[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 15 (Friday, January 24, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S355-S356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Trump Administration

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to 
speak to some of the actions that President Trump has taken just in his 
first 3 to 4 days and speak to the nomination of Pete Hegseth as 
Secretary of Defense.
  President Trump was sworn in at noon on Monday just down the hall a 
bit. As a candidate, he ran promising to help working men and women 
throughout the country. He talked about addressing their kitchen table 
issues. So let's take a quick look at some of the big actions that have 
been taken just in the last 4 days.
  One very serious action taken was pardoning the men and women who 
were convicted of bludgeoning and assaulting police officers in this 
Capitol on January 6, 2021. For those of us who were here that day, we 
will never forget, because after losing that election, Donald Trump 
unleashed rioters on Capitol Hill, rampaging throughout the ``citadel 
of democracy,'' clubbing police officers with baseball bats, and 
crushing them between doors.
  Mr. President, 140 law enforcement officers from the Capitol Police 
and the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police were injured that day. I 
remember their heroism, and I remember those who died in the days 
following those attacks.
  To pardon people who were convicted of assaulting and bloodying and 
bludgeoning police officers demonstrates contempt for the men and women 
who help protect us every day--not just here in the Capitol but men and 
women in law enforcement throughout the country.
  As the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of 
Police Chiefs have said, ``Allowing those convicted of these crimes to 
be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices 
made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.'' They 
go on to say that this leniency ``sends a dangerous message that the 
consequences of attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially 
emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence.''
  The simple result of this is to send a terrible message that if you 
assault police officers in the name of Donald Trump, he will be there 
to pardon you.
  Let's look at some of the other actions he has taken just in these 
first days back in the White House.
  He issued an Executive order that rolls back initiatives to help 
reduce the costs of prescription drugs for more Americans.
  He has been laying the groundwork here on Capitol Hill for a huge new 
tax cut that will disproportionately benefit the superwealthy and the 
biggest corporations at the expense of other Americans.
  We heard him speak at that podium during his swearing-in of the 
golden age, and sitting right behind him were the billionaire titans 
from the tech industry. He is going to deliver a golden age--an even 
more golden age for those who are already very wealthy and for the 
biggest corporations, but it is not going to trickle down and help 
others. We know that because we have seen this movie before.
  We saw Trump tax cuts 1.0. They promised that investments in 
businesses would go up, the idea being that if you provide tax cuts to 
big corporations, they will take the additional savings and they will 
invest it in their businesses. Well, that has been looked at, and that 
didn't happen. What did go up were stock buybacks engaged in by the 
corporations to further benefit their shareholders, many of them 
already very wealthy people.
  They promised that those savings would be used by corporations to 
increase wages. In fact, they said that on average, it would be $4,000 
a worker. It just didn't happen. What went up were CEO bonuses.
  What else went up was the deficit and the debt. The claim that these 
would somehow pay for themselves was just once again a pure falsehood 
disproved by reality.
  So here we are embarking on 2.0, Trump tax cuts 2.0--same story 
unfolding, although now we already hear our colleagues talking about 
how everybody else in America and many other millions of Americans are 
going to have to pay for the tax cuts for the folks at the very top.
  Just take a look at some of the proposals made by the chairman of the 
House Budget Committee, a Republican Member of Congress, talking about 
trillions of cuts in things like Medicaid--a very important health 
program that helps kids with disabilities, helps lower income 
individuals, helps seniors in nursing homes; talking about cutting 
programs in--food and nutrition programs.
  So everyone seems to be all in with President Trump on the idea of 
another round of tax cuts for the very rich, but they are going to ask 
everybody else in the country to pay for it.
  Let's look at something else the President did in his first 3 or 4 
days. He issued an executive order called schedule F. What is schedule 
F? In a nutshell, schedule F is an attempt to convert our merit-based 
civil service into a political cronyism-based civil service.
  Since the late 1800s and the Pendleton Act, we have had a civil 
service based on merit. Civil servants--people who work for the Federal 
Government in regular, ongoing positions--have to pass a test, show 
that they are qualified, that they are experienced, that they have the 
know-how. It is what you know, not who you know.
  What President Trump and his team are proposing in schedule F is to 
convert that merit-based system into a politics-based system where you 
have a political litmus test not for competence but for your politics.

[[Page S356]]

  I should point out that of course Presidents are entitled to lots of 
people in their administration as political appointments. In fact, 
there are about 4,000 political appointments in our current system. 
Obviously, you have the Secretaries of various Departments--I am going 
to talk about one of those in a minute--but you have the Deputy 
Secretaries, and you have many Assistant Secretaries.
  So you have 4,000 political appointments already available to be made 
by President Trump, but that is not enough, apparently. They are 
talking about converting approximately another about 16,000 additional 
positions that are currently merit-based systems, based on your 
qualifications, to political cronyism-based systems.
  That is a recipe for corruption. It is a recipe for reducing the 
quality of services to the American people from coast to coast. You do 
not want somebody who is chosen just because of who they know and what 
their politics are to be the people doing your food inspection or 
working on policy on all sorts of important things that impact the 
American people.
  A lot of those positions will be at the Department of Defense, so I 
want to turn now to the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary 
of Defense.