[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 22 (Monday, February 3, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S558-S565]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROJECT 2025
Mr. SCHATZ. Back to the Affordable Care Act:
[T]he ACA subsidy schemes simply masks these impacts.
That is a funny one. The ACA subsidy scheme masks the impacts, which
is really to say we have an inefficient healthcare system--I think
everybody can agree with that--and what they mean by ``masking the
impacts''--right?--is we have a terrible system; under normal
circumstances, people's monthly payment would be 5, 6, 7, $900, and
under the subsidy scheme, people will have to pay less, masking the
impacts.
And so just to understand, there are a lot of euphemisms in here for
coming after your healthcare.
CMS--
Center for Medicaid Services, Medicare/Medicaid services--
should develop a plan to separate the non-subsidized
insurance market from the subsidized market, giving the non-
subsidized market regulatory relief from costly ACA
regulatory mandates.
Let's kind of explain what this means for a second. They want to
separate the healthy from the not healthy, and the problem is, like, it
is true that if an insurer wants to, let's say, only provide insurance
for like 35-year-olds and under, that they are going to be able to
provide really, really cheap rates. But the problem, before the
Affordable Care Act, was that, that is exactly how it worked.
So if you were 23, your insurance was reasonably affordable; and if
you are 48 and you have heart disease, or you have mental health
challenges or you have asthma or you have diabetes, then you have a
preexisting condition. And then the insurance companies were able to
just literally not write you a policy. You couldn't get insurance.
And so the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy pre-ACA was medical debt. People
were going bankrupt because they got sick. Imagine--now it has to be a
big enough thing to be expensive, so it is almost definitionally ``you
get sick and it is very serious.'' Your life might be in danger, you
might have to manage a new disability, but it is stressful and hard to
try to get well or whatever it is.
But on top of that, pre-ACA, you got absolutely screwed financially.
And so imagine getting a terminal diagnosis and you don't have
insurance, and then you are sitting there thinking: I got 3 years, but
in the meantime, my family is going to go broke.
``Mask the impacts.'' What they mean is subsidize people so that they
can afford their insurance and put everybody in the same risk pool so
that it is not the case that sick people can't get insured and well
people can. The reason insurance companies love to discount their rates
and take young people on their plans is it is very unlikely they are
going to get sick, so they make money all the time. And the reason they
wanted to reject sick people is because that ends up being expensive,
right?
And so it is not a surprise that the Republican Party wants to
eliminate the Affordable Care Act; but we also
[[Page S559]]
need to understand, they are coming after Medicare and Medicaid, too.
And I want you to hear this part from our OMB Director nominee:
In its opening words, article II of the U.S. Constitution
makes it abundantly clear that ``[t]he executive power shall
be vested in a President of the United States of America.''
So far, so good. That is true.
That enormous power is not vested in departments or
agencies, in staff or administrative bodies, in
nongovernmental or other equities and interests close to the
government.
Now, that is where he is way off track. He is already way off track.
We make laws. There is an executive branch that is a creature of
Federal law, and this guy's theory is, nah, we elect a king. We elect a
person who doesn't have to deal with any existing statutes. How does
the Department of Transportation distribute Federal funds? Is it by
formula, or do they do grants? How does the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid determine who gets grant funding for a hospital, right?
All of that, over the years, has been decided as a matter of law, and
what Russ Vought is saying is:
The President must set and enforce a plan for the executive
branch. Sadly, however, a President today assumes office to
find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is
carrying out its own policy plans and preferences--or, worse
yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical,
supposedly ``woke'' faction of the country.
What is interesting about this document, as I have started to read
it, is it has got all this high-minded stuff, and then they just want
to go after the left. That is what this is, right? They are just
pissed. They are mad because they think certain Agencies are too
leftwing. They think there is a bunch of people in the government that
are too busy, like, caring too much about, I don't know, healthcare or
women's equality or children's mental health. I don't know what is
considered woke and not because I feel like with the tragic plane crash
last week, that those words died. Like, those words are now devoid of
meaning.
What in the hell does it mean to say DEI caused a plane crash? Now,
it is just an epithet you throw when you don't know what else to say or
what to be critical of or how to be a serious person.
He says:
This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like
Congress's decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking
power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert
``independence'' that protects so-called expert authorities
from scrutiny, the presumed inability to hold career civil
servants accountable for their performance, and the
increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big
and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the
public and a President who is elected by the people and
empowered by the Constitution to govern.
So what they mean here--right?--is that if you want to pass a law, it
has to have all of the implementation in the law. And it is funny to me
because a lot of Republicans will complain about the length of a law.
We are supposed to make broad public policy. Let me give you a really
good example.
The Telecommunications Act was passed and then reauthorized over the
last couple of decades, and that enabled a telecommunications
revolution because it set basic parameters for competition. And then it
said: You, the Federal Communications Commission, expert Agency, you
can open up dockets, you can listen to testimony, you can evaluate
individual cases. You have to work within the four corners of the
statute. We are telling you what the principles are here, but we don't
know how much--how many gigahertz of spectrum should be given to
Department of Defense versus, like, open RAM this and that.
We don't know that kind of thing, and I will give you a good example
from my first days in the Hawaii Legislature 100 years ago. When I got
to the legislature, we had a committee. It was called Ocean and Marine
Resources. We actually--``we'' the legislature--set the minimum catch
size for individual fish. There was a pretty corrupt legislator who set
the minimum catch size for an opakapaka, a kind of snapper, based on
how big he wanted the snapper to be on his dinner plate. It happened to
be 2 inches smaller than spawning size.
Now, why do you care about spawning size? You want people to throw
back a fish before it makes a bunch of eggs. And once it has had its
spawn, then go ahead and eat it, right? That is how you keep a healthy
fishery alive.
So what we realized is, shouldn't a bunch of aquatic biologists
figure out the minimum catch size of an opakapaka? Shouldn't a bunch of
actual experts determine how to manage our ocean and marine resources?
