for
tax breaks for billionaires that, as the Senator pointed out, go on and
on and on and are actually permanent.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I yield to my colleague from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. When I was budget chairman and we were trying to
focus, for instance, on the impending economic nightmare coming our way
through climate-caused property insurance failures, what I would get is
nonstop regular lectures from Republicans on the Budget Committee about
how we had to take responsibility for the deficit, we had to reduce the
debt. Nothing else mattered as much. It was absolutely vital.
Now, of course, we see that, as their very first shot with the power
to do anything through their majority and using reconciliation, they
are raising the debt, and they are raising the deficit--and not by a
little but by trillions.
And I am wondering if, in the Senator's time as chairman or perhaps
if in Senator Murray's time on the committee or perhaps in Senator Van
Hollen's time over on the House committee, you were favored with such
constant lecturing by Republicans about the debt and the deficit and
how credible that all seems right now.
Mr. MERKLEY. I yield to Senator Murray.
Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Senator for his question because it is just
stunning to me that the vast majority of debate--in fact, all the
debate--that came from Republicans at the time I was chair of the
Budget Committee and trying to put forward a smart budget for the
United States of America--the only thing they talked about--was debt
and deficit. The only challenge they made to us was debt and deficit.
The only time we tried to do anything for childcare, for healthcare,
they threw the debt at us.
So this is pretty stunning to me that, now that they need to raise
the debt for giving tax breaks to the very rich people who stood behind
the President at his inauguration, then they play with the numbers and
pretend it is not real, and ``trillion'' all of a sudden becomes
``zero'' and: I am using some rule you have never heard of to try and
pretend that this isn't real.
It is fairy dust.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I just want to say, to answer the question from the
Senator from Rhode Island and pick up on what my colleagues have said,
that when I was the senior Democrat, the ranking member of the House
Budget Committee, Paul Ryan was the chairman of the committee. And,
look, we disagreed on many things; we agreed on many things. We both
agreed that we should get our deficits and debt under control. We had
different ideas on how to do it. He wanted to privatize Medicare. We
wanted to close tax breaks for the rich. But the reality is that the
Holy Grail--the only guiding North Star for Republicans at that time--
was: We have got to bring down deficits and debt.

This is not that Republican Party--not in any way, shape, or form.
They clearly don't give a damn. In fact, they are worried, as we can
see, that the American people still care, which is why they want to
engage in this fraudulent scheme.
But I will just close on this: I remember one of those years--I
believe it was the 2012 Republican convention--they even put up a debt
clock. They put up a debt clock at the convention.
Mrs. MURRAY. I can't find it.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right? I am looking under my desk for the debt clock
here because the Republicans seem to have hidden it away forever. They
want to wish it away. That is what they are telling us.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The bill, actually, is required to raise the debt
limit by $5 trillion. So, in reality, there is a huge hit to our debt,
huge additions to our deficit.
And it makes me a little bit frustrated to think back to all those
lectures that I had to receive as budget chairman, which the Senator
from Maryland witnessed as a longtime member of the Senate Budget
Committee, which the ranking member witnessed in his time on the Budget
Committee, and which Senator Murray experienced when she chaired the
Budget Committee. We have been lectured to death by our colleagues. And
at the very first instance when they had the power to do something
about it, they went 180 in the other direction and are cranking the
national debt in order to give big benefits to the rich people who fund
their campaigns.
Mrs. MURRAY. If the Senator would yield for a question--and I know we
need to move on here--I just want to add one thing. It is not just that
it is going to be debt. It is the cost to families because of this debt
they are putting in place.
I would ask the chair of the Budget Committee now, as he knows as I
do: People's houses are going to cost more because their mortgage
interest rates are going to go up. Their car interest rates are going
to go up.
These are not just magic numbers sitting out there pretending. Real
families are going to feel the cost of this debt and this deficit.
Mr. MERKLEY. I really appreciate that point from my colleague from
Washington State because, in this bill, it creates so much necessitated
borrowing that CBO estimates that that borrowing will cause interest
rates to go up. And when interest rates go up for the Treasury, it goes
up on your car loan, on your adjustable rate, the mortgage on your
house, and just in general. These are costs that are borne by ordinary
families.
And I find it very interesting because the Republicans were demanding
what they called the dynamic score, saying: Well, won't these cuts
produce such a great economy that it will kind of lift all boats and
produce more revenue and maybe the deficit won't be as bad.
Here is what the Congressional Budget Office found. Again, that is
the nonpartisan honest broker. They found that because of the interest
rates rising as a result of this massive sea of red ink that
necessitates massive borrowing that, in fact, those rising interest
rates will hurt the economy.
So there is no dynamic score that produces: Oh, well, it isn't so bad
after all.
No, it is the opposite, and, in fact, that dynamic argument has
always been wrong.
And we are looking at the folks who lectured my colleague from Rhode
Island. I sat through many of those lectures as well. And I, in my
head, went: Wait a minute. Aren't these the folks who did the massive
ocean of red ink in the 2001 Bush tax bill? Aren't these the same folks
who produced a massive ocean of ink in another tax bill, 2 years later?
Aren't these the same ones that, in 2017, did a massive ocean of red
ink? And now they are doing it again? How could they possibly be
putting themselves forward as deficit hawks or debt hawks, not to
mention that they cheered on two adventures that were a huge tragedy
for the United States of America--trying to occupy Afghanistan and
going to war in Iraq--which together added $8 trillion to our debt?
And if you take a look at this chart, every time there is a
Republican administration, the last deficit while they are in office
compared to their first deficit goes up. For Clinton, it went down.
That is fiscal responsibility. For George W. Bush, first term, it went
up. For Obama, it went down. In other words, the Democratic Presidents,
time after time after time--Clinton, Obama, Biden--they reduced the

[[Page S3627]]

deficits while they were in office, and the Republican Presidents,
while they were in office, every single time, increased the deficits.
So none of us want to hear any more talk about fiscal responsibility
from across the aisle.
Do you want to be fiscally responsible? Vote no on this bill. This
bill takes and fires 16 million people off of healthcare to finance
those tax breaks for billionaires. This bill says 4 million children
will go hungry to finance tax breaks for billionaires. This bill is
``families lose and billionaires win,'' and the debt goes up,
endangering our ability to do basic programs for the entire next
generation. It is wrong on every count.
And I think, collectively, we urge our colleagues to honor the
argument they have made over time that, in fact, they were concerned
about the deficit and they were concerned about American families,
because if you are concerned about the deficit and debt, if you are
concerned about families, you must vote no on this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I really want to thank my colleagues. The
Senator just said they used to call themselves deficit hawks. We need
to call them deficit robins. They are robbing from you to pay for the
billionaires. They are no longer deficit hawks. Agreed?
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my colleagues. And I think, as Senator
Merkley said, if you care about the deficit and debt and you don't want
working families to have to pay for these tax cuts for billionaires and
the rich, vote no on the bill.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I would only add as my last words: Watch. Everybody
who is here, watch as this goes forward, because we will give the
Republicans a chance to reduce the increase to the debt and the deficit
by peeling back just the tax cuts for the greedy billionaires.
We would be voting for working-class tax cuts, I am almost certain.
We will have a chance to bring into stark focus through our amendments
what really matters to the folks on the other side of the aisle. And
that is the tax cuts for the superwealthy, for the billionaires, for
the corporations that are offshoring jobs, and for the biggest
polluters in the country. That is where their sweet spot is, and we
will expose that through these votes.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, just a final word. Those votes, we are
not sure when they will start because they are redrafting provisions of
this bill right now. That is how little time this Senate will have to
actually know what is in this 1,000-page bill with all kinds of special
deals tucked into it for various Members. We will have little time
because they are still writing it.
So those amendments that my colleague from Rhode Island mentioned--
stay tuned. We are not sure if those amendments are going to start at 2
in the morning or if they are going to start sometime later tomorrow,
but stay tuned and pay attention because you are going to find out who
stands with families and who stands to hurt families in favor of
helping billionaires.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I think it is a really important
discussion that we had right now about the deficit and the debt, but I
want to talk a little bit more about this bill, in general.
You know, recent KFF polling shows that this Republican ``Big Ugly
Betrayal Bill'' is overwhelmingly unpopular. In fact, this thing is
more underwater than the Titanic.
Nearly two in three Americans view this bill unfavorably. That goes
up to nearly three in four when they learn it will kick millions--
millions--off their health insurance. And it goes up to nearly four in
five when they learn it will choke off funding to their local hospital.
In other words, the more the American people hear about what is
actually in this ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill,'' the more they dislike it.
So with that in mind, I want to be here today to say a little bit
more about what is in the Republicans' latest version. Spoiler alert:
It is still big; it is still ugly; and it is an absolute betrayal of
the people who sent us here to fight for them.
The Republican plan is still going to mean over 16 million people
losing healthcare. As patients get kicked off their ACA plans, kids and
struggling families will get kicked off Medicaid.
Rural hospitals are going to be forced to shut their doors. The
Republican plan is still going to mean more starving families. New
redtape is going to cut people off from their SNAP benefits that they
need to put food on the table, and it is going to take away kids'
school meals.
The Republican plan still rips away support from the people in this
country who are struggling the most to give away billions in tax breaks
to billionaires who need help the least.
In short, this latest version of the Republicans' bill would still be
one of the biggest transfers of wealth from the people at the bottom to
the people at the top in our Nation's history.
When it comes to healthcare, this Republican abomination will cause
millions of people to lose their insurance and see their costs
skyrocket in one way or another. It will create mountains of new
paperwork and bureaucratic barriers that are positively meant to kick
people off their Medicaid and ACA coverage. And there is new sabotage
to the ACA healthcare markets, which will mean more people losing their
affordable coverage.
Meanwhile, there is nothing--a big, fat zero--when it comes to
renewing the tax credits Democrats passed to lower your healthcare
costs. That is right. While Republicans are showering their billionaire
donors in new tax breaks, they will not lift a finger to extend
healthcare tax credits that are saving millions of families thousands
of dollars a year on health coverage.
Instead, they are going to make sure people lose healthcare coverage,
including our seniors, people with disabilities, pregnant women,
millions of patients who rely on Medicaid. And let's not forget, the
cuts in their bill are going to shutter hospitals across the country,
especially in our rural areas.
Do you have Medicaid? Medicare? employer sponsored coverage?
Regardless, Republicans have some pretty bad news for you because it
hardly matters what insurance you are on when you don't have a hospital
to get care anymore.
In Washington State, we have 14 rural hospitals that are fighting to
survive and would likely close under this bill, mostly in areas
represented by Republicans, I should add; not to mention, we have six
rural labor and delivery units that could be forced to close their
doors under this bill.
Do you know what the Senate Republicans did? They made that problem
worse. They put even more pressure on our rural hospitals. I am telling
you, this betrayal is getting bigger and uglier by the day, and this
cannot get lost.
Republicans want to shut the doors of one of the biggest healthcare
providers in the country. They want to defund Planned Parenthood. That
is wildly harmful and wildly unpopular. It would shutter at least 200
health centers that provide a wide spectrum of care, including cancer
screenings, Pap smears, and birth control for millions of women.
And let's not forget Republicans are cutting nutrition assistance
too. This big ugly betrayal would make one of the biggest cuts to SNAP
in history. We are talking around a $200 billion cut over the next 10
years. Now, it should be obvious, but that would be devastating for our
country and for our kids' future.
And yet Republicans are not giving up on taking dinner off the table,
taking school lunch off kids' trays, all so they can shovel tax cuts at
billionaires and wealthy corporations.
It is worth underscoring the new redtape in their bill is even
targeted at some of our most vulnerable families because it expands
work requirements to apply to seniors and parents with kids in school.
When my dad--a World War II veteran--got sick with multiple
sclerosis, he lost his job. He lost his job. My mom was at home--seven
kids she was raising. My dad lost his job, and they had to spend--my
mom had to spend some time getting some new skills so she could go back
to work and take care of our family.
Do you know what? During that time, we had to rely on food stamps in

[[Page S3628]]

my family to feed those seven kids in my family. But under this
Republican bill today, because neither of my parents had a job during
those few months, my family would not be eligible for SNAP benefits. We
would not have even gotten food on our table at the worst time in my
family's life.
This is wrong.
Thanks to those food stamps, my family did get through that rough
patch, and all seven of us kids grew up to give back to our
communities, whether as a firefighter, middle schoolteacher, or even
here as a U.S. Senator.
So I can't emphasize enough: Republicans want to cut families from
SNAP and Medicaid Programs that give people a hand up in hard times.
Why? So they can give an enormous handout to the richest people and the
biggest companies in our country.
Oh, and at the same time, they are making it harder to afford
groceries and healthcare. I should mention they are also gutting energy
investments in a completely chaotic way. It is all but guaranteed to
drive away jobs and drive up energy costs for all American families.
And at the same time in this bill, they are giving billionaires
billions of dollars. Republicans are going to give students the short
end of the stick. This big mess of a bill would tear away programs and
protections that make it possible for many students to pursue a higher
education. It eliminates grad PLUS loans. It cuts families off from
parent PLUS loans. It punishes students who go into public service or a
medical residency and more.
Meanwhile, they are tearing down the guardrails from gutting
regulations that protect students whose universities commit fraud to
opening up a Pandora's box for Pell grants with a new loophole that
would let low-quality programs suck up our taxpayer dollars.
These changes are especially going to hurt students from low-income
families and first-generation college students and our veterans. Some
of them will have no way to go to college when Republicans take their
support away.
Some will be driven into predatory private loans they can't afford,
and some will get lured into low-quality programs that take their
money, waste taxpayer dollars, and leave the student worse off.
If that wasn't enough, if the Secretary of Education wanted to try to
stop this kind of fraud and protect students, Republicans will leave
them about as much authority as the school hall monitor because in this
bill, Republicans prevent any Secretary of Education from making
regulations that carry added benefits for borrowers.
And it hardly matters if that is a good impact like saving students
money, protecting taxpayer dollars from fraud, or making higher
education more accessible. Republicans are going to make problems worse
and make fixing them even harder. Students in this country should be
outraged.
I want to be perfectly clear about something: If Republicans charge
ahead with this big awful mess, which they seem intent on doing, they
can kiss any last shred of credibility goodbye, as we just talked
about, when it comes to pretending to care about balancing the budget
or addressing the national debt.
The idea was already laughable. For the entirety of the 21st century,
the biggest driver of the national debt has been tax cuts that
Republicans championed. But now, as we just talked about, they want to
put at least $4 trillion--that is trillion with a ``t''--on the
national credit card. Why? So they can shower the richest people on the
planet with more money.
And then they are pretending all the math works, and it is kind of
just easy peasy if they only just--they can do it if they kick people
off healthcare or take enough meals away from kids or close enough
hospitals or, better still, use some absurd accounting gimmick to
pretend--to pretend--that billions of dollars in new tax cuts for their
billionaire donors actually just don't cost anything.
Well, I have got some bad news for Republicans: Your math is
terrible, and so is this bill. This thing is very expensive, and you
don't have to take my word for it. Ask the nonpartisan Congressional
Budget Office, which just said the latest version of this bill will add
4 trillion--``t'' trillion--to the debt just over the next 10 years.
If Republicans want to ignore them, you can also ask the fiscal hawks
at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They calculate that
the House bill adds $5 trillion to our debt when you include interest
payments and the costs of making temporary provisions in this bill
permanent. And we are told the Senate bill is even less fiscally
responsible.
Everyone agrees this thing is not beautiful, but it is recklessly
big, and it won't just increase the debt; it will blow it up. This may
very well be the most expensive bill in history. I say it may be
because Republicans are still planning changes. We have not yet gotten
the final bill.
They already cut out even more taxes for multinational corporations.
SNAP benefits, they are still on the chopping block. Healthcare, still
on the chopping block. In fact, they want to cut Medicaid even more
painfully. We may not know how expensive the Republicans' bill will be
in the end, but we know who is paying for it--it is you, working
families.
And it is important for people to know, as bad as this bill is,
Republicans were trying to make it even worse. Now, Democrats have been
fighting them every step of the way, and we have notched a few
important wins by challenging every single provision we possibly could
under the Senate rules.
So I want to talk about some of the things Democrats were successful
in getting out because if Republicans had had their way, not only would
this bill take away more food from our struggling families or shutter
even more hospitals and kick even more people off their health
insurance, it would have also sold off all of our public lands.
And instead of just slashing CFPB funding, it would have completely
shuttered the doors of a very important Federal watchdog that protects
Americans from getting scammed.
If Republicans had had their way, this bill would make it easier to
buy gun silencers, harder to get your earned income tax credit, or pay
off your student loans, and effectively impossible to get insurance
plans on the Marketplace to cover abortion care.
If Republicans would have had their way, this bill would have also
given Trump more power to deny funding to our constituents on a whim
and less power for the courts to stop him.
We are talking about a full smorgasbord of really awful, unpopular
ideas and policies that would have hurt our families and weakened our
democracy--ideas that were this close to making it into this bill. But
Republicans did not have their way. Democrats have been fighting back
at every single step. We got those provisions tossed in the shredder,
and we are still doing our darndest to send the rest of the bill to the
shredder as well.
Now, let's be clear. When we talk about how unpopular this bill is
with the American people, the reason is simple: This bill polls like
garbage because it is garbage. That is why it should go nowhere except
a trash bin.
Democrats are going to keep pushing back on this monstrosity with
absolutely everything we have got at every step that we can. We are not
going to stand by as Republicans shutter hospitals so the richest
people in the country can build another vacation home. We are not going
to sit around and let Republicans kick millions of people off of their
insurance and raise working families' premiums so corporate executives
can get a bigger bonus. We are not going to be silent as Republicans
take food away from struggling families so they can help billionaires
fuel up their private jets. We are going to keep speaking up, we are
going to keep pushing back, and we are going to make sure everyone--
everyone--knows exactly what is going on here.
This bill is deeply unpopular--that much is clear--but if Republicans
keep pushing for this disaster, buckle up because we are only going to
keep getting louder and louder about how big this is, how ugly it is,
and it is only going to get more unpopular with the folks back home as
these provisions are enacted if this bill passes.
I am pretty astounded by how far some Republicans are trying to stick
their heads in the sand on this. One Republican Senator told their
concerned constituents ``We're all going to die.''

