[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 18 (Tuesday, January 28, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S443-S445]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am honored to be with my colleagues on
the floor to talk about the actions that have become very manifest in
Virginia today because of the President's Executive orders,
particularly the recent order pausing Federal funding--grant funding,
program funding.
I want to thank my colleagues for being here on the floor to talk
about this and share just in the last 24 hours what Virginians are
saying and what Virginians are asking and what Virginians are worried
about. Then I want to make one point about my Federal workforce and an
offer the President made to them at the end of the day and then finally
raise a question of what President Trump is afraid of.
President Trump has two Republican Houses. If he wants to do
something to shrink the size of government, if he wants to do something
to reduce spending here or there, we have a March 14
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budget deadline, and he has two Republican Houses, and there is a way
to do this--unless you are afraid that your Republican majorities don't
want to go as far as you do in cutting Medicaid and cutting Medicare
and endangering Social Security and hurting kids and hurting veterans
and hurting families.
Let me talk about the orders of the day and then the Federal
workforce and finish with this question: What is President Trump afraid
of?
I started to hear from Virginians about this Federal funding pause
yesterday. I was at an event in Fredericksburg to kick off tax season.
The local United Way and chamber of commerce were initiating something
they have done for 21 years in a row--volunteer tax assistance for low-
and middle-income folks. It is a classic community program. A lot of
volunteers help everyday folks figure out how to file their taxes and
make sure they can get benefits they are entitled to.
As I was at this kickoff, people came up to me and said: Hey, I am a
veteran. I am trying to get an appointment at a VA hospital or clinic,
but the VA portal is closed to me. What is going on?
What is going on? This was the leading edge of this chaos.
Someone else came to me at this kind of good-news event about
volunteer tax assistance and said: The Federal Government has paid to
build a VA clinic in Fredericksburg--state-of-the-art, right on
Interstate 95, visible to all, scheduled to open in February. We are
still being told that the grand opening is going to happen, but now
those working there are saying they are under a hiring freeze. We spent
tens of millions of dollars to build this facility that looks great,
but we are under a hiring freeze. Can we even hire people to serve the
veterans in this region?
This was how it started.
From then to today, let me tell you other calls of anguish we have
received in our office. Two childcare centers, one in the Williamsburg
area and one in Appalachia, far, far away in southwest Virginia: We
think our funding is being cut off. We think we may not have enough to
pay staff. We also think parents who are receiving some childcare
funding--that may get cut off. So neither they can afford childcare,
nor can we afford to maintain the employment of these hard-working
childcare workers in childcare centers.
Universities reached out to me today: We are doing cutting-edge
medical research. We have contracts that are ongoing right now, and we
are about to send a bill to the Federal Government because we do the
work and then we submit bills. We are not sure it is going to be paid.
What do we do--lay off the researchers and not get the research done?
What should we do, Senator?
There is an organization in Virginia called the Virginia Health Care
Foundation. What they do is they help low-income people and seniors
apply for Medicaid, apply for Affordable Care Act subsidies. They have
a contract with CMS to help them hire eight staffers--they call them
navigators--who work around the State helping low-income people access
programs to which they are entitled, for which they have paid taxes.
They received a note suggesting that that grant to hire these
navigators to help everyday people was going to expire and they
couldn't get any Federal funding after 5 today. They heard this late
yesterday. So they did what any good organization would do. They
reached out this morning to the CMS to say ``Please give us the payment
right now, before 5 o'clock today,'' and what they got back from CMS
was ``Sorry, our website is down. We just decided that today will be
the day that we will just spend time repairing our website, and it will
be open again soon''--open again soon but after the 5 o'clock deadline.
You don't have to be a genius to figure this out. Hurting people
getting health insurance. Hurting people trying to get Medicaid
benefits. Hurting childcare centers. Hurting veterans trying to get
appointments. Hurting a VA clinic we spent tens of millions of dollars
to build by threatening, through a hiring freeze, the ability of this
place to open.
That is just a little snapshot. There was an earlier order freezing
foreign assistance funding. A whole lot of nonprofits, church-based
nonprofits like World Vision and other organizations that do foreign
assistance work around the world--humanitarian aid in Ukraine, for
example--they were told they don't get funding anymore. The only
foreign assistance we will give, according to the Trump Executive
order, is military armaments transfers to two countries in world: Egypt
and Israel. No humanitarian aid. No transfer of military assistance to
other nations.
This is all on the say-so of a President trying to overturn existing
appropriations bills that have been passed by a bipartisan Congress.
If I heard these stories in 1 day and my colleagues have heard these
stories in 1 day, I know what I am going to hear tomorrow. I know what
I am going to hear through the weekend. This is going to build like an
avalanche, and it is not just Democratic Senators who are hearing these
stories.