Shouldn't the legislature make broad policy, but you don't want us
idiots talking about the minimum catch size of an opakapaka. We don't
know. We have preferences. People might whisper in our ear about that.
If you can imagine the sprawling Federal laws that exist about speed
limits and civil penalties for contract violations and criminal law and
everything else, and we are going to elucidate exactly how all of this
works? It is totally preposterous, but it goes back to this idea of
President as elected king, and that is where they want to go.
In Federalist [No.] 47, James Madison warned that ``[t]he
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many,
and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.''
Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes to a
significant degree the modern executive branch, which--
whether controlled by the bureaucracy or by the President--
writes federal policy, enforces that policy, and often
adjudicates--
None of this is true.
--whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced. The
overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably
expensive, and in urgent need of repair. Nothing less than
the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.
Like, they get really grandiose really quick in this document, and I
think that is what is a little bone-chilling about it, is that they are
not just going for conservative outcomes, they are going for a kind of
revolution.
Look, everybody is prone to exaggeration in campaigns. Everybody
hurls accusations, one side at the other. And so, like, you will
forgive me for--when I heard about Project 2025, I was like, OK, some
groups want us to focus on it. Fine. Whatever. Let me check it out.
Then I started to realize this is really their plan.
Then I heard Trump say: Well, no, it is not my plan. I don't know any
of these people.
I, frankly, didn't talk about Project 2025 during the campaign
because I couldn't quite nail down, were they going to do it? And now
two-thirds of these nominees are authors or otherwise affiliated with
this document, which is a 900-page game plan that they are in the
middle of executing.
Just to take a step back on the tactical side, they really do
understand that a lot of what they are doing is not within the four
corners of the law. They really do understand that. That is why they
are moving so fast, is they are trying to create as much chaos as they
possibly can. They are trying to terrorize the Federal workforce. And I
mean that advisedly.
I have a friend. I won't even mention where he works to protect him,
but he just texted me and said: What do I do, man?
I have known him since I was a kid.
What do I do?
He is just an unbelievably good human being. I don't know how he
votes. I don't know if he votes. But he is terrified.
So when you get this email that says ``Fork in the Road'' and you are
an air traffic controller--and there was a 30-percent vacancy rate of
air traffic controllers last week--and you are encouraged to not show
up for work and take a severance, that is what this is. This isn't some
sort of minor policy dispute; this is arson.
They believe that the Federal Government is an impediment to freedom,
and I think we should have that argument. Like, let's have a fight. I
don't mean physically; I mean, let's have a debate on the Senate floor.
Is the Federal Government an impediment to freedom, and what parts of
it? Because it is easy enough to say, but is it the FAA you would like
to cut? Is it Medicare you would like to cut? Would you like to cut the
Affordable Care Act subsidies? Would you like to cut the Federal
Highway Administration? Would you like to cut the Department of
Defense? Would you like to cut the Small Business Administration? Would
you like to cut disease prevention around the world?
[[Page S560]]
I think where the rubber hits road, right, is that it is very easy--I
mean, look, I am sure plenty of Republicans could talk like me if they
wanted to, and I could talk like Republicans. We sort of understand
each other's points of view. But I just do think that underlying it
all, you know, we are a big, powerful country, the most powerful
country that has ever existed, and in order to maintain our primacy in
the world, in order to be the best in research, in order to be the best
in defense, in order to be the best in innovation, we actually do need
a Federal Government. Whether it is the Patent Office or preventing
Ebola from reaching our shores or making sure we have a strong
military--all of that is in jeopardy if these particular ideologues
have their way.
I mean, these people are actually more ideological than some Members
of Congress, and I think it is pretty scary stuff because they are just
going forward with it as if they have a mandate. Most of the people who
got elected looked their voters square in the eye and said: I don't
know anything about this. That is not my plan. Let me tell you what my
plan is.
But now that all of these people are going--personnel is policy,
remember--into the government to implement these plans, it is ``I, I,
I, I, I'' and then maybe secretly whispering to a Democratic colleague
``You know, I have got some concerns, so keep it up.'' I have gotten a
lot of ``I have got some concerns. Keep it up.''
At some point, people are going to have to stand up and say ``This is
not what we meant.'' Maybe they were pissed off at the Afghanistan
withdrawal. Maybe they were pissed off at the price of eggs or the
price of gasoline. Maybe they were angry and they felt that the
previous President wasn't up to it. Maybe they thought Democrats were
focused on the wrong things. But I don't think, actually, people really
signed up for this. They might have tolerated it as part of a
coalition, but this is not what your average swing voter thought they
were signing up for--the elimination of Affordable Care Act subsidies;
the storming of Federal buildings and relieving all of the senior
staffers of their duties; the defying of temporary restraining orders
issued by Federal judges. I don't think that is what people had in
mind. I think they were pissed. I think they were tired from COVID. I
think they were irritated at the Democratic Party for a number of
reasons. But I don't think people understood that these people had a
plan that was separate and apart from the campaign.
Because Donald Trump--again, very cleverly--said ``I got nothing to
do with that,'' people did not think this was what the campaign was
about, but now that they are in the government, that is exactly what
this was about. They are in the government, and they are acting as if
the people ratified this plan.
People need to understand what was in this plan.
The great challenge confronting a conservative President is
the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of
the executive branch to return power--including power
currently held by the executive branch--to the American
people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare
combination of boldness and self-denial: Boldness to bend or
break the bureaucracy to the presidential will--
Remember that email ``Fork in the Road''?
--and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send
power away from Washington and back to [American] families,
faith communities, local governments, and states.