[[Page S3629]]

Well, maybe that is a better name for the bill--at least it is more
honest--because when you take healthcare away from people, when you
make it harder to get, when you make it harder to afford, when you
close the only hospital for miles, yes, you are right, people will die.
You would think my colleagues would show a bit more concern about
that. Instead, that Senator actually doubled down, and in a response
video, she filmed walking through a cemetery. I don't know how you get
out of touch that much to misunderstand this, but let me be clear about
something to our Republicans: ``Whistling past the graveyard'' is a
metaphor to stop ignoring dangers; it is not a literal messaging
suggestion.
If you thought Republicans couldn't be any more dismissive to their
own constituents, this week, another Republican Senator who was
speaking about people voicing their concerns about these Medicaid cuts
said people will ``get over it.''
I have news for every one of my Republican colleagues who is trying
to deny the reality of this bill and pretend the fairy tales they are
telling themselves are true: When someone's local hospital closes, they
don't get over it. When someone's kid is kicked off healthcare, they do
not get over it.
If Republicans don't want to take my word for it, they can listen to
the doctor I spoke with, who warned that when patients go uninsured,
they delay care, and it increases costs for everyone. Instead of paying
$10 for diabetic medication, we will pay $10,000 for an amputation.
Or Republicans can actually read the countless letters I am getting
from my constituents sharing their stories:

My dad is a double amputee. He relies on Medicaid.
Without Medicaid, we couldn't get my kid's antiseizure
medication.

Or, I am a full-time caregiver for my daughter with cerebral palsy or
my son with spina bifida or my elderly mother, and this bill threatens
to kick them off their healthcare and the supportive services they rely
on to survive.
Better yet, Republicans can go out and talk to their own
constituents, because I have no doubt they will hear similar stories.
They will even come to you. Advocates have been here in DC all week. I
have seen them in the halls. I have heard them from my office.
Now the Republicans can listen to the people across the country who
are warning them about this bill, and they can do the right thing and
abandon this effort or they can keep ignoring them. But make no
mistake, in the end, the American people will have their voices and
their votes heard, because at the end of the day, this bill, this
monstrosity of a bill, is all in the goal of a tax break for
multibillionaires and corporations, and the way they pay for it is by
taking away your healthcare and your nutrition, the things your family
or your neighbors or people you know rely on. That is just wrong, it is
un-American, and we are fighting back.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose this partisan
reconciliation bill. Republicans have named it the One Big Beautiful
Bill, but you would only lose that kind of title if you were trying to
hide something. And here is the simple truth: This bill takes health
insurance and food assistance away from millions of Americans and gives
President Trump's billionaire and millionaire friends giant tax cuts.
Indeed, this bill would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in
tax giveaways to the country's 902 billionaires and millionaires while
kicking 17 million Americans off their health insurance. Just weigh the
balance: 902 billionaire beneficiaries with extraordinary tax
deductions and tax benefits versus denial of healthcare to 17 million
Americans. It doesn't balance.
And despite slashing healthcare, somehow this bill will add trillions
of dollars to our national debt. It will further weaken our financial
position in the world. It will, indeed, have many countries wondering
if the United States is, as it has been since the end of World War II,
the place to put their resources, their investments, their reserves.
This could have profound fiscal and monetary implications to the
United States, and if you tie that together with this tariff battle, we
are headed economically in the wrong direction, as we are socially.
And this bill is loaded with outrageous special interest giveaways
and President Trump's personal political priorities; for example, $7.5
billion for wealthy developers to use for luxury housing and other
high-priced developments at a time when affordable housing for working
families is a crisis in every State in the country; $1.7 billion for
gunmakers who will be able to sell silencers, sawed-off shotguns,
short-barreled rifles, and other very dangerous weapons and components
tax-free, making our streets more dangerous for police and for the
American people, and, indeed, especially for the police because they
are the first responders. They are the ones that are typically going to
the door wondering if the person behind that door has an automatic
weapon or some other weapon designed not to hunt or shoot but to kill.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax cuts for extraordinarily
wealthy oil-and-gas companies, and $40 million for a Garden of Heroes,
a sculpture garden to honor President Trump's favorite historical
personalities. And at the same time, it slashes the budget for the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which makes sure that shady
payday lenders, mortgage lenders, and banks don't fleece American
families.
And, in particular, the military division of the CFPB protects men
and women in the uniform of the United States. We were able to pass an
interest cap of 36 percent for Active-Duty personnel, and that is going
to be ignored because there is no one to enforce it.
And we are going to see, as we have in the past, our soldiers,
sailors, airmen, guardsmen exploited--systematically exploited--by all
those little automobile shops and payday lenders and everything else
that surrounds every military base in this country.
It is a tale as old as time. My Republican colleagues showering the
rich with tax benefits and prioritizing favored industries and friends.
President Bush joined with the Republican Congress to do that; of
course, I opposed it. And by the way, when President Bush did that, we
were projected to have over the next 10 years a multitrillion-dollar
surplus. Of course, this legislation will lead us to a multitrillion-
dollar deficit, and it is interesting because when I was younger, the
Republicans all associated themselves with fiscal responsibility,
balanced budgets, surpluses. That is not the case now.
President Trump exacerbated the situation in his first term by his
grand giveaway, but this time, President Trump and my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle are depriving millions of Americans of their
healthcare coverage to pay for it. They are intent on punishing the
most vulnerable Americans in this bill simply for the crime of being
poor--in fact, in many cases, despite working very long hours and being
poor.
I came here to Congress to the Senate after serving my country in the
U.S. Army, as the Presiding Officer did with great distinction in the
U.S. Navy as a Navy SEAL. I came here to serve my constituents and
improve the lives of average Americans, and I think most of my
colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, came with the same goal.
And according to press reports, a few of my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle are starting to realize that this bill is going to do
great damage to their constituents. One Republican colleague has warned
that this bill could leave 600,000 of his constituents without
healthcare coverage and blow a $38 billion hole in his State's budget.
That would be a devastating effect.
One of the other aspects of this attack on our healthcare system is
there are some people that believe, well, Medicaid doesn't touch me. It
certainly does because when you extract that much money from the
healthcare system, what will private health insurance do? They will
raise their rates. Everyone will be paying more, and some won't be able
to afford it. They will have to go without coverage. And that is going
to be a tragedy for this country.
Now, knowing the damage this bill is going to do, one must ask why
would

[[Page S3630]]

anyone support it? But this legislation is more than just numbers. I
have heard from countless Rhode Islanders who are concerned about these
cuts during meetings, in letters, when I bump into them at the grocery
store, the pharmacy. They have been telling me about how Medicaid has
helped them and their families.
I have been meeting, for example, with Christina from Smithfield, RI,
for many years. Her daughter Lauren was born with cystic fibrosis and
has endured countless hospitalizations, procedures, medications, and
other challenges as she navigates her life with this disease.
Christina, Lauren, and their family have private insurance, but
Medicaid also helps cover the expenses not covered by private insurance
for people with serious illnesses who are not able to work.
When President Trump and congressional Republicans began proposing
these cuts to Medicaid, Christina told me:

Lauren was born with CF, a rare, genetic, progressive
disease which affects her lungs, GI, and Endocrine systems.
I had no idea we carried this gene. When Lauren was born
she spent a month in the hospital. We almost lost her. When
she was 5, she contracted a germ that put her in the hospital
for a month and almost killed her. Her lung function fell to
70 percent. At 13, I thought she was going to die. Her
hospital stays were every 3 months for 2 weeks with IV
treatments. Her lung function fell to 30 percent.
With one of the medicines for CF, she was able to finally
get her lung function back to 65 percent at 23 years old. She
still suffers every day, just trying to breathe is difficult.
If she catches the common cold, it could put her in the
hospital. She has a hard time keeping weight on and her GI is
a disaster. She spends hours in the bathroom. She developed
CF-related diabetes, which always puts her in danger.
Every day is rigorous treatments and medications, just to
stay alive. It is with the help of the NIH and the FDA that
she is still alive. Please do not make these cuts.
If Medicaid is cut, when she is 26, two years from now she
will have no way to pay for all her hospitalizations,
medications, and treatments. Few could afford to keep her
alive.
It is this simple. Without Medicaid she will die. We need
your help!

Carolina from Central Falls, RI, shared similar concerns for her
daughter.

My daughter has special needs, and we rely on Medicaid for
her needs. Not having Medicaid would create a sink hole for
us.
People with profound autism need lifetime, 24/7 care. As
you consider budget cuts, it is important to me as your
constituent that you work to ensure that this vulnerable
population has access to the critical supports that it needs
to survive. I will be looking to you for your courage and
leadership.

Indeed. And now we are looking across the aisle for courage and
leadership to reject this flawed bill.
I received an email from one constituent, Wally from Cranston, RI.
She is a 71-year-old retiree on Medicare. Her husband is 72, with
Alzheimer's disease, living in a nursing home under hospice care and
relying on Medicaid for his healthcare. She wrote to me that she was
``terrified at all the cuts to programs and services'' that she and her
husband so desperately rely on. Without Medicaid, she wonders if she or
her husband would be able to continue receiving care.
I also heard from Diane in Coventry, RI, whose daughter gets
lifesaving care through Medicare. Diane said:

Medicaid is important to me personally. Medicaid matters to
my family. My 15-year-old daughter suffered a brain bleed and
a stroke at age 5. It came out of nowhere and was very
unexpected. She has spent a lot of time in the hospital,
rehabilitation services, doctors' offices, appointments, etc.
over the past almost 10 years. Medicaid allows her to be home
and taken care of on a daily basis. Without Medicaid, she
would not be able to receive hospital level care at home. She
wouldn't have a wheelchair or any other durable medical
equipment. She wouldn't be able to get her life saving
medications or the nourishment she needs through her G tube.
Please, I urge you to save Medicaid not only for my family,
but millions of others. All of our lives depend on it.

Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may say: We are not
going to cut these people's Medicaid; we are just going after the
fraudsters, the freeloaders who aren't working.
Now, who exactly are these fraudsters and freeloaders? Is it the
elderly patient who needs expensive nursing home care? Is it the child
with a serious, chronic health condition? Should we cut off these
people's access to healthcare because they can't work, they physically
cannot work, or because the constant paperwork requirements got lost in
the shuffle?
Let's be clear. If my colleagues were serious about eliminating
fraud, they would be providing States with more resources to
investigate questionable claims and bad actors. Medicaid coverage is
not extravagant; it is a lifeline. If my colleagues were sincere in
their claims that these cuts are to protect the program ``for the
people who need it the most,'' as the majority leader has claimed, then
they would be investing the so-called savings back into Medicaid
instead of blowing it on tax cuts for the well-off. Instead, this bill
is cutting funding to States for Medicaid, and States will have no
choice but to pick and choose who will get access to care.
But don't take my word for it. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office, CBO, estimates that this bill will cause nearly 17 million
Americans to lose their health insurance--17 million people. That is
not fraud. It is just making it harder for people to get healthcare.
On top of that, even if you are one of the lucky ones who gets to
keep your Medicaid, will you still be able to get care?
Nursing homes rely on Medicaid. More than 6 in 10 nursing home
residents in Rhode Island are on Medicaid. As Medicaid funding is cut,
what will nursing homes do? I imagine some will have to close their
doors or dramatically reduce the number of beds.
So you can be one of these fairly well-to-do Rhode Islanders trying
to get mom in a nursing home and you are willing to pay, but if it is
closed or there are only 5 beds where there used to be 20, she is going
to be where, in my generation, grandparents were: in the living room in
a hospital bed being cared for--in those days, typically by your
mother.
So this approach to Medicaid is going to touch every aspect of
American life, and the same can be said about the community healthcare
centers. Medicaid makes up a huge portion of the operating budget for
community health centers, which provide primary, dental, and behavioral
care to more than 200,000 Rhode Islanders. That is roughly one in five
Rhode Islanders.

It is hard enough to find a doctor now; it will only get harder if a
community health center closes its doors and thousands of patients
don't have a doctor anymore. And where do all those patients end up
when they can't get routine care? The emergency room. That means there
will be lines out the door, and if you have a serious health event and
need to get in, you better get used to waiting a long time.
This is not how a health system is supposed to run. And in Rhode
Island, our health system is already on the brink. People are just
getting by. People are waiting in the hallways of ERs for a bed
upstairs. People are spending days on the phone trying to find a
doctor.
We should be making these things better, not worse. But, again,
Republicans' main priority seems not to be the physical or financial
health of everyday Americans; it is providing massive tax cuts to
President Trump's billionaire and millionaire friends.
There is certainly nothing wrong with being successful, and there is
nothing wrong with wealth. That is something that has been part of the
American dream since our beginning. But what it requires is
opportunity, and one of the fundamental opportunities it requires is
good health and good education. What this bill will do is destroy our
healthcare system and force the States to make dramatic cuts to the
education system. We are shutting down opportunity in America while we
enrich the wealthy elite.
The American dream, as I believe it, is about the middle class and a
government that is focused on them, not taking $1 trillion from
Medicaid so Republicans can gift to those who have already benefited
from many other gifts.
Let's put the enormity of this transfer to the wealthiest in
perspective. There are about 128 million households in America. Yet
somehow this bill gives the top one-tenth of 1 percent of households a
$250,000 tax cut--a giveaway that is over three times larger than what
the median American household makes in a year.
When confronted with this point, Republicans consistently try to hide
the ball. Middle- and working-class Americans are getting tax cuts too,
they say. Who cares if the rich get richer? Well,

[[Page S3631]]

