[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 189 (Thursday, December 19, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7196-S7199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GUARDING READINESS RESOURCES ACT
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on
Armed Services be discharged from further consideration of S. 4511 and
that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 4511) to provide for the crediting of funds
received by the National Guard Bureau as reimbursement from
States.
There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the
Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. LEE. I ask unanimous consent that the Lee substitute amendment at
the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be
considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 3345) was agreed to, as follows:
(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute)
Strike all after the enacting clause and insert the
following:
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Guarding Readiness Resources
Act''.
SEC. 2. TREATMENT OF FUNDS RECEIVED BY NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU
AS REIMBURSEMENT FROM STATES.
Section 710 of title 32, United States Code, is amended by
adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(g) Treatment of Reimbursed Funds.--Any funds received by
the National Guard Bureau from a State, the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, Guam, or the Virgin
Islands as reimbursement under this section for the use of
military property--
``(1) shall be credited to--
``(A) the appropriation, fund, or account used in incurring
the obligation; or
``(B) an appropriate appropriation, fund, or account
currently available for the purposes for which the
expenditures were made; and
``(2) may only be used by the Department of Defense for the
repair, maintenance, replacement, or other similar functions
related directly to assets used by National Guard units while
operating under State active duty status.''.
The bill (S. 4511), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a
third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
[[Page S7197]]
Social Security Fairness Act of 2023
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about
commitment--commitment across our Nation--in each of our States and
towns and cities and in the villages in Alaska, and the men and women
who have made a commitment to their neighbors and to strangers and to
the broader community. These are our teachers. They are our nurses.
They are our firefighters, emergency responders, and police--public
servants who manage applications for Federal and State benefits like
SNAP, unemployment, and disaster assistance. They ensure that our
elections are well run. They get our streets paved and plowed. They
have made their commitment to serve. And for many of these public
servants, their States have opted out of Social Security, and so they
are not paying into the system.
But many of them have had other jobs in the past or will have other
jobs in the future. These are jobs that will require them to contribute
into Social Security. In many cases, they have contributed to Social
Security for an entire career before taking on a job in public service.
And then, when they retire--when folks retire, you assume that the
Social Security benefits that you have paid into you are going to be
receiving. These are benefits that people are entitled to receive,
benefits that they are entitled to as the spouse or the survivor or
both.
But for decades now, the commitment that these public servants have
given to their communities and to our Nation has been returned with two
acronyms that have had devastating consequences for, unfortunately, far
too many Americans: GPO and WEP. For many in my State of Alaska, these
are like swear words--GPO and WEP, government pension offset and
windfall elimination provision.
The Social Security benefits of spouses, widows, and widowers were
first cut by the GPO in 1977. Then, in 1983, Congress went after the
benefits of the retirees themselves with the WEP. These two provisions
have been responsible for reducing Social Security benefits from hard-
working Americans who have earned them and then from their spouses,
widows, and widowers.
And it is in Alaska where the highest number per capita of teachers
and public employees are impacted. So when you look at the map of the
United States and those areas where you have the highest negative
impact from the WEP provision and the GPO provision, it is,
unfortunately, in my home State of Alaska.
And it might not sound like a lot--15,156 Alaskans who are impacted
by either GPO or WEP or both. These are all their stories. These are
all individual Alaskans who have stories about how this has impacted
them--like the retired teacher who is just one paycheck away from
homelessness because, after serving for years as a teacher, she lost
two-thirds of her earned Social Security benefits because of WEP; or
the young Alaska widow who is in dire financial straits following her
husband's recent unexpected death, simply because of GPO or WEP; or the
senior citizen who taught for over 25 years, then turned to commercial
fishing, and then he worked for BLM and the U.S. Forest Service--this
is a career track that you see with a lot of Alaskans. His Social
Security was cut by over 30 percent. So now, at 82 years old, he is
still working to make ends meet. This is not retirement, folks.