Fortunately, a President who is willing to lead will find
in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) the levers
necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction
for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. The effectiveness
of those EOP levers depends on the fundamental premise that
it is the President's agenda that should matter to the
departments and agencies that operate under his
constitutional authority and that, as a general matter, it is
the President's chosen advisers who have the best sense of
the President's aims and intentions, both with respect to the
policies he intends to enact and with respect to the
interests that must be secured to govern successfully on
behalf of the American people.
What he is saying is that a President gets elected, and he gets to do
whatever the hell he wants. That is what this is.
FEMA--``The Federal Emergency Management Agency'' should ``be moved
to the Department of the Interior or, if combined with CISA, to the
Department of Transportation.'' That one, I don't even have a smart
comment on other than, like, why? It is not going to more efficient if
you move it under DOT. And what the hell does the Federal Emergency
Management Agency have to do with transportation? They are smart
people, don't get me wrong--very sophisticated, smart people. They do
have a plan. But some of this sounds like dorm room, like, rando
brainstorming. ``Yeah, we should move this over here.'' What does that
even mean? Do you have any idea what FEMA does? Do you know how FEMA
responds in a disaster? Have you ever met anybody whose--look, people
get pissed about the Federal Government all the time, but when a
disaster hits, I have never heard somebody say ``Oh, dammit, FEMA is
here.'' People are pleased that FEMA is there.
I have had my disagreements with FEMA as it relates to the Maui
recovery, but, dammit, when Lahaina burned, they were there. They were
making sure people had food. They were making sure people had medicine.
They were making sure people had a roof over their head. I mean, there
are some Agencies that actually work pretty well and do exactly what
they are supposed to do.
So you see that this isn't about the relative efficacy of any
individual Department because they are literally after them all. It
doesn't matter if they work well, don't work well, are in the right
place, not in the right place; they construct a critique of literally
every single Federal Agency to sort of reduce its legitimacy. Why?
Because they believe in their heart of hearts--and this is similar to,
like, what Rand Paul thinks, truly--that anytime there is any Federal
authority, that means less freedom for an individual. But that is not a
mainstream position. This is not a mainstream document.
(Mr. SCHMITT assumed the Chair.)
The reason I am spending so much time on this is that I don't think
the media has actually read this damn thing, and I think they kind of
like view this as yesterday's news, last year's fight. And there is a
little bit of a sense of: Eh, Democrats--they try to make something
stick. They can never make something stick, so they are talking about
2025 again. I am going to roll my eyes, and blah, blah, blah.
They are implementing this thing. They are actually in the process of
implementing this thing. It is all right here.
FEMA manages all grants for DHS, and these grants have
become pork for states, localities, and special-interest
groups. Since 2002, DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56
billion in preparedness grants.
OK. Preparedness grants are awesome, actually. Talk to any Governor,
Democrat or Republican; talk to any county administrator, mayor,
Democrat or Republican--preparedness grants are awesome. We should
spend $56 billion on preparedness grants. Do you know why? Because we
just passed a $150 billion supplemental emergency appropriations bill
because disasters are getting more severe and more frequent every
year. Last year was the biggest disaster year on record. I think it is
because the climate is changing because we are burning too much fossil
energy. But even if you don't think that, even if you have some magical
other explanation for it, it is certainly a fact that we have more
severe and more frequent disasters everywhere.
And we have weird ones. There has never been a wildfire in the State
of Hawaii anything like what happened in Lahaina. The whole town burned
to the ground--2,200 structures--in not even a whole night, like 3
hours, basically.
Western North Carolina, parts of West Virginia, and Virginia have
flooded. Towns that were literally considered--they call them ``climate
havens.'' So all of the people who try to predict weather patterns say:
This is one of the very few places that is probably safe from a
climate-driven natural disaster. Suddenly, Western North Carolina is
absolutely flattened.
And I feel really bad. And Thom Tillis has been working so hard with
Senator Budd trying to get resources for people in Western North
Carolina. And I feel badly because, frankly, a lot of people have been
to Lahaina, and it was one discreet beautiful town that holds a lot
of--a lot people have a special place in their heart for the town of
Lahaina, and they should. But all these
[[Page S561]]
towns--most people have not been to Western North Carolina. All these
towns are small--500 here, 700 there, 75. It is small. Add it all up.
It is lots and lots and lots of people, and lots and lots and lots of
damage.
So preparedness grants are what they sound like. They help a county
or a State or a community to--when a disaster hits--not get wrecked.
Just as an example--this is not in the preparedness grant--but in the
State of Hawaii, if you put something called a hurricane clip on your
roof, the roof is way less likely to literally fly off, which is
obviously bad for your house but also bad for other houses. That is
money that the State government provides to individuals to just say: Be
prepared.
Why? Because it is super cheap compared to the alternative. It is
super cheap compared to tens of thousands of roofs being ripped off
when a category 4 storm or hurricane hits.
So preparedness grants--I don't know--that is not pork, unless you
have no sense of what people actually need. And that is what this is.
This is a bunch of people on K Street, primarily, in downtown
Washington, DC, in their cubicles, typing up ideas on how wasteful all
this stuff is. This stuff very much matters to communities.
DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56 billion in
preparedness grants . . . President Biden requested more than
$3.5 billion for federal assistance grants.
Again, I don't see the problem.
More than any objective needs, political interests appear
to direct the flow of nondisaster funds.
That is ridiculous. In fact, if that had been the case, I would have
gotten more from the Biden administration.
The principles of federalism should be upheld; these
indicate that states better understand--
That is true. States do better understand their needs in preparing
for a natural disaster. That is actually not the question, because the
way disaster preparedness response and recovery work is that actually
the States and the counties are in charge of their preparedness,
response, and recovery. It is just that, when a tiny little county gets
flattened and the damage is so bad that the people--that the fiscal
resources of that little government--can't handle it, that is when the
Federal Government steps in, not to dictate the recovery but to be a
backstop. I mean, this is what a Federal Government is for. I am
lingering on this one because I think it shows how disconnected these
folks are.