the Senate bill raises taxes on the lowest income Americans--the same
families from whom Republicans are ripping away healthcare and other
benefits.
While we are voting on this bill without a full analysis of its
impact on households, the Congressional Budget Office found that the
House-passed version would take around $1,600 away from these lowest
income households each year after accounting for tax changes and
benefits cuts. And it is not just low-income Americans. Researchers at
Penn's Wharton School of Business have found that most Americans lose
money under the House bill in future years too.
I want to be crystal clear. We need to reform our tax system. We need
to make it fairer for working Americans, not just for the ultrawealthy.
We hear from people so often that government is broken. They are right.
Our tax system is unfair and needs reform. But giving the top one-tenth
of 1 percent of Americans an extra quarter of a million dollars every
year is not fixing the government; it is just adding to the sense of
unfairness and brokenness that so many citizens feel.
We can do a bipartisan tax bill that is both fully paid for and that
helps average Americans. In fact, we almost did that last summer when
the House passed a tax bill 357 to 70 that would have extended the
child tax credit and reinstated tax cuts for businesses without
increasing the deficit. Forty-eight bipartisan Senators voted for that
bill in this very Chamber, but it was blocked because Republican
leaders wanted to pass something like this bill before us today.
My Republican colleagues have drafted a bill that is neither paid for
nor helps most Americans. Worst of all, they have chosen to take from
the poor and the middle class and the working class to give to
billionaires.
This bill is very bad policy. It is almost un-American if you believe
that the essence of America, as expressed by one of our greatest
Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, is to give every person a fair chance in
the race of life. This bill denies that chance to millions and millions
of Americans while enhancing and filling the pockets of the wealthiest,
and I oppose it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague
Senator Reed, and he is absolutely right that this bill is almost un-
American. In fact, I would say it is un-American because it is so
destructive to the middle class, to healthcare, to education, to basic
fairness and decency in our great country, the greatest country in the
history of the world.
It would balloon the debt and the deficit by $4 trillion, and yet my
Republican colleagues have sought to disguise and hide that
reprehensible pain and damage to the American system.
It would cut Medicaid by $930 billion, which means billions in cuts
for Connecticut, hundreds of thousands of Connecticut children and
families off Medicaid, food nutrition shredded, and student loans
decimated.
These kinds of impacts on Connecticut are mirrored through the whole
country.
And the American people are beginning to get it. That is why this
bill--this so-called One Big Beautiful Bill--is so deeply unpopular--in
fact, by a 2-to-1 majority.
I want to talk not only about Connecticut but two of the States that
are represented by colleagues here. They are so-called red States. But
make no mistake, this bill is seismically catastrophic not just for
Connecticut but for the whole country and for Louisiana, where this
measure, if it is passed, will mean that my colleagues from Louisiana
are voting to kick roughly 250,000 people in their State off health
insurance. They will be voting for a bill that could close 33 rural
hospitals in their State alone and cost their State's healthcare
providers $588 million for services that newly insured patients simply
will not be able to pay back. Their State program would lose $4
billion.
That is Louisiana alone in funding.
These numbers are staggering, and they are the reason that every
major health system in Louisiana is opposing this bill. Just yesterday,
they sent a letter warning that cuts in this bill--and I am quoting the
Louisiana healthcare providers here--``would be historic in their
devastation and warrant our shared advocacy to protect our patients and
the care we provide them in hospitals and clinics.''
I could go on about Louisiana. I am going to abbreviate my remarks
and ask unanimous consent to put my full statement in the Record.
This bill also reduces SNAP benefits for 206,000 Louisianians. It
eliminates the benefits entirely for 94,000 of them.
I want to see my colleagues from Louisiana go home and face their
constituents, having cut the legs from SNAP and the Medicaid Program
and many other benefits.
And in Utah, that same tragic scenario is unfolding in a State where
337,000 children and adults depend on Medicaid. Nearly half of all
children in Utah are covered by Medicaid and 59 percent of nursing home
residents, and 60,000 people living in rural Utah communities are
covered by Medicaid.
If this bill passes, at least 180,000 Utahns will lose healthcare
coverage, and Utah's uninsured rate will increase by a staggering 67
percent. If this bill passes, 31,000 of the people in Utah could see
their benefits slashed, and 13,000 would risk losing their benefits
entirely.
I just want to say, in conclusion, these numbers for Connecticut, for
Louisiana, for Utah, for the State of Washington--and my wonderful
colleague Senator Cantwell will be talking shortly--they are not just
numbers. They are faces. They are lives. They are children who are just
beginning to be Americans, and their productivity and their
contributions back to America will be hamstrung. Their lives will be
financially handicapped, and healthwise, they will be impaired as a
result of these irresponsible and reprehensible cuts.
I couldn't be angrier about these kinds of cuts in programs, done
only so that the ultrawealthy will receive tax cuts. I am willing to
bet that a lot of those billionaires and millionaires would forego
those tax benefits if they understood the consequences. But my
Republican colleagues, who are in disarray at this moment, they can't
come together on a program because they know how abhorrent its effects
would be on their States. They ought to listen to the people of
America, not the ultrawealthy. The people are speaking in the polls.
They are speaking through their elected representatives. And they are
speaking because their conscience simply won't let them support a bill
that does such abhorrent damage to the American middle class, the
American way of life, and American values.
I am proud to stand here. I wish we weren't here going all night into
Monday morning. But I am proud to stand here with my colleagues. I just
wish my Republican colleagues were on the same side of these issues,
because they are going to go home, and they will have to face the
children and families who will be hurt so deeply by this bill.
Mr. President, I stand here today to, again, express my staunch
opposition to the proposed Republican reconciliation bill. This
legislation includes sweeping cuts that would raise costs for the
American people and make it harder to access health care and food.
Over the past few weeks, my Democratic colleagues and I have spoken
at length about the impact this bill would have on everyday Americans.
This reconciliation bill is not about savings or government efficiency.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office found just last night that it
will INCREASE the deficit by $4 trillion.
Instead, this bill funds tax cuts for billionaires by gutting life
sustaining services like SNAP and Medicaid that help everyone else. It
will cut $930 billion from Medicaid--that is $930 billion that helps
states provide health care services to their residents--and lead to
nearly 12 million people losing coverage. That's 12 million people who
won't have health insurance when their child breaks their arm on the
playground, or when they feel a lump that could be cancer.
This budget is a disaster for Connecticut.
But this budget will not just harm Connecticut. It will not just harm
those living in blue states. This budget will harm Americans in every
state across the country. That is why I am joining my Democratic
colleagues to share some of the impacts this legislation will have on
the Americans whose

[[Page S3632]]

Senators plan to vote for these cuts. If my Republican colleagues do
not want to highlight these harms, we will.
In Louisiana, nearly 2 million people are enrolled in Medicaid. This
includes 64% percent of moms giving birth, 54% percent of children, and
74% percent of seniors in nursing homes. One-fifth of Louisiana's
Medicaid population lives in a rural area where access to coverage is
already difficult.
Medicaid also supports school health professionals, like speech
pathologists, occupational therapists and school psychologists. Without
Medicaid, many of the 96,000 students with disabilities in Louisiana
schools could have essential services ripped away from them. Is
Louisiana expected to pick up the bill for these kids? Will the parents
be forced to pay? Or will these children just lose out on these
services entirely because their legislators decided that tax cuts for
the rich are more important?
Currently, the state of Louisiana receives $13 billion in federal
Medicaid funding every year. That means that my colleagues from
Louisiana are voting to kick roughly 250,000 people in Louisiana off
their health insurance. The majority of the Louisiana Congressional
Delegation is poised to vote for a bill that could close 33 rural
hospitals and cost the state's health care providers $588 million for
services that newly uninsured patients simply will not be able to pay
back. The state Medicaid program would lose $4 billion in funding.
These numbers are staggering, but they will never fully capture the
impact on Louisiana families. How many couples will now have to pay out
of pocket if they want to have a baby? How many will simply forgo
having a child altogether? How many grandparents will see their care
worsen because of cuts to nursing homes? How many kids will miss a
doctor's appointment because mom and dad can't afford to pay the bill?
These cuts aren't just numbers--they will impact lives and livelihoods
for everyone, even those who keep their coverage.
That is why every major health system in Louisiana is opposing this
bill. Just yesterday, they sent a letter warning that the cuts in this
bill, and I am quoting Louisiana health care providers here, ``would be
historic in their devastation and warrant our shared advocacy to
protect our patients and the care we provide them at our hospitals and
clinics.''
That is straight from the people providing care in Louisiana.
Historic devastation for the state.
The letter went on to say, and I quote: ``[The] economic consequences
pale in comparison to the harm that will be caused to residents across
the state, regardless of insurance status, who will no longer be able
to get the care that they need.''
The letter highlighted nearly 17,000 jobs likely to be lost in the
State and tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. It is just
senseless. It is a senseless cut to the State's budget, to the State's
health care system, and to the State's economy.
However, Republicans are not stopping there. They are also going
after SNAP benefits.
In Louisiana, one in six people live with food insecurity. The SNAP
program helps. This federal program feeds hungry people. That is it.
That is what the program does. SNAP supports 849,163 people in
Lousiana, including over 22,000 veterans, 33% of households with older
adults, and 50% of households with children. That means 377,258
children in Louisiana were fed, in part, by SNAP. This bill would
reduce SNAP for 206,000 Louisianans and eliminate the benefit entirely
for 94,000.
I want to be clear about what this means. SNAP feeds people. These
taxpayer dollars make sure children and veterans have enough food to
eat. They make sure our friends and loved ones who have fallen on hard
times don't go hungry. They make sure our neighbors can afford to share
a meal with family.
We can debate day and night about our Federal spending, but this
funding--keeping our Nation fed--should not be controversial. But this
bill will force people to go hungry. It will force kids to lose out on
school meals. It will overwhelm already stretched Louisiana food banks.
People facing hunger in Louisiana report needing an estimated $528
million more per year to meet their food needs. This bill will
exacerbate that. Simply put, the Federal cuts in this bill will force
people in Louisiana to go hungry or pay more at the grocery store.
A similar and tragic scenario would unfold in Utah where 337,000
children and adults depend on Medicaid. Nearly half of all children in
Utah are covered by Medicaid, 59% of nursing home residents in Utah are
covered by Medicaid, and 60,000 people living in rural Utah communities
are covered by Medicaid. If this bill passes at least 180,000 Utahns
will lose health coverage, and Utah's uninsured rate will increase by a
staggering 67%.
As a result of this bill, Utah's health care system will lose an
estimated $559 million per year in Federal funding, making it nearly
impossible for the State to maintain current levels of coverage,
benefits, and payments to providers.
Providers in Utah are speaking out. Kasey Shakespear, from the Rural
Health Association of Utah, said of the bill, and I am quoting him
here: ``It's going to dramatically reduce the support rural Utah is
getting from the state of Utah and take a lot of resources away from
them that are crucial to their success.''
An OB-GYN from Utah specifically spoke about the impact of the
Republican bill on pregnant women and their newborn infants. He said:
``I don't think I can count the number of times where Medicaid has made
a difference in my practice.''
He told us about the women he saw in his practice who, because of
Medicaid coverage, were able to bring home a healthy baby. Moms in Utah
who did not have to worry about accessing care or how to pay for
coverage, and whose pregnancy complications were kept to a minimum as a
result. This Utah doctor said, and I am quoting him again here: ``If
Congress slashes Medicaid funding, this kind of care disappears for
thousands of Utahns.''
Do my colleagues from Utah really support taking away support for new
moms and their children?
Utahns will also face greater food insecurity. Right now, one in
seven people in the State struggle to put food on the table and more
than 178,000 residents depend on SNAP. This include nearly 5,000
veterans, 56% of households with children, and 32% of households with
older adults.
If this bill passes, 31,000 Utahns could see their benefits slashed
and 13,000 would be at risk of losing their benefits entirely. This
could have severe consequences for the Utah Food Bank, the primary food
bank distributing food to a network of over 200 partner agencies across
the state.
These statistics are not just numbers, and these cuts are not
abstract. They represent real people, real families, and real harm. It
is our duty to protect our constituents, but it is also our duty to
protect the American people. As U.S. Senators, we were not elected by a
political party. We were elected by the constituents in our States who
entrusted us with the responsibility of representing and protecting
them at the highest level.
In publishing this reconciliation bill forward, my Republican
colleagues are prioritizing partisan loyalty.
My Republican colleagues have access to the same data that I do. They
know how devastating this bill would be and I implore them to remember
that their responsibility is to their constituents, and the people of
the country, and not to President Trump and his billionaire cronies.
I want to conclude by reading from the letter that Louisiana
healthcare organizations sent. The letter ends by saying, and I quote
the Louisiana healthcare community here: ``Protecting Medicaid is not
just about avoiding budget cuts; it is a commitment to our shared
values of community, resilience, and economic vitality.''
The letter goes on, and I quote: ``We take no pleasure in having to
speculate about the impact of these cuts. However, in light of the cuts
being proposed, we must have honest conversations together, and with
you--the communities we serve. Louisiana and our healthcare delivery
system are at a crossroads. We face the largest cut to healthcare in
our state's history. Will our leaders in Washington choose to protect
the health of our people, hospitals and economy? We are counting on
them to do so.''

[[Page S3633]]

Mr. President, all of us, in Connecticut, in Utah, and in Louisiana,
are counting on them, too. Let's hope our commitment to shared values
rises above partisan politics, and that this devastating bill can be
voted down.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to ask my colleagues to turn down
this legislation in front of us--to reject it and instead work together
on fiscal policy that would help us by growing our economy more
successfully and not devastating for our constituents.
Before I start, I want to thank the Presiding Officer for speaking up
about not selling public lands. I very much appreciate his voice in
that debate--and critical that we were able to successfully get that
out of this legislation.
I want to work across the aisle to talk about these policies so that
we can move our country forward in a competitive fashion. But I am
afraid that what we have in front of us is not the answer to what will
make America competitive, particularly at a time when we are putting
tariffs on American imported products, when we are basically getting
into a trade war, and when we are devastating what I think is the
underpinning of the economy of today, that is an Information Age
innovation economy, and here we are devastating all of our investments
in NIH and NSF and in the competitiveness that we just implemented in
the IRA and the CHIPS and Science Act that is making us the envy of
countries around the world for innovation.
We do have great capital markets, and those capital markets help us
innovate. And I think some of my colleagues think, well, we have a
promise to families here to give them a tax break, and while many of us
would support that, you are asking us also to give tax breaks to big
corporations before they can get their tax break.
And that, we don't like. We don't like it because it raises the cost
on everybody, and that cost for middle-class and lower-income people
will be devastating, particularly at a time when we continue with this
tariff policy.
This bill would make the entire healthcare system less responsive and
more expensive for everyone by dismantling Medicaid and shifting more
of the cost burden onto States and threatening the very existence of
rural hospitals.
This bill also sells spectrum out from under our national defense and
safety Agencies and forces States to choose between protecting their
citizens from dangerous AI or providing broadband service. And it just
gives away big breaks to companies like Meta--that is Facebook--or
Google, who I am sure at this point in time don't really need that
additional tax break.
Clearly, though, the most egregious and certainly most destructive
part of this reconciliation is the changes to healthcare--the fact that
17 million people will be uninsured and raise the cost on everyone.
This is from the Congressional Budget Office.
We don't need to be raising healthcare costs on our constituents. The
CBO analysis revealed that hasty, negotiated updates by Republicans
discussed behind closed doors early Saturday morning, added that $130
billion in Medicaid cuts to the bill. That is a whopping $930 billion
in total Medicaid cuts.
That is how CBO got to this number of 17 million people. The
challenge is, nobody marked up a bill in committee. Nobody even had a
hearing where somebody presented this information. No, this is all
being changed on a daily basis, and everybody is trying to catch up,
but what we are really trying to do is fight for our constituents and
make sure that we know the impacts.
The impacts of these 17 million people will be severe cuts felt in
every corner of the United States. State governments will be the first
to feel the tsunami of cuts, and unlike the Federal Government, they
must balance their budget, so they can't borrow the money to make up
for the deficit.
In our State, the State of Washington, our Governor and legislators
have to grapple with an estimated $3 billion shortfall that this will
bring to them as a result of this many people losing coverage.
Friday, I held a virtual press conference with a group of Republican
State representatives. A Republican Utah State Representative Ray Ward,
who just also happens to be a physician, warned that these cuts will
amount to $1 billion budget deficit per year in his State of Utah. That
budget shortfall forces his State government to make some very
difficult decisions. They have to decide whether to cut reimbursements
to providers, cut medical services, cut more people off the rolls, or
make drastic measures like increasing everyone's taxes.
Kevin Leonard and Steve Hobbs, one of them is the executive director
of the Association of County Commissioners of North Carolina and the
other a former Missouri representative, basically said, as county
government leaders and State leaders, they are worried that this bill
basically is an unfunded mandate on them. Commissioner Hobbs said where
they will feel it most is that services like behavioral treatment will
now have to be provided through the jails instead of a medical setting.
Our own Peninsula Behavioral Health expert, who was on the call,
basically said that in their region of our State, this could be as much
as a 25-percent to 45-percent cut in behavioral health.
So that is what happens when you cut people off of Medicaid. The
amount of money, since $1 in $5 is a Medicaid dollar, you are going to
take that much out of the system. These people do not operate on wild,
profitable margins, oftentimes barely breaking even, or in behavioral
health, oftentimes losing money.
But I guarantee you, if instead of seeing this Medicaid population in
a behavioral health setting, you think you are going to see them in the
emergency room or a jail, it is going to cost us a lot more money. It
is going to cost our State, our county, and the local region a lot more
money.
Not only will this bill diminish their Medicaid revenues, but it will
also increase the uncompensated care some are estimating to be $42
billion. Our rural hospitals, our rural healthcare challenges will be
devastating.
In Washington, over 300,000 people will lose health insurance. And
these are people who were easily treatable. Conditions that if you
treat them, chances are they will be dealt with. But now, if you don't
treat them, they are going to go to the emergency room, and they are
going to raise costs on everyone.
These families depend on this care. Last week, I spoke on the floor
about one of my constituents. Britton Winterrose talked about his
daughter Leda, a 5-year-old girl who had a rare condition where she
stops breathing in her sleep if she doesn't have oxygen. Mr. Winterrose
talked about how, even though he had a very expensive platinum plan, it
didn't cover her costs. And just by doing this Medicaid and covering
their cost, basically they have saved her life, and they have enjoyed
her, in the many years that they have given to them.
Why are we making the Winterroses sweat over whether their daughter
is going to be able to keep Medicaid, about whether the whole system in
their part of our State is going to be able to keep doing Medicaid?
Right now, people are estimating that 5.4 million people will get
pushed into medical debt because of healthcare and the cuts in this
bill, the total amount of medical debt that Americans will owe will
increase by $50 billion. So is it really worth it to take $880
billion--or whatever it is now--$930 billion out of Medicaid, so that
you are actually increasing the personal debt of people, making
counties basically have unsustainable budgets, or having State
legislatures come back in to cover our costs? As one of these
commissioners said, this is nothing more than cost shifting to the
States. It is irresponsible.
According to the Center for American Progress, a 60-year-old couple,
who will be in the Affordable Care market today, making $85,000 a year,
could see their annual premiums raise as much as $15,400.
Why? Because when you have uncompensated care and you basically kick
people out of Medicaid and off of the Affordable Care Act, what you are
going to do is raise premiums on all of us.
A low-income Medicare recipient also qualifying for Medicaid could
see their costs go up as much as $8,340. So why