These aren't hypotheticals. These are real stories from Alaskans who
have reached out to me asking me, as their Senator, to help them. I
have been hearing from these folks for the entire tenure that I have
been here in the U.S. Senate--hearing about the disparate impact on
Alaskans, hearing about the inequity, the unfairness: I have earned
these benefits, and yet I am not able to receive the full benefit.
Where is the fairness in that?
And so I have not just listened to my constituents; I have responded
and stepped forward. In every single Congress since I have been here in
the U.S. Senate, I have cosponsored legislation to eliminate GPO and
WEP, and proudly so. But it has been very frustrating because, over
these 22 years now, I have got constituents who are saying: This is
happening to me in realtime right now.
And I have to say: This is hard. This formula is not right. We get
it. We have got to address it, but this is going to be expensive. So
until we are able to do more wholesale reforms, I don't know how we are
going to be able to help you in the Senate.
That is not a satisfying answer to that teacher, to that firefighter,
and to that widow.
So I was so pleased to be able to cast my vote yesterday to move to
passage of the Social Security Fairness Act. I am proud that 72 of us
here in the Senate joined together, and I am truly looking forward to
final passage of this important measure before I return home.
And when I get home, I will be able to tell school districts that you
are going to have a better chance. It is going to be a little bit
easier for you to recruit and retain good teachers and principals
because the disincentive to work in a State that is impacted by GPO and
WEP is going to be gone for us in Alaska.
I will also be able to tell firefighters and the police and EMS
responders that they are not going to have the burden of knowing that
their retirement is going to be less secure or their spouse's
retirement will be less secure after years of putting themselves on the
line in service to our communities.
And I will be able to tell my neighbors and the folks I meet in the
grocery store and in the community meetings that their service is not
more of a sacrifice than it should be.
I am proud of the work that we have been able to do on behalf of
Alaskans and for over 800,000 Americans in other States who are
affected by GPO and the over 2 million people in the States who are
impacted by WEP.
In the next Congress, it is going to be up to all of us to look at
Social Security's solvency from a larger perspective, to work on it,
debate on it, and vote on ways to ensure that this vital retirement
program is going to continue to ensure that Americans are able to
retire with dignity and security.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Trump Administration
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk to my
colleagues about something that is happening right in front of our
eyes. It is a set of events that aren't random--they are connected to
one another--that threaten to destroy this country that we love.
Everybody can see it, but for some reason--maybe the exhaustion of
the aftermath of a brutal election, maybe the distraction of the
Christmas season, maybe just an instinct to flee instead of fight--
there are far too many people who are denying to themselves what they
are seeing.
What is happening right now is that Donald Trump and his billionaire
advisers are unfolding for the country in real time a plan to
transition this country from a democracy to a restrictive oligarchy,
where political opposition is silenced, where the media isn't free, and
where government just exists to enrich a small cabal of elites that
surround the man in charge.
I know a lot of my colleagues do see how these dots exist and how
they connect, and I know, in your gut, a lot of you see the specter of
the disaster that is coming. But if you don't, I want to spend just a
few minutes laying it out.
To make things simple, I am just going to focus on three events that
happened in the last 7 days: the recommendation by House Republicans
that Trump critic Liz Cheney be subject to criminal prosecution, the
lawsuit filed by Trump against an Iowa pollster and an Iowa newspaper,
and the decision by ABC to pay Trump $15 million to get rid of a bogus
lawsuit.
First, the recommendation from House Republicans that Liz Cheney be
prosecuted. Liz Cheney was a member of the January 6 Commission that
tried to find some accountability for the assault on this Capitol that
resulted in people dying, that resulted in an officer with blood
running down his face running into this Chamber to rescue us before the
violent rioters got ahold of us.
Donald Trump did not like that narrative that he had something to do
with, that he inspired the January 6 riot. He doesn't even like the
narrative that January 6 was a riot. His events are opened by the
January 6 choir in commemoration of the events that day.