Like I said, this thing is 900 pages, and I really did intend to read
the whole thing, except I found out it was going to be 120 hours. But
you can go Department by Department and sort of know, A, that they
really are trying to do all these things and, B, that they are totally,
totally disconnected from the needs of the people.
You could pick on a few Federal Agencies, and I might shrug my
shoulders and go: You know, they are right. But FEMA? And the idea that
a little county should be in charge of its own disaster response--that
is actually preposterous. What you are saying, then, is that you are on
your own.
That is freedom, to be on your own, to not have the inefficiencies of
the healthcare system masked by a subsidy. You are on your own to not
have FEMA come in and backstop a little town in Maui County or in
California or in West Virginia. You are on your own. Congratulations
with your freedom--the freedom to get kicked off your health insurance;
the freedom to not have that damned Federal Government intervene when
your town was burned to the ground or flooded out; the freedom to make
sure that if there is an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, it is not our
problem.
Sure, it is an international world. Sure, the Marburg virus is also
now spreading in Eastern Africa, in Tanzania. And, sure, it has a 90-
percent morality rate. But you will be so satisfied with all your
freedom.
The modern conservative President's task is to limit,
control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the
American people. This challenge is created and exacerbated by
factors like Congress's decades-long tendency to delegate its
lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies.
That is not true. We are not delegating our lawmaking power to Agency
bureaucracies. What we are doing is establishing policy and
understanding that--say in telecom--that the last thing you want is 100
people arguing about, I don't know, a spectrum auction, right, or the
worthiness of a particular bridge, right? You want experts to determine
some of this. And not that we don't have a bunch of smart people, but
we are supposed to make general policy.
In Federalist [No.] 47, James Madison warned that ``[t]he
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many,
and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.''
Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes to a
significant degree the modern executive branch, which--
whether controlled by the bureaucracy or by the President--
writes federal policy.
The Director must view his job--
Sorry, this is about the OMB Director.
OMB cannot perform its role on behalf of the President
effectively if it is not intimately involved in all aspects
of the White House policy process and lacks knowledge of what
the agencies are doing . . . ensuring that the policy-
formulation procedures developed by the White House to serve
the President include OMB is one of any OMB Director's major
responsibilities. A common meme of those who intend to evade
OMB review is to argue that where ``resources'' are not being
discussed, OMB's participation is optional. This ignores both
OMB's role in all downstream execution--
You can tell this person is like: OMB is everything; everything goes
through OMB--right? That is what this is. It is a fancy way of saying:
No, no, fiscal, nonfiscal, budgetary, nonbudgetary--everything goes
through OMB.
This would be pretty boring stuff if it weren't for the fact that we
are about to vote on an OMB nominee who helped to write this document,
who last week was overseeing a Federal funding freeze--an illegal one--
that was already overturned by the courts. And the White House Press
Secretary was asked about--I forgot what programs were necessary or
popular or sympathetic--and the White House Press Secretary said: Go
talk to Russ Vought.
Here is the problem--two things. At the time, Russ Vought was not
even in the government. He is not a government employee. Imagine that
you have to appeal to him like a friend of the King for mercy: Now, I
know you passed a law, but go talk to Russ Vought. I know that the
Federal law establishes that USAID exists, and it gets roughly $29
billion to distribute across the world--foreign military financing,
economic assistance, development assistance, humanitarian aid. I know
there is a law that says that, but go talk to Russ Vought.
This document tells us what they were up to.
I understand that we lost the argument last year; we did. We lost the
argument. People didn't vote for us--fair enough. Free and fair
election. I want to be very clear: I am very confident in that vote
count. I don't like it, but I am confident in that vote count. I don't
want to say ``happy,'' but I was determined to ratify the electoral
college count.
We lost the argument about Project 2025. It kind of broke through,
but people obviously didn't think it was the main thing. But it is the
main thing now because, as the old saying goes, you campaign in poetry
and you govern in prose.
Another way to say it is: Project 2025? I don't know anything about
that.
Oh, it turns out two-thirds of all of our nominees are very close--
not like adjacent to Project 2025 but authors of it. They wrote whole
sections of it, right?
The White House Press Secretary did training videos for Project 2025.
I don't dislike these people personally. I have never met any of
these people personally.
I want everybody to understand what this project is. This isn't some
random PDF that got uploaded to the internet and everybody ignored it.
This is literally the playbook that they are following.
So I just would encourage staff, the public, Members, the media to
open it back up and see how much it tracks, because if you want to know
what the Trump administration is doing, and if you want to know what
they are about to do next, just open up Project 2025. They are in the
process of implementing this.
The Director must view his job as the best, most
comprehensive approximation of the President's mind--
It is the King's hand, right?
--the best, most comprehensive approximation of the
President's mind--
[[Page S562]]
That seems like a cool job.
--as it pertains to policy agenda, while always being ready
with actual options to effect that agenda with existing legal
authorities and resources.
Well, maybe.
This role cannot be performed adequately if the Director
acts instead as the ambassador of the institutional interests
of OMB and wider bureaucracy. . . . Once its reputation as
the keeper of the ``commander's intent'' is established, then
and only then does OMB have the ability to shape the most
efficient way to pursue its objective.
Externally, the Director must ensure that OMB has
sufficient visibility into deep caverns of agency decision-
making.
I am sure. That is great.
One indispensable statutory tool to that end is to ensure
that policy officials--the Program Associate Directors (PADs)
managing the vast Resource Management Offices (RMOs)--
personally sign what are known as apportionments. In 1870,
Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act to prevent the common
agency practice of spending down all appropriated funding,
creating artificial funding shortfalls that Congress would
have to fill. The law mandated that all funding be allotted
or ``apportioned'' in installments. This process, whereby
agencies come to OMB for allotments of appropriated funding,
is essential to the effective financial stewardship of
taxpayer dollars. OMB can then direct on behalf of a
President the amount, duration, and purpose of any
apportioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse
and ensure consistency with the President's agenda and
applicable laws.