[[Page S3634]]

are we doing this? And the out-of-pocket expenses, now, that a Medicaid
person has to pay for, they could be paying as much as $1,650. You want
to do that to give a tax break to Google and Facebook? That is why you
are doing this? The tax break that you want to give them--
multinationals.
And I could just say for a minute about this, when the 2017 tax bill
came along and everybody said, the corporate rate is too high. We need
to have our companies be competitive around the world. I would have
considered lowering that rate to something. In fact, my colleague
Senator Kaine from Virginia proposed something. But we didn't accept
that. Instead, they lowered it to a very low rate, and then said, this
year, we will smidge it back up. That means they will increase it back
up a little bit this year. That was their plan.
But somehow, these multinational corporations have got to my
colleagues on this side of the aisle and basically said, ``Give us the
same rate that we had in 2017.'' Now, the reason I didn't support that
in 2017 is because it was kind of ludicrous. You were saying to
companies like Microsoft, ``We'll give you a tax break,'' I don't think
they really needed that big of a tax break, and ``But by the way, we're
going to raise taxes on the people who work at Microsoft. We are going
to raise, because of the SALT deduction, we're going to raise your
taxes.''
So, literally, hundreds of thousands of people in my State paid
higher taxes to do what? Give Microsoft a tax break, which they gave in
dividends. Now, did that help our economy? Did that help really grow
our economy? I am pretty sure the innovation at Microsoft helped grow
our economy. I am pretty sure the people who hustled on AI helped grow
our economy. I am sure the investments that we made at Agencies across
our Federal Government helped us meet the challenges that we are facing
in innovation and competition from China, not that dividend. But now we
are doubling up again. And how much is that multinational tax break?
Over $200 billion.
So literally, you could take half of that money, and you could give
it to Medicaid instead and not cut Medicaid. Now, let's see, tax breaks
to Meta and Google or paying for Medicaid? Tax breaks for Facebook and
Meta--the same company now changing their name--and Google--or making
sure there's enough revenue to pay for Medicaid?
This is ludicrous: the notion that we are continuing to make big
corporations the priority when they knew this tax extension was not
coming. And I am pretty sure if you look at the numbers that you see
from Facebook--Meta--and Google, you will see they don't really need a
tax break. They are doing pretty well right now.
So the budget reconciliation bill really threatens our progress on
healthcare. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. It is not enough
to just say that this healthcare issue that we are really winning the
day, when you look at what happened to us in healthcare, when our whole
goal of doing the Affordable Care Act was to basically get more people
covered under insurance. Why? Because we wanted to lower all the costs
on healthcare overall. We wanted healthcare costs to go down, and we
wanted the cost of premiums and the cost to individuals to go down and
to be more like the rate of inflation: 3 percent to 4 percent. That has
been our goal forever--forever.

And so, prior to the Affordable Care Act, rates on an annual basis--
think about this--on an annual basis, your healthcare premiums, your
healthcare costs, were generally rising about 5.4 percent a year. OK.
Who could keep up with that? Who could keep up with every year your
healthcare costs continuing to rise?
And so we did the Affordable Care Act--and guess what? We did get
that into the rate of inflation. I think there is more we could have
done. Lots of things happened in between, but we literally got it down
to 3.7 percent, and we did that by covering more people.
The audacity of my colleagues over here to now claim that Medicaid
expenses got too expensive when, in reality, we made this choice to
drive down these premium costs, so they were only rising close to
inflation, and that was our goal, and we succeeded.
So what are we doing now? Well, under the GOP plan, Wakely Healthcare
Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, these are
numbers that come from them, the GOP plan will now go back to raising
your premiums and your healthcare costs between 7 percent and 11
percent a year--a year.
Right? So we are going to go blowing way past the 5.4 percent; we are
going to go back here. And why? Because you are going to cut off
millions of people from healthcare. You are going to increase the cost
of uncompensated care. You are going to make people wait to go to
emergency rooms, and then they are going to be sicker, and that is
going to cost--I don't know how much it costs, but it is definitely a
multiple of five or more.
I don't know if it is--what do you think it is, Kevin, an emergency
room? Ten. OK, 10. He says 10. It is 10 times more expensive to deal
with somebody at an emergency room than to just get health insurance
and get covered.
OK. So now we want to know, why are we raising the cost on
everybody's health insurance, including these plans because this side
of the aisle basically wants to cut a bunch of people out of a system
that lowered the cost of healthcare plans overall and kept it more in
the rate of inflation? Why? Why would you want to do this?
So it makes no sense, and I hope our colleagues will think long and
hard about that. I also think that you could still take the Google,
Meta tax break for multinationals and pay for $100 billion and cover
the Medicaid.
You could take another $100 billion from that big tax break, and you
could pay for some of the energy tax credits that were so essential to
combating the Chinese in what they are doing on the clean energy front.
The Chinese firms are doing everything they can to invest and undercut
the United States in EV and battery technology. The U.S. is responding
aggressively to that. That is why we did the Inflation Reduction Act.
In fact, because of the Inflation Reduction Act, we basically enacted
more than 2,000 new clean energy industrial manufacturing facilities,
more than 980,000 private sector jobs, and more than 3.4 million
Americans claimed clean energy tax credits that improve their
efficiencies. In fact, the Joint Economic Committee estimated that the
typical household could save between $460 and $1,000 in annual energy
costs thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.
But what do we have now? We have President Trump and inflation. We
have inflation because of multiple issues, consumers struggling to keep
up amid higher prices, mounting debt and fiscal uncertainty. That is
what we have.
And so we are reversing the very tax credits that help lower the cost
and were going to help us be competitive against China and help us
succeed as a nation. And the one thing that I always think the United
States is really great at, and that is innovation. I don't know if it
just started with Ben Franklin or many other people along the way, but
you give Americans the task, and they will do the job. If you give them
the education, if you give them the R&D with a university partner, they
will get the job done.
And so now, don't take my word for it. Take Mr. Musk's word for it:
``The latest Senate draft bill [will destroy] millions of jobs in
America and causes immense strategic harm to our country. Utterly
insane, destructive. It gives handouts to the industries of the past
while severely damaging the industries of the future.''
Yeah, he said it best.
But back to that chart. We were doing the energy because we wanted to
diversify, but we also wanted to lower costs, and we wanted to be
competitive. Right here, it says the vehicle, vehicle, vehicle, OK?
Natural gas, propane. OK. That is why we were diversifying--because all
those things are going up.
So this bill is not going to help electricity. You are getting rid of
the electricity tax credit. So again, instead of helping Meta and
helping Google, you could be helping to lower the inflationary cost by
making the investments in these tax credits.
But, Mr. President, there is more in this bill that I don't like. My
colleague from Texas is proposing an AI moratorium. He literally wants
to stop States

[[Page S3635]]

from regulating the rollout of autonomous vehicles like Texas Governor
Greg Abbott, who signed a law last week to regulate how autonomous
vehicles are licensed and deployed in Texas. And how do proponents of
this moratorium propose to get started? By holding broadband money
hostage unless you implement an AI moratorium.
Well, I know what the Heritage Foundation said. The Heritage
Foundation said that the Federal AI power grab could end State
protection for kids and workers. Again, you are giving States a big fat
bill, and now, you are trying to override laws that have been on the
books for a long time, protecting consumers from fraud, from abuse, and
they are there to protect kids, and now, you want to get rid of them.
So it is no surprise that stakeholders on the right and left opposed
this in the bill--they include 17 Republican Governors and 40 attorneys
general from both Democrats and Republicans, and other organizations
ranging from the Heritage Foundation to the Center for American
Progress.
So anytime you can get the Center for American Progress and the
Heritage Foundation on the same side of an issue, chances are you
should be listening to what they have to say.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
this letter from the National Association of Attorneys General.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be
printed in the Record, as follows:

May 16, 2025.
Dear Speaker Johnson, Majority Leader Thune, Minority
Leader Jeffries, and Minority Leader Schumer: We, the
undersigned attorneys general (the ``State AGs''), write to
voice our opposition to the amendment added by the U.S. House
Energy and Commerce Committee to the budget reconciliation
bill that imposes a 10-year prohibition on states from
enforcing any state law or regulation addressing artificial
intelligence (``AI'') and automated decision-making systems.
The impact of such a broad moratorium would be sweeping and
wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent
known harms associated with AI. This bill will affect
hundreds of existing and pending state laws passed and
considered by both Republican and Democratic state
legislatures. Some existing laws have been on the books for
many years.
The promise of AI raises exciting and important
possibilities. But, like any emerging technology, there are
risks to adoption without responsible, appropriate, and
thoughtful oversight. In the absence of federal action to
install this oversight, over the years, states have
considered and passed legislation to address a wide range of
harms associated with AI and automated decision-making. These
include laws designed to protect against AI-generated
explicit material, prohibit deep-fakes designed to mislead
voters and consumers, protect renters when algorithms are
used to set rent, prevent spam phone calls and texts, require
basic disclosures when consumers are interacting with
specific kinds of AI, and ensure identity protection for
endorsements and other AI-generated content. Perhaps most
notably, of the twenty states that have enacted comprehensive
data privacy legislation, the overwhelming majority included
provisions that give consumers the right to opt out of
specific kinds of consequential, automated decision-making
and require risk assessments before a business can use high-
risk automated profiling.
As evidenced by this brief overview, states are enforcing
and considering not just laws that seek to regulate AI or
automated decision-making more generally, but also carefully
tailored laws targeting specific harms related to the use of
AI. These laws and their regulations have been developed over
years through careful consideration and extensive stakeholder
input from consumers, industry, and advocates. And, in the
years ahead, additional matters--many unforeseeable today
given the rapidly evolving nature of this technology--are
likely to arise.
A bipartisan coalition of State Attorneys General
previously recommended that an appropriate federal framework
for AI governance should focus on ``high risk'' AI systems
and emphasize ``robust transparency, reliable testing and
assessment requirements, and after-the-fact enforcement.'' In
that letter, the coalition stated that State Attorneys
General should:

. . . have concurrent enforcement authority in any Federal
regulatory regime governing AI. Significantly, State AG
authority can enable more effective enforcement to redress
possible harms. Consumers already turn to state Attorneys
General offices to raise concerns and complaints, positioning
our offices as trusted intermediaries that can elevate
concerns and take action on smaller cases.

Rather than follow the recommendation from the bipartisan
coalition of State Attorneys General, the amendment added to
the reconciliation bill abdicates federal leadership and
mandates that all states abandon their leadership in this
area as well. This bill does not propose any regulatory
scheme to replace or supplement the laws enacted or currently
under consideration by the states, leaving Americans entirely
unprotected from the potential harms of AI. Moreover, this
bill purports to wipe away any state-level frameworks already
in place.
Imposing a broad moratorium on all state action while
Congress fails to act in this area is irresponsible and
deprives consumers of reasonable protections. State AGs have
stepped in to protect their citizens from a myriad of privacy
and social media harms after witnessing, over a period of
years. the fallout caused by tech companies' implementation
of new technology coupled with a woefully inadequate federal
response. In the face of Congressional inaction on the
emergence of real-world harms raised by the use of AI, states
are likely to be the forum for addressing such issues. This
bill would directly harm consumers, deprive them of rights
currently held in many states, and prevent State AGs from
fulfilling their mandate to protect consumers.
To the extent Congress is truly willing and able to wrestle
with the opportunities and challenges raised by the emergence
of AI, we stand ready to work with you and welcome federal
partnership along the lines recommended earlier. And we
acknowledge the uniquely federal and critical national
security issues at play and wholeheartedly agree that our
nation must be the AI superpower. This moratorium is the
opposite approach, however, neither respectful to states nor
responsible public policy. As such, we respectfully request
that Congress reject the AI moratorium language added to the
budget reconciliation bill.
Sincerely,
Phil Weiser, Colorado Attorney General; Jonathan
Skrmetti, Tennessee Attorney General; Gwen Tauiliili-
Langkilde, American Samoa Attorney General; Tim
Griffin, Arkansas Attorney General; William Tong,
Connecticut Attorney General; Brian Schwalb, District
of Columbia Attorney General; John M. Formella, New
Hampshire Attorney General; Charity Clark, Vermont
Attorney General; Kris Mayes, Arizona Attorney General;
Rob Bonta, California Attorney General.
Kathleen Jennings, Delaware Attorney General; Anne E.
Lopez, Hawaii Attorney General; Kwame Raoul, Illinois
Attorney General; Kris Kobach, Kansas Attorney General;
Aaron M. Frey, Maine Attorney General; Andrea Joy
Campbell, Massachusetts Attorney General; Keith
Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General; Todd Rokita,
Indiana Attorney General; Liz Murrill, Louisiana
Attorney General; Anthony G. Brown, Maryland Attorney
General.
Dana Nessel, Michigan Attorney General; Lynn Fitch,
Mississippi Attorney General; Aaron D. Ford, Nevada
Attorney General; Raul Torrez, New Mexico Attorney
General; Jeff Jackson, North Carolina Attorney General;
Dave Yost, Ohio Attorney General; Dan Rayfield, Oregon
Attorney General; Peter F. Neronha, Rhode Island
Attorney General; Matthew J. Platkin, New Jersey
Attorney General; Letitia James, New York Attorney
General.
Drew H. Wrigley, North Dakota Attorney General; Gentner
Drummond, Oklahoma Attorney General; Dave Sunday,
Pennsylvania Attorney General; Alan Wilson, South
Carolina Attorney General; Marty Jackley, South Dakota
Attorney General; Derek Brown, Utah Attorney General;
Nick Brown, Washington Attorney General; Gordon C.
Rhea, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General; Jason S.
Miyares, Virginia Attorney General; Joshua L. Kaul,
Wisconsin Attorney General.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, this bill would affect hundreds--I am
quoting now from this letter: ``This bill will affect hundreds of
existing and pending state laws passed and considered by both
Republican and Democratic state legislatures. Some existing laws have
been on the books for many years.''
So these are attorneys general from a variety of States who basically
know the laws on their books, and they are basically saying, Don't do
this to us. Don't ever override our laws.
Mr. President, I would also like to ask unanimous consent to have
printed in the Record a letter from 17 Republican Governors also
against this provision.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
June 27, 2025.
Hon. John Thune,
Majority Leader, Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Mike Johnson,
Speaker, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson: President Trump's
One, Big, Beautiful Bill is a win for the American people,
cutting taxes, moving welfare recipients off the path to
dependency and onto the path to prosperity, growing the
economy, and helping secure the border.
While the legislation overall is very strong, there is one
small portion of it that threatens to undo all the work
states have

[[Page S3636]]

done to protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial
intelligence. As Republican Governors, we are writing to
encourage congressional leadership to strip this provision
from the bill before it goes to President Trump's desk for
his signature.
In just the past year, states have led on smart regulations
of the AI industry that simultaneously protect consumers
while also encouraging this ever-developing and critical
sector. In Arkansas, for example, the Legislature created
basic copyright guidelines for generative AI, protected
Arkansans from the nonconsensual use of their likeness, and
prohibited the creation of sexually explicit AI images of
real people--especially children. Similarly, Utah law
requires disclosure if someone is interacting with AI and
creates other consumer protections. Other states have made or
are in the process of creating similar reforms--commonsense
changes that every state, and Congress, should get behind.
As it's currently drafted, though, this provision added by
Congress would prohibit these commonsense protections from
going into effect for ten years, instead waiting on some as-
yet-unwritten regulations to come from Congress.
AI is already deeply entrenched in American industry and
society; people will be at risk until basic rules ensuring
safety and fairness can go into effect. Over the next decade,
this novel technology will be used throughout our society,
for harm and good. It will significantly alter our
industries, jobs, and ways of life, and rebuild how we as a
people function in profound and fundamental ways. That
Congress is burying a provision that will strip the right of
any state to regulate this technology in any way--without a
thoughtful public debate--is the antithesis of what our
Founders envisioned.
We fully recognize that AI dominance is the next front in
industrial competition between the United States and
adversaries like Communist China. States have led on anti-
Communist Chinese action, banning Communist Chinese-
affiliated companies from owning farmland and property around
critical infrastructure and military bases. But America
should not sacrifice the health, safety, and prosperity of
its people in this fight. We must curb AI's worst excesses
while also encouraging its growth, which is exactly what
states have done through the creation of their own regulatory
frameworks.
As Republican Governors, we support the One, Big, Beautiful
Bill and President Trump's vision of American AI dominance,
but we cannot support a provision that takes away states'
powers to protect our citizens. Let states function as the
laboratories of democracy they were intended to be and allow
state leaders to protect our people.
Sincerely,
Governor Kay Ivey, State of Alabama; Governor Brian Kemp,
State of Georgia; Governor Jeff Landry, State of
Louisiana; Governor Jim Pillen, State of Nebraska;
Governor Mike Dunleavy, State of Alaska; Governor Brad
Little, State of Idaho; Governor Mike Kehoe, State of
Missouri; Governor Kelly Armstrong, State of North
Dakota.
Governor Sarah Sanders, State of Arkansas; Governor Kim
Reynolds, State of Iowa; Governor Greg Gianforte, State
of Montana; Governor Kevin Stitt, State of Oklahoma;
Governor Henry Dargan McMaster, State of South
Carolina; Governor Spencer Cox, State of Utah; Governor
Larry Rhoden, State of South Dakota; Governor Mark
Gordon, State of Wyoming; Governor Bill Lee, State of
Tennessee.