[[Page S7198]]
What happened this week is that Donald Trump made good on his
promise. He said during the campaign that he was going to use the
military, law enforcement, and the National Guard to deal with ``the
enemy within.'' When asked who ``the enemy within'' was, he said: Nancy
Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Democrats.
Now, people laughed it off during the campaign because that doesn't
happen in America. We don't use law enforcement to lock up your
political opposition. But that is exactly what is being recommended
when it comes to Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney did nothing criminal. There is
not even a whiff of a criminal allegation. She was just in charge of a
Commission that Donald Trump opposed. But House Republicans, taking
orders from Donald Trump, just recommended that the next
administration, the next Department of Justice, criminally prosecute
Liz Cheney.
By the way, Liz Cheney won't be the last. There will be other
political opponents of Donald Trump who are referred for prosecution.
Now, that would be laughable today under an FBI and a Department of
Justice that doesn't lock up people for political reasons, but Donald
Trump is changing the guard at the FBI. He is putting in someone loyal
to him as the next Attorney General. The person he is going to put in
at the FBI wrote a book about how important it was to eliminate from
government anybody that doesn't line up with the political priorities
of the President. He has said that the people who ran fair elections in
2020 should go to jail because if you didn't run an election that
resulted in Donald Trump being elected, then you did something wrong.
This week, the House recommended Liz Cheney for criminal prosecution.
Donald Trump cheered that recommendation. And we are getting ready to
vote on an Attorney General and a Director of the FBI who have made
clear that they are ready to eagerly prosecute Trump's political
opponents.
This is really important to talk about because this is one of the key
ways that democracies fall all around the world. It, frankly, doesn't
take hundreds of political prosecutions; it only takes a handful before
ordinary, average Americans just decide that they would be better off
staying quiet instead of facing potential harassment or intimidation or
a jail sentence for speaking out the way that Liz Cheney did.
The second thing that happened in this last week was that Donald
Trump filed a lawsuit against a pollster in Iowa. The grounds of the
lawsuit are simple: He didn't like the results of the poll. The poll
said the Iowa race was close. The poll ended up being wrong, but he is
suing the pollster and the newspaper because he was upset that that
poll helped galvanize opposition to him.
That poll, which suggested that race was close, got a lot of people
to donate to his political opponent. It gave people in Iowa some hope
that maybe a Democrat could win. That is not allowed in Donald Trump's
world. It is not allowed in Donald Trump's world for anything to be in
service of his political opposition. So he is filing a lawsuit that has
no chance of succeeding because he wants to try to intimidate
journalists and the press into submission.
Whether we like it or not, it just is true that maybe in the future,
a pollster who has a poll in front of them that shows a race closing,
shows a race that is favorable to Democrats, won't publicize that poll
out of fear of a lawsuit.
Connected to that lawsuit is the third thing I want to talk about:
the decision by ABC to pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a bogus
lawsuit--a bogus defamation lawsuit--that would have never succeeded in
court. But ABC, for whatever reason, decided it would be better for
them to just pay Donald Trump to make it go away.
You are seeing repeated decisions by people in the media to just go
along with Donald Trump rather than risk his ire, rather than
potentially put their profits at risk if Donald Trump and his
regulatory Agencies turn against them. You saw Jeff Bezos tell his
newspapers not to endorse Kamala Harris. You have seen an effort by
Comcast to divest itself from MSNBC. You have seen ABC pay off Donald
Trump $15 million. Over and over again, you see members of the press
starting to decide it is just better not to fight him.
These three things taken together show you the playbook: Threaten
political opposition with jail, throw a few of them into jail to show
you are serious, sue and intimidate and harass anybody that does
anything that is helpful to your political opposition, and intimidate
and harass the media in the hopes that they will just go away and stop
criticizing you.
I don't think it is a coincidence that during this period of media
harassment by Donald Trump, when Liz Cheney was referred for criminal
prosecution, all the headlines played it totally straight. None of the
headlines suggested that the criminal prosecution was bogus, it was
built on lies, it was built on no understanding of the law. The
headlines just said: Liz Cheney referred for criminal prosecution.