The vast majority of these apportionments were signed by
career officials--
Oh, my God.
--the Deputy Associate Directors (DADs)--until the Trump
Administration placed this responsibility in the hands of the
PADs and thereby opened wide vistas of oversight that had
escaped the attention of policy officials. The Biden
administration subsequently reversed this decision. No
Director should be chosen who is unwilling to restore the
apportionment decision-making to the PADs' personal review,
who is not aggressive in wielding the tool on behalf of the
President's agenda, or who is unable to defend the power
against attacks from Congress.
It should be noted that each of OMB's primary functions,
along with other executive and statutory roles, is carried
out with the help of many essential OMB support offices. The
two most important offices for moving OMB at the will of a
Director are the Budget Review Division and the Office of
the General Counsel. The Director should have a direct and
effective relationship with the head of the BRD and
transmit most instructions through that office because the
rest of the agency is institutionally inclined toward its
direction and responds accordingly. The BRD inevitably
will translate the directions from policy officials to the
career staff, and at every stage, it is obviously vital
that the Director ensure that this translation is an
accurate one.
In addition, many key considerations involved in enacting a
President's agenda hinge on existing legal authorities. The
Director must ensure the appointment of a General Counsel who
is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her ability
to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the
status quo. This is vital within OMB not only with respect to
the adequate development of policy options for the
President's review, but also with respect to agencies that
attempt to protect their own institutional interests and
foreclose certain avenues based on the mere assertion (and
not proof) that the law disallows it or that, conversely,
attempt to disregard the clear statutory commands of
Congress.
In general, the Director should empower a strong Deputy
Director with authority over the Deputy for Management, the
PADs, and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA) to work diligently to break down barriers within OMB
and not allow turf disputes or a lack of visibility to
undermine the agency's principal budget, management, and
regulatory functions. OMB should work toward a ``One OMB''
position on behalf of the President and represent that view
during the various policymaking processes.
Now to budget:
The United States . . . faces an untenable fiscal situation
and owes $31 trillion on a debt that is steadily increasing.
The OMB Director should present a fiscal goal to the
President early in the budget development process to address
the federal government's fiscal irresponsibility. This goal
would help to align the months-long process of developing the
actual proposals for inclusion in the budget. Though some
mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the
President's budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for
setting and enforcing budget policy at federal agencies. The
budget team includes six Resource Management Offices--
And so on. Let me just stop here on the question of debt and
deficits.
So there is a big fight that is about to happen, and it is sort of
playing out in the U.S. House of Representatives, among Republicans
only. The Republicans want to pass a big tax cut, and they want do it
like they did the last tax cut, which is to shovel a bunch of money to
the wealthiest corporations on the planet.
I still remember that, I think, the Chamber of Commerce wanted--I
might be getting the numbers wrong, but I think they were pushing for
like a 24-percent top tax rate, and this Congress gave one that was
even lower than the Chamber of Commerce wanted. Like, they are just
going for it. They are going to shovel money to the wealthiest
corporations to ever walk the planet.
When we got power, we instituted, essentially, a minimum tax so that
billion-dollar corporations would pay at least 15 percent. It generated
a bunch of money, and we were able to use that for beneficial things.
So the problem now is that you have got some legit deficit hawks--you
have got some legit fiscal conservatives--who like tax cuts. But
understand that tax cuts, like, reduce the amount of money coming into
the government. Don't engage in this magical thinking where tax cuts
somehow weirdly generate more money for the government. But you have
got a bunch of people who just want to deliver a tax cut and, like,
paper over the fact that they are blowing up the deficit.
But the last--I forgot what it was called. The TCJA? It was the tax
cut, the Trump tax cuts. And there were multitrillion-dollar increases
in the deficit. And what they are about to do is one of two things.
They might do, like, just goofy accounting and say that continuing
these tax cuts is basically free. Now, there are a bunch of Republicans
in the House who, basically, are saying: No way, no how. We are not
doing that.
The problem is, if you are not doing that and you are not raising
revenue, then you have got to cut, and you have got to cut, and you
have got to cut. And let me tell you something: The USAID budget is not
going to do it because it ain't $29 billion they need to find; it is
$1.5 trillion that they need to find.
If you read the document that Jodey Arrington in the House was
distributing, it was Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, clean
energy tax credits, like--and by the way, you need to do, like, most of
those things in order to find $1.5 trillion in savings.
So you will forgive me if I am somewhat skeptical of these people's
commitments to fiscal discipline, because every time they are in
charge, they blow up the deficits, and they blow them up--look, we did
some spending. I am not going to deny that, right? The Inflation
Reduction Act was basically budget neutral; and I am very proud of that
bill. But during COVID, we, obviously, spent money on a deficit basis.
My own view is that whatever one thinks about debt and deficits, like
when it is a global pandemic and you are trying to prevent people from
not being able to feed their families or pay their rent or pay their
mortgage or buy their groceries or buy their medicine, that it was very
reasonable for us to do deficit spending because we have that ability
to keep people afloat, so we did it.
The truth is that, although we experienced inflation subsequent to
coming out of COVID, we did better than almost any other big economy,
frankly, because we didn't underdo it. You can say we overshot it. I
don't actually think that, but some people who are smart think we
overshot it. But we just decided we are not going to err on the side of
austerity when it is a global pandemic. And then I think it has borne
fruit. We have had a very strong economy for quite a while. It is also
fair to say that prices were and remain incredibly high.
But when these guys get in charge, they are suddenly very concerned
with a tiny, little sliver--0.6 percent, something like that, six-
tenths of 1 percent--of the entire Federal budget, which is USAID, and
they are going to pass massive tax cuts that are going to either blow
up the budget or they are going to find a pay-for.
Now, what does a ``pay-for'' mean? It is just basically--OK, I am
taking away money on this side, and I am going to bring in money on the
other side, right?