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, their letter I would like to read from
is really about this point I was trying to make about fighting China. I
mean, I thought we were here to be competitive against them, to
basically beat them in a race on innovation, just like we did with
CHIPS and Science to try to move for the future.
But basically their letter says:

We fully recognize that AI is dominant in the next
industrial competition between the United States and
adversaries like Communist China. States have led anti-
communist China action banning Chinese-affiliated companies
from owning farmland and property critical for infrastructure
and military bases. But America should not sacrifice the
health and safety and prosperity of its people in this fight.
We must curb AI's worst excesses while also encouraging
growth, which is exactly what states have done through their
creation of their own regulatory framework.

So they are basically saying the States are on the frontlines of
helping to protect on AI.
Now, Mr. President, I have no idea why the President of the United
States has not protected the American people or the American military
from the Chinese scams that are happening on TikTok. We would never let
China own ABC News and put out Chinese Communist propaganda on ABC
News, but we let them do that on TikTok.
This body and our colleagues said, No, stop that, and stop the
Chinese. And yet we still haven't stopped the Chinese. So now, here we
are in this bill cutting out the States' abilities to fight Chinese AI
companies like DeepSeek or Alibaba--and they have no interest in
stopping the scammers from using their AI products to harm Americans.
They have none.
And if you think we are going to pass something here, I am always
ready to sign up to get legislation done, but that isn't going to
happen anytime soon. And so now you are telling these Governors, these
attorneys general, yep, I am not even going to let you fight China
because I am going to take that tool away from you. So clearly, I don't
support this part of the legislation, and I appreciate my colleague
from Tennessee and her attorney general working on this very important
issue.
And finally, I come to the issue of spectrum. This is a very ill-
conceived plan to auction off our precious spectrum. Such an auction
will fundamentally compromise our defense capabilities, while
endangering aviation and important Federal capabilities like weather
forecasting and scientific research. This bill would require an auction
of 800 megahertz of spectrum critical to our military and civilian
infrastructure. It would compromise military radio frequencies and
weather and other spectrum issues, most importantly, drone operations.
And I know the Presiding Officer knows how much drones are now at the
epicenter and forefront of warfare and is reshaping the battlefields
across the globe. So why would we do this?
Well, my colleague Senator Cruz is pushing for something that experts
say would risk military operations. Last Congress, we got the
Department of Defense and the Department of Commerce to agree that we
should testbed the next generation of technology because we don't like
interference.
Now, I am sure most Americans sitting at home are thinking, What is
she talking about? Well, if you drive in a car and you have a radio
station and, all of a sudden, the radio station doesn't get its signal
or has some interference, you know that there is an issue. The tower--
not big enough, not strong enough--this is the same.
This radio spectrum has been used by Department of Defense for secure
purposes, very important secure purposes. Mr. President, think of the
Chinese balloon and the fact that we want to detect when a Chinese
balloon is flying through our airspace. We want to be able to stop
people from spying on the United States of America. And yet, instead of
basically saying we are going to look at this military spectrum and
make sure that it continues to be secure, my colleague is suggesting to
all of us that we sell that and basically allow, I believe, for what is
going to be a good amount of interference without solving this problem
first.
Why does that bother me? Because I think we live in a world where you
are going to see more and more spectrum, more and more warfare based on
satellite and communication, and the landscape is changing. So I
certainly don't want our military preparedness to be affected.
Air Force leaders warned that spectrum bands are crucial to this
radar operations, and I am not going to go into more about why, but I
am just saying, just like you can't have four radio stations basically
interfering with each other, my colleagues want to allow the major
telcos, mostly AT&T and Verizon, who are so hungry to sell more,
whatever it is, $79.99 plans or $59.99 plans, they literally are going
to give away national security just so they can sell more telephone
plans.
In fact, I would ask them, what have you done to clean up the last
disaster that you had when the Chinese hacked you on Salt Typhoon? Now,
they didn't successfully hack the telecom company in my State because
they were smart enough to do all the preparatory work not to be hacked.
But these guys didn't do the work, and now, they are up here pushing
our colleagues to say, give us more, give us more, give us more,
without doing the homework required to figure out how to make sure our
military is protected.
But what is even more infuriating is they want the same spectrum from
our airlines as well. They want to cause confusion between the spectrum
of aviation and in this telecommunication. Last time the Trump
administration did this, there was a major, major debate, and the White
House and the Biden administration had to come in and fix it.
It is all related to the altimeter on a plane. Again, the Presiding
Officer

[[Page S3637]]

knows this well. An altimeter helps tell the plane what altitude they
are at and what to do. But if you have interference with that
altimeter, as we just saw in this helicopter accident--we are pretty
sure now that this accident between an American regional jet and an
Army helicopter, there were some altimeter issues, and that caused a
discrepancy and a crash. So I am not for any interference with an
aviation altimeter. I am not for it.
But instead of figuring this out, working together--both commercial
and defense--we are jamming into a bill the overriding of the defense
interests and saying, just give it to these two commercial bidders,
maybe more, who then will basically just feel empowered to sell more of
these telco plans.
Mr. President, our competitiveness is too important. Our
effectiveness is too important. Collaboration and working together to
solve these problems is how the United States is going to succeed.
Basically trying to pit each other against each other in these kind of
technology issues is not going to help us win.
I have outlined many issues here, and I have outlined how you could
fund Medicaid without basically doing what we are doing here. There is
no reason, according to the Penn Wharton budget model and analysis,
families in the first 40 percent of earners are, on average, projected
to experience losses in aftertax income and benefit transfers.
In other words, yes, extending the 2017 tax cuts does help some
middle class families, and we would support that, but all the hits in
other areas like health insurance mean they will actually lose money
overall. The lowest 20 percent of income brackets are hit even harder.
So in this massive bill, it is those who can least afford it who are
going to be hit the hardest.
We don't need the Trump inflation. We need to protect healthcare. We
need to make progress in America's competitiveness. But this is not the
answer, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, President Trump's so-called Big Beautiful
Bill, now on the floor of the Senate, is the most dangerous piece of
legislation in the modern history of our country. It is a gift to the
billionaire class, while causing massive pain to low-income and
working-class Americans. Actually, though, I am wrong. This is not a
gift to the billionaire class. They paid for it.
This bill is an absolute reflection of a corrupt campaign finance
system which allows billionaires to buy elections. And when
billionaires spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars trying
to elect a President or a Senator or a Member of Congress, they are not
making that investment just for the fun of it; they want something in
return. And this legislation--big time--is what they are getting in
return.
So what is in this bill that they invested in? Well, if you are in
the top 1 percent, you and the class you represent will receive a $975
billion tax break--$975 billion tax break, at a time when the richest
people in this country have never, ever had it so good.
Further--this is really quite unbelievable--if you are among the
wealthiest two-tenths of 1 percent--I am not talking about 1 percent; I
am talking about the top two-tenths of 1 percent--you will be able to
pay zero taxes on your $30 million inheritance.
So all of you folks out there who are waiting to inherit at least $30
million, today is a good day for you. Collectively, you will receive
approximately $211 billion in tax breaks for the top two-tenths of 1
percent. Congratulations, you hit the jackpot.
If you are a large corporation and you want to throw workers out on
the street and replace them with artificial intelligence, or maybe you
want to shift your profits to the Cayman Islands or other tax havens,
you are going to get a $918 billion tax break. Congratulations to the
CEOs of large, profitable corporations.
While the rich and large corporations make out like bandits in this
bill, what does it do for low-income and working families? Well, let me
say a few words on that.
If you are concerned about healthcare, which I suspect that everybody
in the world is, this bill throws over 16 million people off the health
insurance they have--according to the Congressional Budget Office--by
cutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by over $1.1 trillion. In
other words, the top 1 percent are getting a $975 billion tax break,
and that is coming directly by throwing 16 million people off of the
health insurance they have.
This bill, for the first time, forces millions of Medicaid
recipients, who make as little as $16,000 a year, to pay a $35
copayment every time they visit a doctor's office.
So what is the impact of all of that? You throw 16 million off
healthcare, you force people who don't have any money to pay a $35
copayment, so what is the impact of it? This is not my view. This is
what the Yale School of Public Health and University of Pennsylvania
determined based on a study that they did. This is the result--and it
is almost so horrific, so grotesque that it is difficult to speak
about, but they estimate that if this bill goes through with all of
these cuts in healthcare, if 16 million people are thrown off the
insurance they have, over 50,000 Americans will die unnecessarily every
year--50,000 Americans will die unnecessarily in order to give tax
breaks to billionaires who don't need them. In other words, this bill
is literally a death sentence for low-income and working-class people.
Further, if this legislation is enacted, rural hospitals all over the
country--and I come from one of the most rural States in America. Rural
hospitals are already struggling. But when you make massive cuts to
Medicaid, many of them are going to shut down or not be able to provide
the level of services they do today. In other words, this bill would be
a disaster for rural America.
It would also make massive cuts to community health centers and
nursing homes, which are very heavily dependent upon Medicaid funding.
The bottom line is that this legislation is the most significant
attack on the healthcare needs of the American people in our country's
history.
We already have, as everybody knows, a healthcare system which is
broken, which is dysfunctional. And instead of addressing it, instead
of doing what every other major country I know does--guarantee
healthcare to all people--we are throwing 16 million people off the
health insurance that they have.
But it is not just healthcare. The future of America rests with our
children, and yet in a nation which now has the highest rate of
childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, this bill wipes
out nutrition assistance for millions of hungry kids in America.
We are literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry kids to give
tax breaks to Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg and the other
multibillionaires.
If we understand that if we are going to compete effectively in the
global economy we need to have the best education system in the world,
this bill makes $350 billion in cuts in education, with the result that
working-class kids will find it much harder to get the higher education
they need to succeed in life.
If you are concerned about the existential threat of climate change--
and we are seeing heat waves right now all over the world--this bill
decimates investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy like
wind and solar and moves us in exactly the wrong direction with regard
to energy.
If you are concerned about our role in never-ending wars, this bill
makes a bad situation even worse by handing out another $150 billion to
the Pentagon, a 15-percent increase in an already bloated Pentagon
budget. We don't have enough money to feed hungry children. We don't
have enough money to make sure that people continue to have the
healthcare that they need. We don't have enough money to make sure the
kids can get a decent education. But somehow the military-industrial
complex is going to get another $150 billion, a 15-percent increase.
In my view, nobody in the Senate or the House should vote for this
legislation, and I applaud all of the Democrats for voting against it.
And I want to congratulate two Republicans, Senator Paul and Senator
Tillis, for voting against it--for different reasons, by

[[Page S3638]]

the way, than I have. But I do find it interesting, and it does tell us
where we are as a nation today that when one of those Senators, Senator
Tillis, voted against it because he thought it was not a good bill for
the people of his home State, North Carolina, suddenly the President of
the United States went after him in a very, very vicious way. And,
today, he announced that he will not be seeking reelection.
So it appears now that the Republican Party has really become a party
of the cult of the individual. The only thing you have to do now, as a
Republican, is say: I agree with President Trump. I love President
Trump. President Trump is right all of the time.
Hey, that is all you have to do now to be a good Republican.
There was a day when Republicans and Democrats understood that they
were elected by their constituents. Yes, you want to work with the
President of your own party; nothing to do about that. But there was an
understanding that you were also elected to represent your constituents
and not simply pay homage and bow down to every wish and whim of the
President.
During the vote-arama, I will be offering several amendments, which I
hope will win support. No. 1, at a time when 22 percent of our Nation's
seniors are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year, my first
amendment would fundamentally improve their lives in two significant
ways. No. 1, it would cut the price of prescription drugs under
Medicare in half by making sure that our Nation's seniors do not pay
any more than Europeans or Canadians pay for the same exact drugs; and,
No. 2, with those savings, we are going to expand Medicare to cover
dental, vision, and hearing. In other words, instead of throwing people
off of healthcare, we are going to expand Medicare to provide a number
of services that seniors desperately need and want.
Secondly, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, my
second amendment would eliminate the $211 billion estate tax for the
top two-tenths of 1 percent that is included in this bill. The top 2
percent, as I mentioned, get a $211 billion tax break. That is insane.
We are going to get rid of that.
And lastly, at a time when we spend more on the military than the
next nine nations combined, at a time when the Pentagon cannot account
for trillions of dollars in assets, we are going to end the provision
that allows the Pentagon to receive another $150 billion.
The bottom line is this country faces many crises: the high rate of
childhood poverty, kids going hungry, the education system in deep
trouble, the healthcare system completely broken. And in virtually
every single area, this bill takes us in precisely the wrong direction.
When the wealthiest people in this country have never ever had it so
good, it is totally insane to be offering them a trillion dollars in
tax breaks so that we can cut healthcare, education, and nutrition.
This bill is not what the American people want, and I hope very much
we can defeat it.
Thank you very much, Mr. President.
(Disturbance in the Visitors' Galleries.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. McCORMICK). The Sergeant at Arms will
restore order in the Gallery.
The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for coming to the
floor all day today. I thank them for speaking so fiercely and so
clearly about what is at stake for the country. And the American people
deserve to see this debate. That is why we, last night, forced a
reading of the bill.
Republicans don't want people to know what is in the bill. They want
to hide it. They know it is not popular. We all know it is not popular.
We all know it is totally against what people want. But a small cabal
of very wealthy people and hard MAGA people run that show, to the
detriment of the party itself and, of course, the American people.
So we forced a reading of the bill last night and allowed people to
catch up because the bill was just put on the floor right before the
reading started--the amended bill.
So we are here today to continue to shine a light on how bad this
bill is, and this debate will continue. Soon, we will turn to vote-
arama and bring amendment after amendment after amendment to the floor
so Republicans can defend their billionaire tax cuts, so they can try
to explain their massive cuts to Medicaid to people back home--why kids
who need healthcare shouldn't get it so there can be tax breaks for
billionaires; why middle-class families who have someone in a nursing
home who is now going to be removed from that nursing home because it
is going to close, what they are going to do; and to try and sell to
parents and kids why they are making unprecedented cuts to SNAP.
Taking food from hungry babies for a tax cut for wealthy people. What
kind of world do these Republicans live in? It is a slanted world. It
is really a corrupt world. Kids will get $5 a day to feed themselves.
You can't buy a dozen eggs for $5.
And then they are killing millions of good-paying jobs. It is
estimated--and, by the way, the clean energy cuts are even worse.
Before this, it was estimated 850,000 jobs would be lost in America on
clean energy alone, over a million jobs in healthcare. So 2 million
jobs, approximately, lost--at least 2 million lost--because of this
bill. That could create a recession.
So this has been a long few days in the Senate, but the hardest
choices for Republicans are still in front of them because we know that
so many of our colleagues on the other side aren't happy with this
bill. Tillis is not an exception. There are many others who think the
same way he does. Well, they ought to vote their principles, their
conscience, and what is good for their constituencies.
Our side is going to give our Republican colleagues a chance to do
the right thing in front of this Chamber and in front of this Nation.
The American people deserve to know exactly--exactly--what is happening
right now in the U.S. Senate because, right now, Republicans are
concocting the ultimate rush job. They are trying to pull off a sneak
attack on this Chamber and on the American people themselves.
The bill before the Senate is utter poison. Some Republicans are
trying to rush through a bill that they released less than 2 days ago,
under the cloak of darkness, written behind closed doors, molded in
order to appease Donald Trump and the very special powerful interests.
Earlier today, my colleague from South Carolina came to the floor
with a pretty interesting looking floor chart, where he claimed that
his bill somehow reduced the debt by $500 billion. What a joke. The
Budget chair, respectfully, needs to check his math because somehow
Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Budget Committee, said that his bill
reduces the debt by $500 billion.
The Budget chair, respectfully, check your math, Chairman Graham,
because not 1 hour ago, the JCT confirmed this bill does not reduce the
debt; it explodes it. It explodes it. That is what it does.
Here is what his chart should have looked like: $4.45 trillion
deficit explosion.
According to the JCT, the Republican bill explodes the debt by $4.5
trillion, as this chart, drawn slightly better than Lindsey's, shows.
For those keeping score at home, my colleague got his math wrong by a
whopping $4 trillion. All this--all this--just so billionaires are
rewarded while millions lose their healthcare, a $4.5 trillion deficit
explosion.
And that is not just an abstract concept. What does that mean? The
average American will pay more to buy a home. The average American will
pay more to buy a car. The average American will pay more on their
credit card debt--on issue, after issue, after issue. Prices will go up
because of this deficit because of taxes for the billionaires. That is
$4.45 trillion, all so some people--wealthy people--God bless them.
They made a lot of money. OK. They don't need a tax break.
Let it be known that this bill is the death knell of the supposed
party of fiscal responsibility. We always knew that this was a sham,
and now this bill ends the charade of Republicans caring about the debt
for all time coming. When they say they have to cut healthcare on any
bill or food stamps on any bill because it reduces the deficit, we will
know it is utter hogwash