I think it is really important that we lay out what is happening here
because this is how a democracy vanishes, but I think it is also
equally important to talk about why Donald Trump and Elon Musk and
Vivek Ramaswamy and all of his billionaire friends are engaged in this
very coordinated early attack, even before he is sworn in, to try to
intimidate his political opposition and bully the press.
The reason they are doing this, the reason they are trying to
suppress dissent, is because they are preparing to steal from us.
Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies want to be in charge of
government so that they can make themselves more wealthy at our
expense. They want government contracts. They want to privatize
government programs. They want to get bigger regulatory breaks. They
want lower taxes.
Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies want government to serve
them, but they know the only way they get away with that is if no one
holds them accountable. So in order to steal from us, they have to
silence political opposition, intimidate activists into submission, and
try to get the press to fold. If they do that, then they can get away
with using government as a mechanism to enrich themselves.
If you want further proof of their agenda, look what is happening
right now, today, as we speak: Republicans and Democrats had a deal to
keep the government open and operating, to fund much-needed disaster
assistance, and it was killed yesterday by the two billionaires closest
to Donald Trump. When asked as to what their alternative was, they
said: Raise the debt ceiling. Donald Trump said: Raise the debt
ceiling. You will have my support for a continuing resolution if you
raise the debt ceiling.
Why do they want to raise the debt ceiling? It is easy. They want to
pass a huge tax cut for the billionaires in charge of Donald Trump's
government. That is their agenda--big, big tax cut for billionaires and
corporations. But the only way you can do that is if the debt ceiling
is raised. The only way you can get away with that is if you can borrow
more money on the backs of ordinary, average, everyday people in order
to pay for that tax cut.
So we are seeing the agenda of the Trump administration before they
are even sworn in, in front of our eyes: Rig the rules in order to make
the billionaires richer, and telegraph that as your No. 1 priority to
Congress.
Listen, there aren't just democracies and dictatorships in the world.
There are dozens of countries that occupy a gray zone in between those
poles, countries where there are still elections but the media and the
political opposition are so weak--weak because they have been beaten
into submission by the regime--that the people actually have no power.
There are elections, but the same group, the same man, the same family
wins every time.
America has been, for almost all of our history, a functioning,
robust democracy where the party or individual in power changes
regularly because people hold all the tools necessary to choose their
leaders. But that could change in a heartbeat, so quickly, but without
any one galvanizing moment, that the transition might just be missed by
all of us. You could just wake up one day and find out that the rules
of democracy have been so rigged that Republicans or the Trump family
[[Page S7199]]
never ever lose again and billionaires get to steal from all of us
without any accountability.
I know that sounds hard to believe. I admit that I might be wrong
about all of this. America's democracy is the longest existing
democracy in the history of the world. It has proven to be resilient.
It is filled with grit. It has survived challenges before. But like
every one of us eventually disappears from this planet, so does every
democracy. Every democracy has a last day.
If you look around the world, the steps that lead to the termination
of a democracy--the termination, end of self-governance--are shockingly
similar from country to country. The wealthy people who control the
media and the economy fold into the regime. Better to join than to
fight. The citizens get scared of joining up with the opposition
movement because they are fearful of harassment. Better to stay quiet
than fight.
If we don't speak out more loudly and more boldly about the events of
the last week and the way we are seeing a purposeful, detailed roadmap
constructed by Donald Trump and his billionaire friends to transition a
democracy to an oligarchy; if we don't fight like hell against these
nominees, especially those going to the Department of Justice that will
execute this assault on democracy, then our Nation, very soon, could
easily befall the same as these other destructed democracies.
The survival of our 240-year experiment is facing, right now, one of
its most severe tests, and I just think it is time that everybody woke
up to that and pulled their heads out of the sand.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Baldwin). The Senator from Connecticut.
____________________