There are only two ways to find a pay-for. One is you cut something
you are spending money on. The other is you raise revenue, right? You
raise taxes somewhere else. They are not going to raise taxes, so they
are only
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looking at cuts. The problem is there is actually not enough on the
domestic discretionary side to find $1.5 trillion worth of savings.
They couldn't pass it themselves, and this is why it can never pass in
appropriations bills, because they don't even--like, they can talk
about it, but then when it comes to, like, cutting transportation, they
don't want to do it, right?
But what is--the cataclysm that is coming is either a massive,
budget-busting tax cut for people who never needed it in the first
place, or they are really going to cut Medicare and Medicaid, Social
Security, and the Affordable Care Act. Like, that is the plan.
And I quote:
Though some mistakenly regard it as a . . . paper-pushing
exercise, the President's budget is . . . a powerful
mechanism.
Because the RMOs are institutionally ingrained in nearly
all policymaking and implementation across the executive
branch, they play a critical role in helping the Director to
implement the President's . . . policy agenda. However,
because each RMO is responsible for formulating and
supervising such a wide range of policy details, many
granular but critical decisions are [often] effectively left
to the career professionals.
Like, I want you to understand. Many decisions are left to the career
professionals, and this is like--it is not the whole thing, but this is
a big part of what we are arguing about, right?
Are you OK with career professionals making decisions? I am. That
sounds good to me. I will give you a choice. Forget political party. Do
you want political appointees or career professionals making decisions?
Like, I want the career professionals. It is not to say that a new
President doesn't get to drive policy, but, like, if you have Region 9
of the Federal Highway Administration and they are trying to figure
out, like--I don't know--the stability of the Hanalei Bridge, I don't
want political appointees determining that kind of stuff. I want
experts. I want career professionals.
And that is, like, a really foundational difference between the
parties right now. It is that they believe expertise is being
weaponized against them. They believe that, by virtue of being elected,
you should have monarchical power. They believe that these people in
the Federal Government are--I don't know--woke or something. But I have
met thousands and thousands and thousands of Federal employees at the
shipyard, at Yokota Air Force Base in Japan, in Manila at the Embassy,
in Jordan at a refugee camp, in Honolulu at the harbor. These are some
of the best people I have ever met. I am not kidding. Like, this is
not, like, some political statement. They are just awesome. They care.
Most of them could go make money someplace else. Most of them don't
need this crap. Most of them have dedicated their lives to their
country, and they just got an email saying: Fork in the road.
So I have one simple message to Federal workers: Don't give up. The
law is on your side. They are trying to harass you into leaving your
position. This is a hostile takeover of the Federal Government.
And I say those words advisedly. I promise you I didn't want to land
here in the second week of the Trump administration. I talked to my
staff about this. I said: This guy is a lameduck. He survived a
shooting. He won the popular vote and the electoral college. Sometimes
people age out of their worst behavior. I am not being sarcastic here.
I had a little sliver in my head that said: I want to at least see that
every, like, ``hashtag resistance'' thing was not going to come to
fruition, and here we are in the second week, and it is unlawful as
hell.
And I quote:
It is vital that the Director and his political staff, not
the careerists, drive these offices in pursuit of the
President's actual priorities and not let them set their . .
. agenda based on the wishes of the sprawling ``good
government'' management community in and outside of
government--
That is great. Good government people, damn them--
Many Directors do not properly prioritize the management
portfolio, leaving it to the Deputy for Management, but such
neglect creates purposeless bureaucracy that impedes a
President's agenda--an ``M Train to Nowhere.''
OFPP: This office plays a critical role in leading the
development of new policies and regulations concerning
federal contracting and procurement. Through the Federal
Acquisition Regulatory Council, which is generally chaired by
the OFPP Administrator, the OFPP helps the Director to set a
wide range of policies for all of those who contract with the
executive branch. In the past, those governmentwide
contracting rules have played a key role in helping to
implement the President's policy agenda. This office should
be engaged early and often in OMB's effort to drive policy,
including by obtaining transparency about entities that are
awarded federal contracts and grants and by using government
contracts to push back against woke policies in corporate
America.
You can see how it, like, sort of sounds fine, and then, suddenly,
they are, like--whoa--and push back against woke policies in corporate
America. Like, what the hell has that got to do with anything? And I
don't even know how the Office of Management and Budget is supposed
to--like, what do you care if Coca-Cola is, like--I don't know--pro
queer or something or, like--or, like--Pepsi or--I don't know--like
some--whatever? Like, who cares? NBCUniversal is--like, wants climate
action. Is that important for the Federal Government to have one
opinion or the other about?
And is it proper for the Office of Management and Budget in the
Executive Office of the President to use the fiscal authority of the
United States of America--and this--remember that this guy has this
theory that he is the King's hand. He represents what the President
thinks in all matters, right?
And I remember--I have been a Lieutenant Governor, and I remember my
Governor--a very good friend of mine still--used to say--not for
everything, by the way, but only on specific things. We would be in a
meeting, and he would say: He has all my authority on this.
It was very generous of him. He delegated that specific authority to
the Lieutenant Governor, and then I could represent him.
What this guy is saying is that the OMB Director represents the
President of the United States in all matters and is going to use that
to push back against woke policies in corporate America. Like, that is
not a proper use of Presidential power. It is not a proper view of
Presidential power, right?
First of all, the OMB Director does not represent the President in
all things. That is preposterous. That is the guy who is writing this
who is going ``I am going to be OMB Director. I might as well represent
to all the world that I am all-powerful,'' right? But, also, what the
hell has that got to do with anything?
So you see these guys have a very specific view of the world, and it
is not just like ``I think the government should work this way or that
way''; they view this as a real war. That is what, to me, is so kind of
jarring because, as I talk to Republican colleagues--some of them
probably see me as the enemy, but most of them don't. Most of them just
think I have bad ideas, like I think they have bad ideas. But these
people have a very different view of the American system of government
and what is happening societally.