[[Page S3639]]

because of the $4.5 trillion they are doing now for tax breaks for the
wealthy.
So Republicans want to move quickly. That is why we are here on the
weekend. That is why they released a bill in the dead of the night--all
because they want to hide the truth from the American people.
You know, it is hard to believe, my colleagues; this bill is worse--
even worse--than any draft we have seen thus far. Every time the bill
comes to the floor--a new bill, a new amendment--the hard-right handful
over on the Republican side: We are not voting for it unless you hurt
kids more, you hurt people who need healthcare more, you hurt rural
hospitals more, you hurt clean energy more.
And the Republican leadership folds and does it. And the handful of
more mainstream Republicans who know how bad this is right now haven't
had the backbone to oppose those changes. We hope they find it.
So this bill is worse on healthcare, worse on SNAP. It will kill
900,000 good-paying jobs in clean energy. Folks, you don't like paying
your electricity bills, you will pay 10 percent more on your electric
bills because of this ``Big Ugly Betrayal.''
It will also kill a million healthcare jobs. You put it all together,
and there is no other way to put it; at the very last minute, Senate
Republicans made the bill more extreme to cater to the radicals in the
House and the Senate. Republicans want to hide the truth so badly, in
fact, that they are even ready to blow up the Senate rules to get it
done.
Senate Republicans are doing something that has never been done
before in this Chamber--never, by Democrats or Republicans--using fake
math and budgetary hocus-pocus to make it seem like a gargantuan tax
break for billionaires is going to cost virtually nothing. That is
insane. It is delusional.
Current policy baseline doesn't take into account that actual budget
numbers show these cuts expiring. So when you put them back up again,
the deficit increases. It is simple math--second grade math.
But our colleagues just--again, in a frenzy to help the
billionaires--are willing even to do that. Republicans know it. That is
why they are squirming. You can see sort of the faces come on the
floor. They don't look very happy because they know how bad this stuff
is.
They can use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want. Republicans can
use whatever budgetary gimmicks they want to make their math work on
paper, but you can't paper over the real consequences of adding
trillions and trillions to the debt in one fell swoop.
CBO, nonpartisan--everyone who looks at this says it is going to
increase the deficit. Not the so-called party of deficit hawks. That is
out the window.
So what is going to happen when they pass this bill, if they do--hope
they don't--our children and grandchildren are going to be faced with a
lifetime of higher borrowing costs. As I said, mortgage costs, costs to
buy a car, costs for a credit card, harder to start a business--every
one of these will get worse.
And the economic ceiling of this country will close in on itself. The
American engine that has been the driver of American innovation and
growth and optimism for so many generations will sputter and ossify
with this $4.45 trillion deficit explosion.
It is deeply irresponsible to future generations, to our children, to
our grandchildren to pass this bill. That is not just Members on this
side of the aisle saying it. Independent experts across the political
spectrum--many of them very conservative Republicans but who are, at
least, honest about what they are doing--say it too. And plenty of
Republicans in both the House and Senate say it.
It remains to be seen if their words and their actions will align.
The question has to be asked: Why is this even happening? Why is this
nightmare of a bill moving forward? Why are Republicans forcing our
country down this ruinous road when they know the fiscal harms, when
they know this is a rush job?
Well, we know by now: tax cuts to billionaires and corporate special
interests. And not just another round but, in fact, they make them
permanent.
Our children and our grandchildren are going to be saddled with these
cuts so that a handful of billionaires get a big break while working
people lose their Medicaid, while hungry kids lose access to food
funding, while clean energy jobs that support so many Republican
communities are taken away.
I say to my Republican friends: When that plant that makes batteries
or wind or solar or when a person who is employing hundreds of people
to put panels on people's roofs all fold and the people lose their
jobs, don't shrug your shoulders and say: I don't know why that
happened.
You made it happen with a nasty bill.
It just makes no sense. We need more energy, AI. Everyone says we
need more energy. And to take away the cheapest, quickest way to put
more electrons on the grid--solar--makes no sense, except we know
Donald Trump has an irrational, infantile, mania against clean energy;
so they all listen to him. It makes no sense.
This bill is sabotaging America. It is the sabotaging of America. It
is antithetical to what the country needs. It is antithetical to what
the American people needed last fall. And our Republican colleagues
don't even want to tell the American people the truth. That is why
Democrats are here on the floor today, sounding the alarm, setting the
record straight.
I also must say this: The way this bill is being passed so deeply
violates the spirit of the Senate. The majority forgets that this
Chamber is unlike any other institution in government. It is meant to
facilitate debate, careful consideration, sound judgment, honest
numbers.
We are supposed to resist the passions of the radical extreme. We are
supposed to hold the line against policies that would devastate our
country. We are supposed to resist the gravitational pull of extremists
like Donald Trump who gets these little bugaboos in his head and wrecks
America because of it. And they all go along.
Senate Republicans are turning their back on the Senate's
longstanding tradition of debate deliberation. By rushing this bill, by
upending the rule of the Chamber, by engaging in what amounts to
accounting magic to hide the cost of their bill, Republicans, simply
put, are accelerating the erosion of the Senate to the nth degree.
Senate Republicans are turning their back on what makes this
institution great. More importantly, they are turning their back on the
people--their own constituents--in their own communities, people
struggling to afford going to see a doctor. You have a child with
cancer, and you don't have healthcare? How can we put people in that
position?
Or families who have to choose between paying for groceries or paying
for prescription drug costs or families who are watching their
electricity bills going up and up; families who are paying more and
more costs--this bill--America, you don't want to pay higher costs? We
don't want you to on our side of the aisle. The Republicans are making
it happen. You will pay more and more and more.
And about the future, they are not worried about our kids'
livelihood. They are not worried that kids won't be able to find good-
paying jobs. Families are worried about the future of this country; but
the Republicans are not. And they are worried--Americans are worried
about the continued radicalization of leaders in government. And here
is the shining example.
So the bill is the wrong answer for the American people. By every
objective standard, it is deeply irresponsible. It is not only a
violation of how the Senate is supposed to work, it is a violation of
the promises that Republicans and Donald Trump--when they campaigned--
made to the American people to look after their issues, not those at
the very top.
So I implore my Republican colleagues, there is still time. Abandon
these terrible policies. We will continue to have this debate in a real
way, not jamming it through in the dark of night. My Democratic
colleagues and I will continue exposing the truth. And if Republicans
go down that road, we will continue to make sure today, tomorrow, next
week, next month, next year, that the American people know exactly what
happened here.

[[Page S3640]]

I assure my Republican colleagues--I assure them this vote will not
be forgotten. Their betrayal will not go unanswered. This bill must not
stand.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I thank our leader for setting the record
straight.
It is really awful when you hear Republicans come down here and they
just don't tell the truth about the bill that they are trying to pass.
Maybe that is why they try to pass it in the middle of the night. They
think no one will really notice.
Mr. SCHUMER. Does the Senator yield?
Ms. WARREN. I yield.
Mr. SCHUMER. All you have to do is look at their faces. They know
what they are doing. They know it is unpopular. They know, as Senator
Murkowski said, that they are all afraid. But it is time for them to
stand up, isn't it?
Ms. WARREN. Yup. Yup.
Mr. President, on Friday I met Vivian. Vivian is an 11-year-old kid
from Winston-Salem, NC. Vivian likes school. She likes her friends. She
likes reading Harry Potter. She is a lot like any other 11-year-old;
but for Vivian, going to school and being with her friends depends on
Medicaid because Medicaid covers the cost of her wheelchair, for her
therapists, and for her health aide.
Right now, Republicans are trying to rip away healthcare from kids
like Vivian. The cruelty is truly breathtaking.
I asked for one Republican Senator--just one Republican Senator--who
plans to vote for this bill to look into Vivi's eyes and tell her that
her healthcare is just not a priority for this country.
You know, Mitch McConnell said to Republican Senators that he knew
they were getting calls about Medicaid but not to worry about people
losing their care because, according to Mitch McConnell, ``they will
get over it.''
So I ask the Republican Senators to look at Vivi and Vivi's sisters
and Vivi's mom and Vivi's dad and say--if Vivi loses her Medicaid and
her wheelchair and her therapists and her health aide, tell all of them
that they will get over it, because here is the deal: Vivi won't get
over it. Her family won't get over it. The people of North Carolina
won't get over it. None of us--Massachusetts, Idaho, Louisiana--none of
us will get over it.
The cruelty here is off the charts, but the part that really burns is
the Republicans are trying to slash the healthcare that keeps kids like
Vivi alive so they can hand out more tax cuts for billionaires. It is
beyond cruel. It is obscene.
I am angry, and we should all be angry, because instead of playing at
the pool or at the park like a regular kid on summer break, Vivian had
to come here to Washington to beg Senators not to cut her healthcare.
In a country as rich as ours, that shouldn't even be a question.
Now, I actually don't think that my Republican colleagues have lost
their hearts. They have lost their spines. It seems that all they can
do now is bow down to Donald Trump and his billionaire donors. They
will bow down even if it means hurting families, community hospitals,
and nursing homes in their own States.
Trump wants the Republicans in Congress to hand out giant checks to
the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations, and the
Republican Senators are willing to do that even if it means kicking
Vivi to the curb.
Republicans know what they are doing. They know that this bill will
hurt people. They know that this bill will kill people. And though it
is hard to believe, they just look the other way. But on behalf of Vivi
and millions of other kids and mommas and seniors and families that
rely on the lifesaving care that Medicaid makes possible, my Republican
colleagues should grow a spine and stop this awful bill in its tracks.
If it wasn't bad enough that this bill is set to rip away healthcare
from 17 million Americans to pay for tax giveaways for billionaires, it
actually has a bunch of other filthy giveaways buried in it too.
Who wins if Republicans pass this ``Big Ugly Bill''? Billionaires;
Wall Street; Big Tech; Big Oil; the wealthiest Americans and the
biggest corporations.
Big Oil will get a special ``get out of paying your taxes'' card
while millions of people lose their healthcare coverage. Billions of
dollars for Big Oil, nothing for Vivi.
Meta--oh, man, Meta. There is a company that is really struggling.
Meta will win $15 billion to incentivize them to do research in 2022,
2023, and 2024.
Think about that. Unless a time machine comes with this, what Meta
does in those 3 years is already done, but under this bill, Meta gets a
$15 billion check on the day this bill passes simply for existing,
while families lose access to their healthcare.
Wall Street wins big with a provision Republicans squeezed in that
would slash funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Giant
corporations want the opportunity to cheat American families again, so
Republicans are desperately trying to take the cop off the beat.
And who loses thanks to this big, ugly bill? Americans who can't
afford healthcare. Families who need a little extra help putting food
on the table. Grandmas and grandpas in nursing homes. Little babies and
their mommas.
If Republicans pass this bill, 17 million Americans will have their
healthcare ripped away. That number has kept growing as the Republicans
keep making more and more changes to the bill. For them, it is just a
question of how many more Americans they can rip healthcare away from.
This bill would also make the biggest cut to food assistance for
families, kids, and veterans in American history.
Here is one to underscore: One out of every four nursing homes in
America would have to shut down under this bill.
You know, my Republican colleagues should just call a few seniors who
are in nursing homes in their home States and just go over the plans
for where those folks are supposed to go next. What exactly do the
Republicans have in mind for them? Maybe call the daughter of someone
who is in one of those nursing homes and explain how she has to become
a full-time caregiver once this bill passes. Maybe call just a few of
the people whose lives you plan to tear apart.
Budgets are about our values, and Republicans have made their values
clear: They are willing to throw millions of Americans under the bus so
that they can help out a handful of their billionaire buddies and giant
corporations. They should be ashamed.
Here is what Democrats believe. Democrats believe that no baby should
go hungry so that Mark Zuckerberg can buy another Hawaiian island.
Democrats believe that no person with a disability who needs a
wheelchair or a home health aide to live independently should have to
give that up so that Jeff Bezos can buy a third yacht. Democrats
believe that no grandma should be pushed out of her nursing home so
that Elon Musk can take a subsidized rocket ship ride to Mars.
It doesn't have to be this way. What if, instead of tax breaks for
billionaires, we make the rich pay their fair share? What if, instead
of slashing healthcare for our kids, we make it possible for every
American to see a doctor when they are sick without breaking the bank?
And what if, instead of giving Big Oil more giant handouts, we make
universal childcare a reality for families all across this country?
We can tax the rich. Dammit, if Jeff Bezos can afford to rent Venice
for $50 million for his wedding, he can afford to pitch in his fair
share on taxes so the next kid has a chance to make it big and the kid
after that and the kid after that.
We can make life better for working people. We can make it easier,
not harder. We can lower costs for families, not jack them up even more
like this bill does. We can put families first, not billionaires and
billionaire corporations.
Democrats believe this. Democrats are willing to fight for this. We
will vote no on this awful bill. And for kids like Vivian, for seniors
in nursing homes, for families who rely on home health aides, and for
the millions more Americans that this bill will hurt, I urge my
Republican colleagues to grow a spine and vote no.

[[Page S3641]]

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before she leaves the floor, I want to
thank my colleague, in particular for putting a human face on what this
is all about for us on this side of the aisle--that small child, the
senior you were talking about. I am going to pick up on what you said,
and I thank you for your leadership.
I am going to get into the specifics of this horrifying bill, in a
moment--all the details, the healthcare carnage, and the clean energy
bloodbath that Republicans are dragging America toward. First, though,
I want to spend just a few minutes on the state of the Senate and our
democracy.
As of a few hours ago, the rules of the Senate are whatever
Republicans feel like when the day begins. It is democracy-defying,
plain and simple.
The bill before the Senate is loaded--loaded--with fraudulent budget
math that hides trillions of dollars in handouts to corporations and
the ultrawealthy. It is a violation of the rules that used to be
followed for years for the reconciliation process. It is a violation of
the Congressional Budget Act. It is a violation of common sense.
Republicans decided that none of that matters. So they have kind of
gone nuclear to advance the bill.
Apparently, in this Chamber, if the Republican chair of the Budget
Committee says so, one plus one equals three. That is unsustainable. We
are going to be a sicker, poorer, and weaker country if this bill
becomes law, and the Republicans have used this process, going nuclear,
to pass it.
But these moves cut both ways, and there will be a lot of cleanup for
Democrats to handle down the road.
Now, in my time in public service, I have never seen a more
destructive, regressive, commonsense-defying bill debated in the
Senate. This bill is going to determine the future of healthcare in
America. Millions of Americans will lose their health insurance if
Republicans pass the bill.
My colleagues seem to be ignoring, for example, the fact that rural
hospitals are the anchor of life in much of America. This bill will
sever that anchor and set rural healthcare adrift.
Here is how flawed the Republican plan is. The danger they are
causing for rural hospitals is so great that Republicans have had to
create a rural hospital relief fund. It is a bandaid on an amputation.
I can tell you, one thing I know for sure is that only in Washington,
DC, would you create a relief fund to address a problem that you
caused. How about you just not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the
first place?
Now, I wanted to get a sense of what rural America thought of this
legislation. So last weekend, I held four townhalls in three Eastern
Oregon counties. It is as rural as it gets. Donald Trump carried these
counties overwhelmingly. One of them was Malheur County, where Donald
Trump received more than 70 percent of the vote. This is where I held
an open-to-all townhall meeting. It happens to have one of the highest
Medicaid enrollments in the country. The message I heard was very clear
and very loud: This bill will be a disaster for Malheur County on rural
health.
Now, healthcare is a top employer in America. If these cuts go
through, the healthcare workforce in rural areas of our Nation is going
to be decimated. Nurses, doctors, and support staff will lose their
jobs, and rural economies are going to suffer.
Many of the Americans that will feel the consequences of this
legislation, today, walk an economic tightrope. Many have multiple
jobs.
Millions more Americans will lose their benefits, like home care and
mental health, and services that already fall far short of what our
people expect. These are overwhelmingly kids, people with disabilities,
seniors--all to pay for more tax cuts for multinational corporations
and the ultrawealthy.
It is not just the cuts. It is also a whole lot more redtape, making
it harder for people to get care.
At the center of the Republican Medicaid changes is a bunch of
redtape thickets designed to entrap people into a never-ending maze of
AI chatbots and phone trees that make it impossible for them to get the
coverage they need.
And even if you manage to get through all that bureaucratic water
torture and sign up for Medicaid, the Republican plan says: If you lose
your job, you lose your healthcare.
Why would the Congress want to inflict that on more people?
Nobody I could find wants these cuts, no matter their political
persuasion, and I was in places that were bright red.
I am sure most of us can agree there is a real debate to be had on
how we can make healthcare more affordable and accessible, but this
bill achieves none of that.
Let me mention seniors. My colleagues have touched on the elderly.
Two in three nursing home beds in America are covered by Medicaid. If
Republicans pass this into law, conditions will deteriorate. Seniors
will be forced out of their nursing homes or forced to move in with a
family that doesn't have the necessary skills to care for their aging
parents or grandparents. Nursing homes would be forced to shut their
doors as a result of these cuts, during a time when States are in
desperate need of more nursing home options, not fewer.
The bill also repeals nursing home safety standards. That is going to
mean fewer nurses in nursing homes. You would think that would be a
concern of Republicans in the Trump administration.
But when the Finance Committee was considering the nomination of CMS
Administrator Mehmet Oz, he said:

I believe we can provide quality of care equivalent to
having a nurse in that nursing home using tools and
technologies.