We have to respect the law and congressional appropriations.
I ask anyone hearing who is concerned about this: If you are in
Virginia, call my office. If you are not in Virginia, call your
Congress man or woman, call your Senator and tell them the President is
not above the law, the President must follow the law, and it is
Congress--Democrats and Republicans--that has to ensure that the
President follows the law.
Second, I want to talk about Federal employees. The Federal employees
received an interesting email at the end of the day today. I happen to
have some fellows assigned to me who are not Senate employees, but they
are executive branch employees, as most of us have, working in my
office. They received an email from the administration that said: If
you tender your resignation by next Friday, we will guarantee you
payment through the end of September whether or not you show up for
work.
So tender your resignation and then, boy, it is just going to be a
gravy train. You are just going to get paid for 7 months without
working.
The President has no authority to make that offer. There is no budget
line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. This is a guy
who made this promise to contractors again and again and again when he
was a private business guy: Oh, come work for me at my casino. Come
work for me in a hotel. We are going to do a handshake. We are going to
do a contract.
The contractor does the work and then finds out they get stiffed.
So my message to Federal employees who received this is, yeah, the
President has tried to terrorize you for about a week and then gives
you a little sweetheart offer: If you resign in the next week, we are
just going to pay you for doing nothing for the next 7 months.
Don't be fooled. He has tricked hundreds of people with that offer.
If you accept that offer and resign, he will stiff you just like he
stiffed the contractors. He doesn't have any authority to do this.
Do not be fooled by this guy. You were here before he was here, and
you will be here after he was here. Show up for work. Be diligent.
Serve Americans every day. Make their lives better. Answer their phone
calls. Give them an answer. Track down their constituent's calls. Don't
be fooled by a fake offer that, because he has terrorized you in the
last week, it would be easy to just resign now and get a check for 7
months because I can tell you, that promise is worth nothing. And you
will regret it just like these contractors regretted it who did work
for this guy while he was a businessman.
Finally and lastly, I will say this: What is this move by the
President to try to shrink the Federal workforce? Because we all know
this: If he can persuade a bunch of people to resign, he will stiff
them, and then he won't fill the position.
OK. That is one way to shrink the Federal workforce: If I can get
away with not distributing money pursuant to a congressional
appropriation, OK, that will shrink the Federal budget.
But wait a minute. Wait a minute. The President has two Republican
Houses. We are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14. What
is today? Is it, like, the 25th, 26th, 27th? Is it the 28th? Is today
January 28? Do you think I am right? March 14 isn't very far away. We
are supposed to come up with a budget deal by March 14, and the
President is sitting in the captain's seat. He has got two Republican
Houses. So if he wants to slash
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Federal spending, if he wants to reduce the Federal workforce, if he
wants to gut Medicaid, gut Medicare, gut Social Security, gut the SNAP
program, gut low-income heating assistance, gut rental assistance, gut
title I funding to our public schools, guess what? He has got two
Republican Houses that he can persuade to do his bidding. He has been
pretty good so far at persuading these two Houses to do his bidding.
So why didn't he do that? That would be the lawful way to accomplish
that. If President Trump could convince the two Houses to slash all of
these programs in a budget, that would be lawful and get an
appropriations deal that cuts all of these programs the way he and
Russell Vought and Project 2025 want to do it.
But that is not what he is doing. He is trying to do it on his own.
Why? Why would President Trump, who has a clearly legal path ahead of
him that he can exercise over the course of the next 6 weeks--it is not
very long--to get a budget deal with two Republican Houses--why would
President Trump, with two Republican Houses and 6 weeks to get a budget
deal to do everything he wants--why would he not exercise that route
but, instead, use an illegal route as an Executive to slash funding
contrary to clear statute?
It is because he doesn't think that elected Republican Members of the
House of Representatives and the Senate will go along with his radical
plans. He doesn't think he can convince my GOP colleagues to take the
ax to all of these programs and hurt the American people in the way he
wants to.
Let's make President Trump do this the right way, not the wrong way.
Let's put it on the shoulders of President Trump and the two Republican
majorities. Do you want to slash this stuff? Fine. Have that debate on
the floor of the Senate and on the floor of the House when we are doing
the budget negotiation between now and March 14. Show the American
public your homework. Show them who is going to get hurt. Show them
that we are going to hurt everyday people at the expense of the big
guys, who are getting a tax cut in the reconciliation bill later. Let's
really have that debate right here in the full view of the American
public with these spotlights on and the TV broadcasting it.
That is what this President is afraid of, and that is why he is using
this illegal strategy to accomplish what he is afraid he can't
accomplish in the article I branch.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
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