It is dressed up with a lot of, like, overeducated, white-shoe law
firm language, but they really view the left as, like, an enemy--not as
fellow Americans with bad ideas but the enemy--and they are going to
utilize the power of the Federal Government to go after whatever they
think is woke, right? And we saw it last week. We saw it last week, and
it was so damn sad.
The hardest thing to do and the easiest thing to do in a certain
sense is when you are a public leader and something tragic happens. The
hardest thing to do is to summon the strength to be kind and
inspirational and convey your sense of sorrow without looking so broken
up that you don't lift people up, right? That is kind of hard. It is
also the easiest thing to do because all you have to do is be gracious;
all you have to do is care about people.
The President of the United States is asked: Are you going to visit
the crash site?
He goes: What, you want me to go swimming? Oh, you want me to go
swimming?
To blame a really horrific plane crash--I was right here on the
Senate floor giving remarks when I started to learn what happened. The
Republican Cloakroom, the nonpartisan staff--everybody was just totally
wrecked. And the President of the United States blamed wokeness or DEI
diversity.
I want everybody to understand what is going on here. They dress it
up a bit, but they think that is the problem.
[[Page S564]]
They think that is the problem. They think there are a bunch of people
walking around like me or whatever going ``woke, woke, woke, woke.'' I
just want things to work well. I just want people to have
opportunities. I want, when a disaster hits, for a community to be as
prepared as possible. I want, when a disaster hits, for FEMA to be on
the scene. I want our roads and highways to work properly. I want a
strong defense. I want, to the extent that China is engaging in the
Belt and Road Initiative--and everybody in the U.S. Senate talks about:
``Wow, China is so smart. They have this Belt and Road Initiative, they
are doing all these economic partnerships, and they are winning friends
all over the world. We should do something like that.''
We are doing something like that. It is called the U.S. Agency for
International Development. It is USAID. We have it. Maybe you think it
is not working well. Fine. Let's work on it. But we are marveling at
this thing that we already invented, that we already have, that we
already do.
So I just want us all to take a breath and understand that this is
either in the mainstream or it is not. This is either what we are doing
or it is not.
We have a vote coming up on Wednesday and probably Thursday on Mr.
Russ Vought. I have never met him. I don't think I have ever met him. I
knew his deputy. I actually got along with his deputy. He is clearly
smart. He clearly has a point of view. But, I mean, he is the Project
2025 guy. That is no longer in dispute.
My main point tonight is for everybody to get it through their heads:
We are no longer arguing about whether they are doing Project 2025.
They are doing it. They are doing it. They are implementing it. They
have the playbook. Everything you have seen in the last 2 weeks is what
they told us they were going to do.
This is not just to establish an ``I told you so.'' It is very
unsatisfying in politics to do ``I told you so.'' Nobody likes it.
Nobody likes it. It is to ask the public: Is this what you thought you
were getting? Maybe you thought you were going to get a disrupter.
Maybe you just wanted to poke, you know, the Democratic Party in the
eye because you were pissed off about I don't know what--the price of
something or Gaza or whatever.
Look, people vote for you or against you for their own reasons, not
yours. So I respect the voters for electing this man. I just don't
think the voters--even the ones who elected this man--had any idea that
this thing was going to be implemented and implemented so aggressively
and so unlawfully.
You have places all around the country that codified a woman's right
to choose and voted for Donald Trump. You have places in this country
that legalized medical cannabis or cannabis generally and then voted
for Donald Trump. You have places that voted to increase the minimum
wage and voted for Donald Trump. So people voted for Donald Trump not
because of these policies; they voted for Donald Trump because they
didn't think he was going to do it.
Honestly, I know people--I mean, look, in the first Trump round, I
didn't have very many buddies who voted for Trump. In this last round,
I had a few. I didn't even ask because it would have been a little bit
of a strain on our fantasy football relationships and our text strings
and all the rest of it, but I could tell. And it is because they didn't
think he was going to do any of these things.
I just want everybody to understand he is doing them all, and he is
doing them rapidly, and he is doing at least some of them illegally.
We are going to have more to say about this over the next couple of
days, but I just want everybody to understand that this is a marker.
This is what they are doing. They are implementing Project 2025, and
Mr. Russ Vought is the head of this thing. According to the document
itself--according to the document itself--he views this job--which,
let's be honest, nobody knows who the OMB Director is, right? Nobody
knows who the OMB Director is. Nobody even knows what OMB is. But that
is why this thing is so important, is that this guy has decided that
this is the document that is governing how the Trump administration is
going forward, and this guy has a very specific view of this job, which
is that everything goes through OMB. It is the consolidating place for
Presidential power. He represents the President in all things.
We are getting very, very close to this person being able to realize
every single aspect of Project 2025. Some of it--by the way, what they
are doing with USAID is even worse than the document. They actually
call for reform of USAID in this document; what they are doing is
actually eliminating the Department.
Mr. SCHUMER. I am just going to ask the gentleman to yield for a
question.
Well, we have seen just this shadow government sort of trying to
change America inside out, run the show, and, as you said, put power in
one man, not with the usual checks and balances that we have known for
America and that have existed through Democratic and Republican
administrations.
My first question is, Has the gentleman from Hawaii seen anything
like what they did with USAID in terms of just totally eliminating it,
being cruel to the people who work there, not understanding the
security implications to the country, and just coming in and just
shutting down the whole place? Has he ever seen anything like that in
all the years we have had in American history, even?
Mr. SCHATZ. No. And I thank the Democratic leader for his leadership
on this.
I will just say, I think the idea of getting rid of USAID is a
radical one and a wrong one, but that is actually not what we are
arguing about. They stormed into the offices and purged the staff and
took over the servers and, we do think, entered the SCIFs. I mean, this
is the kind of thing that, if you read about it in the newspaper, it
would sound like it was in a country that was falling apart.