Dr. Oz was apparently talking about AI, and I said: You are for
cutting nurses. What is going to happen when an 85-year-old woman has
to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and needs some help?
He had no answers. But he is still being a big booster on artificial
intelligence.
I am deeply troubled about what the Trump administration has in store
for America's seniors. That is on top of the fact that the home-based
care that most seniors prefer will be one of the first benefits States
are forced to cut because it is optional now rather than mandatory.
Hundreds of thousands of seniors are going to see a premium increase
of about $200 a month.
The bill also applies the worst forms of corporate redtape to the
Affordable Care Act: shorter enrollment periods, more verification
forms, more hoops, more bureaucracy, more redtape for Americans who
just want affordable healthcare.
And the healthcare carnage may get worse with the Republican
amendments coming up. It is my understanding that they are going to
offer an amendment that would lower the Federal Medicaid match for new
enrollees in what is known as the Medicaid expansion. That was a key
part of the Affordable Care Act, which delivered affordable healthcare
to roughly 21 million Americans last year.
If this amendment is adopted, taken together with the other awful
policies in the bill, it would amount to repealing the Affordable Care
Act and making good on the 15-year Republican crusade to dismantle that
law.
Millions more working Americans are going to lose their health
insurance, and it would break a promise to the 41 States that have
expanded Medicaid, many of them red States.
These healthcare cuts aren't just going to be felt by Americans with
Medicaid. Those who buy health insurance on their own are going to be
similarly hit. Emergency room wait times are going to skyrocket, and
premiums will spike.
Families will be one lost job or financial calamity away from being
tossed onto a safety net that has rips and tears everywhere you look.
So many are going to fall between the cracks.
I also wanted to touch on another horrendous provision on healthcare
buried in the bill: the defunding of the Planned Parenthood program.
And they are doing it in a way that is essentially a backdoor,
nationwide abortion ban.
This provision is going to strip clinics of their funding and make it
impossible for them to provide lifesaving healthcare, cancer screening,
and annual exams. All of that will disappear for the people who rely on
these clinics for basic care.

[[Page S3642]]

The healthcare cuts are getting a big focus with myself and
colleagues because of the challenge for so many communities, but there
is something else that is absolutely imperative; that is, the clean
energy bloodbath, and it certainly deserves attention.
In the middle of the night Friday into Saturday, the bill that was
already a disaster for clean energy got much, much, much worse. What
Republicans have on offer doesn't just repeal the tax credits I wrote
for wind and solar energy in the Finance Committee; now we have an
actual massacre on our hands.
This Republican plan actually taxes wind and solar--a new tax on the
cheapest and easiest ways to get new energy to the grid. At the same
time, somebody tucked into the bill a brand new tax break for coal. So
here we are, 2025, and the Senate is about to pass a bill that taxes
wind and solar while subsidizing coal. It is so backward, it leaves you
slack-jawed.
When you look at this bill, it is awfully clear that the Republican
goal is to destroy key sources of clean energy in America. It is a
death sentence for the wind and solar industries in our country, a
total abandonment of hundreds of thousands of workers who are about to
lose their jobs as a direct result of the bill.
The head of the North America's Building Trades Unions that
represents millions of construction workers issued a stunning statement
on the bill yesterday. I will read a few select lines from the
statement. He said it is ``the biggest job-killing bill in the history
of the country,'' is how he described the Republican plan; ``staggering
and unfathomable job loss;'' a threat to ``an estimated 1.75 million
construction [workers].'' This union leader said it was ``the
equivalent of terminating 1,000 Keystone XL pipelines'' and that it was
``another lifeline and competitive advantage to China in the race for
global energy dominance.'' He also said that ``critical infrastructure
projects [will be] `sacrificed at the altar of ideology.'' Those are
all direct quotes.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy investments, under
the Republican plan, will simply disappear--not government subsidies or
handouts; these are private sector investments we will not have. Even
worse, this is a guaranteed way to hike utility bills for families and
businesses of all sizes in every nook and cranny of America.
I have never seen this kind of economic self-sabotage. The demand for
energy booms right now. Even the heads of companies involved in fossil
fuels are saying to me and other Members of Congress: We need solar
quickly to get more electrons to the grid. But Republicans don't want
to listen, because this plan risks plunging us into an energy crisis.
It would be a disaster and a total surrender to China on clean energy
manufacturing.
It is clear as a sunny day that all the talk from Donald Trump and
Republicans about American energy dominance was just a fraud, nothing
but a hollow campaign slogan.
I will close with this: There is no question in my mind that the
American people went to the polls in 2024 to vote for cheaper
groceries, cheaper utilities, and cheaper gas. They didn't vote to kick
16 million people off their healthcare so Republicans can give more tax
breaks to billionaires and corporations. They didn't vote for an energy
crisis that benefits nobody except Big Oil investors.
There is a real cost-of-living crisis facing American families right
now, and this Senate ought to be focused on finding ways to lower drug
prices, for example, expand access to quality and affordable
healthcare, and bring down the cost of living. Instead, Republicans are
using every ounce of their power to jam through another round of tax
breaks for those at the very top, and they are doing it on the backs of
everybody else.
There are serious challenges ahead, and there is going to be a
serious mess to clean up, but until then, countless Americans will
needlessly suffer and die as a direct result of losing their healthcare
under this legislation.
I don't believe the American people are going to forget, and this
side of the aisle will make certain that this topic is something that
is dealt with again and again until the American people finally get a
fair shake.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. The Presiding Officer is a distinguished businessman. He
understands capital flows. He understands investment. There are a lot
of people in this Chamber and across the country who, on a
nonidealogical basis, want a consistent tax code so that businesses can
invest with certainty and predictability.
So let's look at some of the numbers here in terms of the impact of
this bill. This bill will kill 300,000 jobs in wind and solar per year.
We are going to lose out on $450 billion in capital as thousands of
projects go under. And because of that, we are going to generate about
500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade.
Now, there was a time--and I lived through it as a politician--there
was a time when people who wanted to take climate action had to argue
for that climate action because it is a planetary emergency, and there
were tradeoffs. And people on the other side said: Look, as we try to
take action to deal with this planetary crisis, we can't create
shortages. We can't increase prices. We can't impede economic progress.
All of that has flipped. This bill will create shortages. This bill
will impede economic progress. This bill will increase prices.
The 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade is pretty much
exactly the amount of energy that we are going to need to meet rising
demand. We are going to have energy shortages as a result of this
legislation.
And you don't have to love clean energy or be an environmentalist--
and I love clean energy, and I am an environmentalist. But you don't
have to care about the climate. I think you should. You don't have to
care about the climate to understand that this is a basic question of
supply and demand. Energy demand is soaring for the first time in
decades largely--not exclusively but largely--because of AI data
centers. And our best chance of meeting it in the next few years is
through wind and solar, not oil and gas. Even nuclear and geothermal
are going to take a while.

That is not just a political talking point or preference of mine. It
is just a fact that gas turbines are stuck in a yearslong backlog. It
is also a fact that 80 percent of the new capacity on the grid last
year came from solar and storage. It is growing; it is cheap; and it
works. And there are hundreds more projects that are in the pipeline
waiting to be hooked up.
So the idea that we are going to kill the only energy--the only
energy--that can be brought online in the short run the very same week
that half the country was melting in a record heat wave which left tens
of thousands of people without power is beyond absurd.
Let's talk about how this bill does all of this damage. Specifically,
it creates an impossible deadline for projects to be operational in
order to claim the clean energy tax credits.
Remember, these clean energy tax credits are Federal law. They are on
the books. So when you have a Federal statute, it is not unreasonable
as an investor to say: Look, I have got this tax credit. I am going to
get x percent back from my initial investment. And you do the pro
forma; you do the underwriting; and you figure out that the thing
pencils out.
And now what they are saying is that you have got to be operational
in 60 days. If anyone has even built a deck in their front yard or
tried to do an extension, nothing gets built in 60 days, certainly not
a clean energy project.
And it has to be placed in service. What does ``placed in service''
mean? It means not only do you have to have the thing built, you have
to have a power purchase agreement through your public service
commission or public utilities commission. You have to have a deal in
place in the next 60 days after enactment or you get nothing.
So imagine you are a company investing in a solar or battery storage
project. You have already put money down. You have secured land and a
power purchase agreement, and you are working on permits. And when you
started the project, the Tax Code said you could claim a credit to
claim the upfront costs. Now, unless you are fully operational, you are
out to luck.
On average, a project takes 4 years to go through the full process.
So even if you have already started that progress, you now have very,
very little time to get it done.

[[Page S3643]]

We are going to strand hundreds of billions of dollars in capital.
And so the impact on price is going to be crazy. The impact on jobs is
going to be crazy. But the impact on America as an investable
proposition is the most dangerous part of this.
I don't know that we have ever, through Federal law, made a big
subsidy, made a big bet on a certain industry, and then halfway through
that process said: Never mind. We didn't mean that. You are stuck.
According to the Edison Electric Institute--and, by the way, I can
guarantee you, this is the first and maybe last time I will ever, ever
quote the Edison Electric Institute--that will cost people, not
companies but people, ratepayers, $60 billion in this decade alone.
Your electric bills are about to go up.
A representative of a solar company in Hawaii put it this way:

It is really unclear in the current version of the bill
what the renewable energy industry even looks like if it were
passed today.

An owner of a solar company in Montana worried that the credits
disappearing would force him to lay off half of his workers.
He says:

Montana is deeply red, but it's also a very practical
place. And so green energy renewables became a taboo phrase
somehow.
The practical energy needs are undeniable, and so if we can
get past our disagreements about the phraseology and realize
that it's electrons, watts . . . amps. And it's all cheaper.

A representative of a wind turbine company in Colorado said:

I don't look at what we do as green or blue or red. An
electron doesn't have a color.

That is the point. Electrons don't have a color. Wanting cheap,
abundant energy is not woke. Wanting a liveable planet today and for
future generations is not radical. And wanting reliable power and to
avoid blackouts and brownouts is not a leftist project.
But even if you set all of that aside for a minute, the States that
have benefited the most from these investments are Republican States.
According to estimates, nearly three-quarters of clean energy
manufacturing facilities are located in Republican States.
It means that Republicans are going to pay more for energy. It means
Republicans will lose jobs in clean energy because of a Republican
bill. It means Republicans are going to have more blackouts in their
homes and businesses.
Gutting clean energy is not somehow owning the libs.
And at least some Republicans in the Senate and House understand
that, even if their votes have not manifested to say otherwise.
Here is a letter from 21 House Republicans earlier this year.

As our conference has long believed, an all-of-the-above
energy approach, combined with a robust advanced
manufacturing sector, will help support the United States'
position as a global energy leader.
Countless American companies are utilizing sector-wide
energy tax credits--many of which have enjoyed broad support
in Congress--to make major investments in domestic energy
production and infrastructure for traditional and renewable
sources alike.

And it goes on:
As energy demand continues to skyrocket, any modifications that
inhibit our ability to deploy new energy production risk sparking an
energy crisis--
``[R]isks sparking an energy crisis.'' Twenty-one House Republicans
are worried about an energy crisis imposed by the Republican Congress.
It goes on:

This is especially true for energy credits with direct
passthrough benefit to ratepayers, where such repeals would
increase utility bills the very next day.

``[W]ould increase utility bills the very next day.''
This is not me, progressive Senator from the State of Hawaii who has
made a career out of fighting climate change. This is 21 House
Republicans saying: We are going to create a crisis here. Maybe we
shouldn't pass this thing. A lot of this stuff benefits us.
If we are all out here talking about ``all of the above,'' why are we
cutting off our nose to spite our face? Just because someone wants a
talking point? Like, people are literally going to lose their jobs
immediately upon enactment. America is going to become a very
challenging place to make major investments in immediately upon
enactment.
The AI industry may move abroad immediately upon enactment. And
prices will go up pretty much right away, as well.

A group of 175 mayors and local leaders wrote:

For the first time, State and local governments, as well as
essential nonprofit community organizations--such as houses
of worship, hospitals, and schools--can access the same clean
energy tax credits as the private sector through elective
pay. This has led to major projects in our communities, like
solar installations for town halls, alternative fueling
infrastructure, and charging stations for local government
fleets.
After one year of direct pay implementation, over 1,200
organizations, including 500 State and local governments, are
already accessing these incentives. We are excited about
these projects and the benefits that they will bring to our
communities. However, as local leaders, we are concerned that
repealing these tax credits would create economic uncertainty
in our communities, as it would prevent us from accessing
those important benefits.

You know, I grew up to understand Republicans. Look, I didn't grow up
as a Republican, but I did understand Republicans were for avoiding
unintended consequences. Republicans were against radical change too
quickly. Republicans wanted a solid business environment that people
could rely upon.
This is literally none of that. This is ideology manifesting itself
as energy policy.
And what is going to happen is people are going to lose their jobs
and pay tons more for electricity.
The Building Trades Unions called this bill ``the biggest job-killing
bill in the history of this country.'' And they go on:

Simply put, it is the equivalent of terminating more than
1,000 Keystone XL Pipeline projects.

I have been here for a while. Keystone XL was a big deal to our
friends in labor. I had some very tough conversations with my friends
in labor about how important that project was to them and how it was in
tension with some of our climate goals. But listen to what they say:

It is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000
Keystone XL Pipeline projects.

These guys are not me or Jeff Merkley or Eddie Markey or Sheldon
Whitehouse or Martin Heinrich or Representative Ocasio-Cortez or any
climate advocate. This is the Building Trades Unions. They are saying
this is the biggest job killer, perhaps, in American history.
We actually don't have to do this. The impetus behind this bill was
essentially border spending and preventing the Trump tax cuts from
expiring. And then a bunch of stuff got added on because that is what
happens.
We were there for our own version of this--our own BBB, our own Build
Back Better--and everybody in your party piles on with something new.
Then, the thing becomes a really challenging thing to pass because
everybody has their hobbyhorse. And somebody's hobbyhorse is not just
to have an all-of-the-above energy strategy, but to go out of your way
to kill clean energy.
It doesn't matter that it is going to raise prices. It doesn't matter
that it is going to kill jobs. People at all levels in the public and
private sectors, across the political spectrum, are all saying the same
thing, which is: This is a bad bill for regular people, for the
economy, and for the planet.
One of the great things about our climate bill was that it made what
was good for the planet also good for the economy. Clean energy became
imminently profitable for businesses and widely accessible to
consumers. And we made a choice there because some in our party didn't
like the basic premise. They were attached to the idea of personal,
political, and economic sacrifice because the planet is in peril.
And I understand that instinct. I understand that instinct.
But we paved a new path, and we decided--look--there is enough
technology out there. There are abundant energy sources out there that
we can actually solve our planetary crisis and create jobs and lower
prices. And we can do it in such a way that blue States and red States,
urban, rural, suburban all benefit.
Republicans are on the verge of undoing all of that, even though it
will hurt their constituents. In doing so, they will virtually
guarantee China's dominance in clean energy, for decades to come,
because if you are China, you

[[Page S3644]]

cannot believe your luck. Your biggest competitor is willingly
forfeiting the fight over who controls the energy technologies of the
future because Donald Trump is too busy trying to get us back to the
preindustrial age.
This is the worst piece of legislation for the planet in the history
of our country, and it is not even close. Republicans are effectively
codifying Big Oil's wish list into law without exception. They are
killing clean energy. They are subsidizing coal. They are dramatically
expanding oil and gas leasing. They are purposefully jacking up energy
prices and creating shortages--and creating shortages. And for what?
Partially, it is to find enough savings to funnel tens, if not
hundreds, of thousands of dollars into the pockets of individual
billionaires.
But even kicking more than 16 million people off of healthcare
coverage, denying food to the poor, and adding almost $5 trillion to
the national debt was not enough. People voted for Donald Trump for all
sorts of reasons. But no one voted for higher energy bills. No one
voted for more frequent blackouts and brownouts and dirtier air or
water. No one, whether you are a Democrat or Republican or Independent,
wants that.
I want to be clear. This fight is far from over. This fight over this
bill is far from over. But even if this bill passes, it will set us
back. But the fight for the planet is bigger than any one bill or vote,
and that includes the big climate bill that we passed in the previous
administration. And as any movement that has successfully mobilized and
made changes knows, progress is not linear. Progress always has
setbacks and frustrations, and progress is not assured.
States like Hawaii will continue to do everything that they can to
protect our environment, and the rest of the world will move on without
us because doing nothing in the face of this worsening crisis is simply
not an option.
Make no mistake, what Congress is doing today will cost all of us in
the years and decades to come.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today--and I will confess, I
rise today a bit angry about this bill--this bill cooked up in back
rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers, with huge handouts
to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least
deserving people you could imagine.
When I first got here, this Chamber filled me with awe and
wonderment. Our leader, Harry Reid, frequently called me his happiest
Senator, such was the awe and wonderment that I felt here.
Today, I feel disgust. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This
piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten
racket. This place feels to me today like a crime scene. Get some of
that yellow tape and put it around this Chamber. The midnight transfer
of wealth in this bill is disgusting.
There is a backdrop here. The backdrop here is the wealth inequality
in our country already, in which the wealthiest 1 percent of our
population owns 30 percent of the wealth and the poorest half of our
population, together, only own 3 percent of the wealth--the top 1
percent, a third of the wealth; the bottom half of the population by
income, 3 percent of the wealth.
And against that backdrop, this bill transfers wealth from middle-
class families to giant corporations, billionaires, and
megabillionaires. And it transfers wealth from our children and
grandchildren to present-day billionaires by adding $5 trillion to the
debt limit to run up the debt of the country to fund the tax giveaways
to these special interests and wealthy billionaires.
How do they do that? They take away healthcare from 16 million
Americans and give huge tax breaks to billionaires.
Most families have someone sit down once a month and go through the
bills, and you try to figure out what bills you can pay. You may not
pay the whole insurance bill; you may just pay the minimum. You may not
pay your whole credit card bill; you may just pay the minimum. You are
aware exactly how much money you have because you need to make those
payments. That is kitchen-table world.
Billionaire world is different. You have a family office. You never
see bills. You don't even know how much money you have, not even to the
nearest $100,000. And you don't care because you have more than you
could ever spend in your life.
You could pay taxes, like regular people, but there is something
about your acquisition of wealth that can't stop. So you won't pay
taxes like a normal person. You demand special treatment. You pay less
of a tax rate than a firefighter, for God's sake. And that is not
enough for you?
Now you come here to this Senate floor wanting even more favors. You
already don't know how much money you have. You could pay regular
taxes, and it wouldn't take a day from sunning on your private island,
a day from cruising in your private yacht, a jet trip on your private
jet, a ski trip to your private chalet. Nothing in your life would
change if you had to pay taxes like a regular person, but you just
don't want to.
And the third is--I should add that, on the tax breaks, a lot of it
goes to corporations. This bill doesn't just give big tax breaks to big
corporations; it gives big tax breaks to big corporations that move
jobs and investment offshore, away from America. And it just doesn't
give tax breaks to corporations that move jobs and investment offshore,
away from America. It gives tax breaks for doing that. It gives tax
breaks for offshoring American jobs and offshoring American investment.
It is the world's worst tax policy. It takes an already-corrupted Tax
Code and bends it even further in the favor of megabillionaires and big
offshore corporations.
And last, what does this bill do? It causes this transfer of wealth
from regular people to the wealthy. It raises your costs to raise their
profits.
I am here to talk about one way that happens. Because of this bill,
your electric bills will go up. The people behind this bill are
counting on you not to know how that works. So I am going to take a
minute here, and I am going to tell you how that works.
There are some rules for the grid about how this works. Generators
who want to sell power to the grid put in a bid, and they give a price
in which they will sell their electricity. You can imagine on this
graph that each of these little hash marks is a different generation
facility, and each has made a bid at its best price. Once it has the
stack of bids, the grid manager, as the load comes onto the grid,
dispatches the cheapest generators first and then goes up the stack to
the more and more expensive ones. As demand rises, the costs go up. The
last one that is called on--the most expensive one that is called on--
sets the price for the whole grid, and this last one, the one that is
the price setter on the grid, almost always is a fossil fuel plant, OK?
It is almost always a fossil fuel plant.

So, if you look at this graph, you will see here that this measures
the price that is charged to put those electrons on the grid for
consumers, and this is the energy demand, how much consumers are
asking. What does the grid need to supply?
If you look at the top line, this is the world without renewables.
This is an all fossil fuel system, let's say, a baseload nuke. OK.
Throw that in. As the demand goes up, the prices go up because more and
more of these generators have to come online.
Eventually, let's say you get to this point, where you have this much
load on the grid and you have this much supply, and the price is set by
that generator.
That is the world without clean energy. Now you add clean energy. You
add renewables to this equation. What do we know about the renewables?
They are almost always cheaper. They are almost never the price setter.
So they fill in down here, and they fill in below the price of the
fossil fuel plant. So if you have load requirement X and you live in
``fossil fuel only'' world, you are going to be paying that price for
energy on the grid--all of it--because it is set by that price setter
generator. But if you filled in with renewables, then you are down here
for price for that much load. You are saving huge amounts of money. The
grid is way more efficient with renewables in the mix.
By the time you get to the same price that you had here for load X,
for fossil fuel, you are all the way out

[[Page S3645]]

here. You have all of this extra load served before you raise that
price. That is the theory. That is how the system works.
Let's see how clean energy fits in this specific area. Let's look at
Texas.
Oh, by the way, last year, 95 percent of the power that came on the
grid that filled in here was clean energy. If this bill kills clean
energy growth, which is its intention, then it is going to kill off the
power source that provided 95 percent of what was added to the grid
last year. It is going to be a big, big hit.
So let's look at the Texas grid, which is easy to talk about because
it is a stand-alone grid. Somebody just did a study of the Texas grid,
and they found that with renewables--and Texas is 30 percent
renewables, OK? So we are in the ``with renewable'' situation. With
renewables, the average price last August was $39 per megawatt hour.
This was $39. Then they calculated what happened if you backed out all
the solar that had been added. If it weren't for the solar driving this
price down, instead of $39 per megawatt hour, it would have been
somewhere between $55 and $90 per megawatt hour--a minimum $25
differential, maybe more than twice the cost.
The punch line:

Had there been no growth in solar energy between 2018 and
2024, wholesale electric prices in `24 would have been at
least 40 percent higher.

Without the clean energy growth of that 95 percent of supply that
came out of the grid that was clean energy last year, electricity
prices would have been 40 percent higher. And where would that 40
percent have gone? It would have gone into the pockets of the fossil
fuel industry that was setting that price as everybody had to pay more
and more and more.
So when you see the fossil fuel industry come here and take this shot
at its clean energy competition in this bill, after having flooded that
side with political money, they are going to make a fortune off of
this, and consumers--consumers--will pay. That is how this bill robs
you. It puts you back onto the fossil fuel side of that curve, not onto
the clean energy added part of the curve, which lowers prices so
dramatically.
The report concluded:

This isn't speculation or modeling; it is what actually
happened in one of America's largest electricity markets.

By the way, while the fossil fuel polluters are out trying to damage
their competition by using the power of government and the influence of
their dark money operation to do so, they are also damaging America's
competitiveness against China.
China has already put in 25 times the solar that we are putting in
onto their grid. That gives them huge advantages as they construct
solar panels, design solar technologies, and offer that to the rest of
the world.
We are in a world market for solar technology just like we are in a
world market for electric vehicles. The fossil fuel industry's desire
to destroy the American solar market and to destroy the American
electric vehicle market is about as unpatriotic as you can get because
it is taking these two technologies and saying: Go for it, China. We
are out. We are out. Have the entire international market for solar and
for energy. We are not going to compete. We are going to load up our
people with new taxes. We are going to tear away the subsidies.

By the way, the fossil fuel industry that is telling you this--they
are the recipients of the biggest subsidy in world history. They get
$700 billion a year in the United States alone from being allowed to
pollute for free. It violates market economics to pollute for free.
Milton Friedman, the most conservative economist, will tell you it is
not proper market theory. When somebody is polluting for free, the cost
of the pollution should be in the price of the product.
So they already benefit. The fossil fuel industry already benefits
from the biggest subsidy in world history--$700 billion with a ``b''--
$700 billion every single year to compete unfairly against clean
energy. On top of that, they want to rip away the investments that have
been made, and they want to put a new tax on clean energy, and they
want to drive consumer prices back up to their fossil fuel model.
There are some really big losers in this big loser of a bill. For
anybody who cares about adding $5 trillion to our national debt, that
is a big loss. It comes through in interest rates for people with car
loans and home loans. Healthcare--16 million people are getting chucked
off their healthcare. Hospitals and nursing homes are facing
receiverships as their revenues dry up from a nearly trillion-dollar
hit to their revenue streams.
Taxpayers are getting clobbered by an already corrupt Tax Code that
this makes even worse, for the individuals benefiting the most from the
corruption of the Tax Code and who are the least deserving of our
solicitude and who are the most able to pay.
I promise you there are people who will not know they even got this
$300,000 individual billionaire benefit. Because they are so rich
already, it won't even count.
On the flip side of the coin, if they had to pay taxes like a normal
American, they wouldn't even notice that either. They would still be
able to sun on their islands, cruise on their yachts, ski at their
chalets, and jet on their jets. Yet we are breaking the bank to the
tune of $5 trillion to take care of those people--creepy billionaires
who can't even count their wealth but for some reason insist on coming
to Congress and just seizing even more and looting the public trough.
Offshoring corporations get a special tax benefit for offshoring jobs
and investment, moving them away from America. Remember, this was the
``America first'' agenda--but not when you look into the weeds of this
crooked bill.
So creepy billionaires, offshoring corporations, and, of course,
fossil fuel polluters who want to pollute have got all the money in the
world. They have made massive profits. They could do their own carbon
removal and make their products safer. They choose not to. They choose
not to because they want to pollute, and they want to kill their
competition so they can pollute more and profit more and drive up
consumer prices, as I showed here.
And guess what. The creepy billionaires, the offshoring corporations,
and the fossil fuel polluters--what do they have in common? Huge donors
to the Republican Party. That is what this bill is about. It is not
about taking care of the economy. It is not about taking care of the
public. It is payback to big special interests and billionaires who
provide the dark money funding that floats the Republican Party, and
now they are demanding payback for the majorities that they bought.
There is a wasp that lays its larvae inside another bug, and the
larvae of the wasp inside that other bug are able to take over the
nervous system of that other bug. They can take over the command and
control system of the bug, and they start driving the bug around from
the inside. They make it do what the larvae want it to do. They make it
go where the larvae want to be. They make it hang where the larvae want
it to hang. And then the larvae consume it from the inside. They eat
it, and they turn into the next generation of wasps.
That is a pretty good analogy for what has happened here. Those
creepy billionaires, those fossil fuel polluters, those big offshoring
corporations have taken over the command and control system of the
Republican Party. The bug over there is being marched around by those
special interests, doing exactly what it is told. And it doesn't care
about the 16 million people coming off insurance, it doesn't care about
the added pollution, it doesn't care about the increased costs, it
doesn't care about the unfairness, and it doesn't care about making the
Tax Code more corrupt because the special interests are in that bug,
running that show.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I come today to explain my vote yesterday
for voting against the motion to proceed on this bill.
I spent most of my career in management consulting. I managed large,
complex enterprise projects, multiyear, thousands of hours, with a lot
of complexity that takes people, process, and technology to make them
work. I learned a lot in that career, and I was able to go to the
legislature and take that mindset as a member of the minority for two
terms.

[[Page S3646]]

Then we got the majority in 2010, and I found myself being the
speaker of the house. We were in the middle of the financial crisis.
When I got sworn in in January of 2011, North Carolina had a $2 billion
shortfall on a $20 billion general revenue fund, and I had 6 months to
balance that budget.
We did something that had not been done in North Carolina. We took
the time to understand every aspect and every dollar that was being
spent in government. We determined how to cut government in a way that
was sustainable. We cut 12 percent from the university system budget,
not at the rate of growth but the actual spending.
I had some people say that it was going to be disruptive, and the
University of North Carolina would never be the same again. But we did
it in a way that was instructed by the operations of the university
system. And we did it in a way in concert with the chancellors.
And do you know what happened? We actually balanced the budget. We
did do those cuts. And the last time I checked, the North Carolina
University system is still considered one of the greatest systems in
the United States of America.
Why do I use that example? Because the Medicaid proposal in this bill
bears no resemblance to that kind of discipline and due diligence. It
has no insights into how these provider tax cuts are going to be
absorbed without harming people on Medicare.
Even worse, most of my colleagues do not even understand, on either
side of the aisle, the interplay of State-directed payments and the
devastating consequences of the funding flows that are going to be
before us.
Here is how I figured out the impact in North Carolina: I used to be
speaker of the house. And I like the speaker and have a good
relationship with the speaker and the President pro tempore, so I
called them up. I had my staff ask them if they would do an impact
assessment on what this proposed bill would do to the Medicaid Program
in North Carolina.
But I didn't want just the view of the Republican partisan staff that
report to the speaker and the President pro tempore on how they are
going to absorb this bill. I decided to go to Josh Stein, the Governor.
I went to his Democrat staff for Medicaid. I asked them to prepare an
estimate, independent of the estimate that I had done with fiscal
research.
But I took it a step further. I went to the hospital association. I
asked three different independent groups--a partisan Democrat group, a
partisan Republican group of experts, and a nonpartisan group of the
hospital association to develop an impact assessment, independent--not
talking, not sharing, reporting to me.
What I found is the best case scenario is about a $26 billion cut.
Now, we have got a delay, so it may be 2 years; it may be 1 year. All
it does is make that $26 billion happen in year 1 or year 12. But the
impact is the same, and it is indisputable.
Now, when I actually presented this report, that you can find on my
website, I had people in the administration say: You are all wet. You
don't know what you are doing.
I said: Well, why don't we assemble a series of meetings. We are
going to provide you our analytics. You go through it. Tear it apart.
And I told Mehmet Oz, whom I consider to be one of the most capable
people in the Trump administration--he is a brilliant man. I encourage
my Democrat colleagues to talk to him. He knows his stuff, and he is
very focused on getting efficiencies out of CMS.
So we had three different conference calls with CMS, with Oz on the
video and me on the video. I said this: Guys, I would love nothing more
than for you to prove me wrong. I would love nothing more than for you
to tell me it is not $26 billion or $30 billion; that it is $2.6
billion or $2 billion or $200 million.
But after three different attempts for them to discredit our
estimates, the day before yesterday, they admitted that we were right;
that between the State-directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this
bill, there is a reduction of State-directed payments, and then there
is the reduction of the provider tax. They can't find a hole in my
estimate.
So what they told me is that, yes, it is rough, but North Carolina
has used the system; they are going to have to make it work.
All right. So what do I tell 663,000 people in 2 years or 3 years
when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid
because the funding is not there anymore, guys?
I think people in the White House, the amateurs advising the
President, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break
a promise.
Do you know the last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare,
with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is when
somebody said: If you like your healthcare, you can keep it. If you
like your doctor, you can keep it.
We found out that wasn't true. That made me the second Republican
speaker of the house since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because
we betrayed the promise to the American people. Two years later, three
years later, it actually made me a U.S. Senator because in 2010, it had
just been proposed. And just anticipation of what was going to happen
was enough to have a sea change election that swept Republicans into
the majority for the second time in 100 years.

Now Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and
betraying a promise.
It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray
the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the
Cabinet room when I was there with Finance, where he said: We can go
after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs.
Now those amateurs who are advising him--not Dr. Oz; I am talking
about White House healthcare experts--refuse to tell him that those
instructions that were to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse all of a
sudden eliminates a government program that is called the provider tax.
We have morphed a legal construct that admittedly has been abused and
should be eliminated into waste, fraud, and abuse.
Money laundering, read the code. Look at how long it has been there.
I was speaker of the house. I refused to do it. When I left North
Carolina, I said we are not going to do a provider tax. I left it at
2\1/2\ percent. Now it is 6--a mistake on the part of the leadership.
Frankly, I know my friends are probably going to think I am a little
bit crazy here, but I actually passed a law that made it illegal to
expand Medicaid.
Why did I do that? Because I was convinced someday we would be here.
I would have rather found a way to get more people on Medicaid at the
standard FMAP than having this 90-10 match and watching it disappear
and taking away desperately needed healthcare.
Over the course of the evening, I may look for an opportunity to
speak again, but I am telling the President that you have been
misinformed. Your supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are
eligible and qualified for Medicaid.
I love the work requirement. I love the other reforms in this bill.
They are necessary, and I appreciate the leadership of the House for
putting it in there. In fact, I like the work of the House so much that
I wouldn't be having to do this speech if we simply started with the
House mark.
I have talked with my colleagues in North Carolina. I know that we
can do that. And I believe that we can make sure that we do not break
the promise of Donald J. Trump that he has made to people who are on
Medicaid today.
But what we are doing, because we have got a view on an artificial
deadline on July 4 that means nothing but another date in time--we
could take the time to get this right if we laid down the House mark of
the Medicaid bill and fixed it.
My friend and colleague from New Hampshire, I jumped in front of her,
so I am only going to take another minute or two.
But we owe it to the States to do the work to understand how these
proposals affect them. How hard is that? I did it. How hard is it? How
hard is it to sit down and ask the Medicaid office, ask the legislative
staff, ask the independent hospital association what the impact is? If
there is no negative impact, what is wrong with daylight? What is wrong
with actually understanding what this bill does?

[[Page S3647]]

I know what it does because I spent a career implementing complex
systems, and then I had the privilege of being speaker of the house,
and I implemented a limited government setting. And since I have been
here, I have focused on bills and watched their implementation from the
cradle until they are fully implemented.
We owe it to the American people and I owe it to the people of North
Carolina to withhold my affirmative vote until it is demonstrated to me
that we have done our homework; we are going to make sure that we
fulfill the promise; and then I can feel good about a bill that I am
willing to vote for. But until that time, I will be withholding my
vote.

____________________