Mr. SCHUMER. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. SCHATZ. Yes.
Mr. SCHUMER. And it is similar. We see it repeated in place after
place after place--when DOGE came into the Treasury Department and said
they are going to control all of the funding and who is getting paid,
what Social Security payments and Medicare payments and so much else
that goes out--again, isn't this unparalleled, what we have seen?
Mr. SCHATZ. It truly is. I thank the leader. It is absolutely
unparalleled. The idea that someone from DOGE--we don't even really
know who it is--basically barged their way in, had a very contentious
negotiation with the Treasury Secretary, and now they have access to
the Federal payments database--they have no expertise. There are only
five people in the Federal Government who have this kind of access, and
somebody was just granted it--
Mr. SCHUMER. They have gotten chosen without any checks or balances,
without ever coming before the Senate, without anything else, and they
have huge power. People's privacy is at risk. But, also, we don't even
know if they have made protections, so that China or Russia or some
other country could look at all this information and use it, and then
the next step could well be even worse. They could just decide ``I will
cut this. I will cut that. I will cut this. We are finding something
wrong with it'' and come right in. I mean, this is just outrageous.
And to boot, we used to have some check called the IG, the inspector
general, who would be in a Department and say: You are doing something
wrong; you shouldn't do it. Isn't it true that they have eliminated
this IG?
So this is virtually unchecked power by a small group of people, and
no one knows who they are, what they believe in, what they are doing.
It could have huge consequences and hurt average working people. This
isn't something just, you know, up in government, two parties fighting;
this could hurt average American families who get Social Security, who
get Medicaid, who are veterans. In issue after issue after issue where
the Federal Government is involved, you could find just decimation.
Mr. SCHATZ. It is true. And the firing of the IGs was not just a
random, like, ``I don't like those guys'' kind of a firing; it is a
precursor to corruption. They literally got rid of the watchdogs, and
then they stormed the building. I just want everybody to understand
that.
The leader is exactly right. It is OMB, and it is IG. So a lot of
people
[[Page S565]]
out there in the public are like ``I can't sort this all out.'' Think
of this it way: They got rid of the watchdogs, and then they stormed
the building and took control of the servers and the data.
Mr. SCHUMER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, if you
remember, for instance, say a group that gets veterans' healthcare, and
all of a sudden, they said: The money is not being spent right. We are
cutting it off.
You almost have no recourse unless we get rid of this.
As I may have mentioned to my friend from Hawaii, the leader in the
House Hakeem Jeffries and I will be introducing legislation to undo
this, and we are going to fight like the devil to get this undone
because this is just a crisis from one end of America to the other. It
is this shadow government of people. We don't know who they are, what
they believe in, and they have just come and stormed in. It is
outrageous and dangerous.
Will the gentleman agree with those two assessments?
Mr. SCHATZ. Yes, absolutely. And I think that is one of the things
that everyone has to wrap their mind around, is that you might have
voted for Donald Trump for whatever set of reasons, but I don't think
you signed up for a bunch--it is not just that billionaires are
influencing the government--that would be one thing, but it wouldn't be
that unusual--but billionaires are in charge of the mechanics of the
government. That is different. That is very scary stuff.
Mr. SCHUMER. And we don't even know if these billionaires have any
understanding of how a feeding program works, how Medicaid works, how a
veterans program works, how we fund the police, how we help our
firefighters--almost no understanding; just with the idea ``Oh, we want
to slash''--which was in DOGE and, I think, in Project 2025--``$2
trillion. We don't care how, where, or when we get there, who it hurts.
We just want to do it'' because very wealthy people don't want to pay
taxes, and so they just want to cut spending. But the spending is not
just wasteful spending; it is things that help American families day in
and day out.
One of their other proposals--I love this one--is to get rid of--
privatize Fannie and Freddie. They are the people who give lower
mortgages. Because there is a government guarantee, there is a lower
mortgage rate. So many younger families really want to buy a home. They
can't because it is expensive. This will make it even more expensive.
You go issue after issue after issue with Project 2025, and then you
look at the power these five unknown people will have over the entire
budget, many of them trying to implement 2025--and this is the way they
do it--and it is frightening.
Mr. SCHATZ. It is really frightening. And I think about last week
before the Federal funding freeze was deemed unlawful and suspended.
People couldn't get their VA home loans.
Mr. SCHUMER. Yeah.
Mr. SCHATZ. We have all had that moment where you are like: OK. It is
closing day. And the VA home loan office was not available for you to
execute on your loan.
Mr. SCHUMER. In New York, the Medicaid portal was shut down. People
who desperately needed Medicaid, needed to get some information and get
some help, were told to go home. Now they have put it back up, but who
knows when they will shut it down again.
Mr. SCHATZ. Yeah. Look, I think our job over the next couple of
days--and the leader has been very strong on this--is to point out
that, look, I have never seen a floor fight over the OMB Director. And
there is a reason for that. It is because that is usually some
nonpartisan job. And they might have--they are important. You want them
to be good at it.
But this guy views OMB as a consolidated locus of power on behalf of
the President to fight woke or whatever.
Mr. SCHUMER. I would say he would use it as a bludgeon, as a
consolidated bludgeon, when he can just cut, cut, cut, and hurt people
in so many different ways, you can't even count them.
And I am so glad that we had--and the Democrats--every Democrat who
was here tonight voted against Vought. But every Republican voted for
him. And people have to realize that they are voting for the guy who
said what he would do in Project 2025, hurt all of your constituents if
you are in a red State, a blue State, a purple State. And they are
going along with it--going along with it. It is amazing. So I really
thank my colleague for all the good work and the talk he has given
here. And I wanted to come out and lend some support and say ``right
on,'' and we are going to keep fighting.
Mr. SCHATZ. We are not done, but I yield the floor.
____________________