    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S1031-S1037]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                             Budget Reconciliation

      Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am down here on the floor this afternoon
    with my colleague Senator Kaine from Virginia and the ranking member of
    the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, to talk about the spending and
    tax bill that is coming before the Congress, driven by Republicans and
    the Trump administration. Whether it is one bill or two bills, it
    doesn't really matter. It is the centerpiece of Donald Trump's economic
    agenda.
      It is really important to talk about the impacts that this spending
    and tax package will have on the American public. Well, there will be
    some new spending for defense and some new spending on immigration
    policy. The heart of this spending and tax package will be familiar to
    many Americans because they remember it from 2017, during the first
    Trump administration.
      The heart of this Republican economic proposal is a massive tax cut
    for the very, very wealthy and for corporations and, this time, not
    borrowed to be paid back later by middle-class taxpayers. This time, it
    is paid for by immediate cuts to some of the programs that regular
    ordinary Americans, many frail seniors, depend on, like the Medicaid
    Program.
      Just for a little bit of context, it does appear to a lot of
    Americans that this whole thing feels a bit like a scam. This is a
    government that is being handed over to the billionaire class in order
    to operationalize government to make money for the very, very wealthy
    and for the rest of us to pay the price.
      The cost of gas is going up, the cost of groceries continues to go
    up. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his billionaire crowd are doing better
    than ever. Just a couple examples: Since Elon Musk, the richest man in
    the universe, has taken control of the government with Donald Trump,
    the value of his business has gone up by 30 percent. Tesla stock has
    gone up by 30 percent. Of course, it has. Of course, it has, because
    Elon Musk is now able to get inside the government to arrange things to
    benefit his companies.
      For instance, the NLRB is gone. They fired the Democrat on the board.
    He is unable to muster a quorum. It is not coincidental that the NLRB
    had several open investigations of Tesla.
      Our foreign policy has been monetized to support people like Elon
    Musk. It just broke yesterday that Vietnam is really worried about
    Trump's tariff policy, and so the way they are going to try to get some
    help from the Trump administration is to give some help to Elon Musk's
    businesses; that they are going to get Elon Musk a Starlink contract.
    And they believe that by doing that, they will be able to get help from
    the Trump administration on tariffs.
      So Elon Musk and the billionaires are able to operationalize and
    monetize our foreign policy. Of course, Elon Musk has access to the
    data, especially the data inside Treasury that is going to help him
    gain an advantage on his competitors, whether he is trying to set up a
    new tax payment system or he is trying to set up a new universal
    payment capacity on Twitter. So it is not shocking that the value of
    Musk's business has gone way up because he now controls the Federal
    Government in a way that could benefit his business.
      But Trump is doing very well, too. He made $100 million off of a meme
    coin--a meme coin where we have no idea as Americans who is buying it.
    It is very likely foreign actors trying to influence the administration
    who could secretly buy the meme coin and then whisper to Donald Trump
    that ``we got your back when you needed it.'' Also, $40 million from
    Amazon for a new documentary of the First Lady. Legal settlements from
    ABC News, Meta, and X--all, shockingly, settled with cash payments to
    the Trump family after the election.
      And the monetization of foreign policy for Donald Trump, just like
    the monetization of foreign policy for Elon Musk. News this week that
    the PGA and the Saudis were meeting with the President to try to settle
    their disputes. It is not coincidental to the fact that Donald Trump is
    in business with one of those golf leagues.
      So it just appears to many Americans like this administration puts
    the billionaires, the corporations, those

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    that are loyal and friendly to Donald Trump first and all the rest of
    us second.
      The apex of this effort to turn our government and government policy
    over to the billionaires is this tax cut. Again, this tax and spending
    package has a lot of elements to it, but the centerpiece is a tax cut
    that is 852 times bigger for the top 1 percent of earners in this
    country than for low-income families. That is a number that is a little
    hard to get your head wrapped around, so I just wanted to put it on
    this chart. That is what 852 times looks like.
      The rates go down for folks who make more than $600,000 a year, but
    they don't move for folks who make under $600,000 a year. I mean, they
    are not trying to hide what is going on here. Rates are coming down if
    you make a whole ton of money. Rates are staying the same if you are
    middle income or lower income.
      Another way to tell this story is that if you are in the top 1
    percent, your average tax cut is about $70,000. That is a lot of money.
    That is a lot of money. But if you are making $30,000 a year--and there
    are a whole bunch of people in this country that are making $30,000 a
    year, especially when Republicans refuse to support the minimum wage
    going above $7.25 an hour. If you make $30,000 a year, you are going to
    get about $130. $70,000 if you are doing really, really well; $130 for
    everybody else. That doesn't make sense. Why do people making $600,000
    a year need $70,000 while only 100 bucks goes to everybody else?
      The corporations are in the mix here too. They came to Congress in
    2017 and said: We need a lower tax rate. And then Trump and his
    Republican allies gave them a tax rate even lower than they asked. And
    they made this claim that all this extra money going to the
    corporations was going to be passed down to workers. They had a
    specific claim that it was going to result in $4,000 more in income to
    every American, because that is how trickle-down economics works in the
    brains of Republicans. You give a whole bunch of money to corporations,
    and they are going to be generous, and they are going to give that
    money to workers in extra income.
      Well, we now have 8 years of experience since that first tax cut that
    they are looking to reauthorize. We know what happened. The study shows
    that it wasn't $4,000 of extra income; it wasn't $3,000; it wasn't
    $2,000; it wasn't $1,000; it wasn't $500; it wasn't $400; it wasn't
    even $200. It was zero. The tax cut resulted in an increase in salary
    to those people who worked for those corporations that got the big tax
    cut. The salary increase was zero.
      It is a scam. Trickle-down economics is a scam. When you put this
    much money into the hands of the wealthy, it does not trickle down to
    everybody else. When you give corporations those enormous tax cuts, it
    does not trickle down to everybody else. It stays in the pockets of the
    wealthy. The corporations use it in order to do stock buybacks, in
    order to inflate CEOs' salaries. It just separates the rich from the
    poor. It is a scam. It is a scam.
      The last thing I will say before turning it over to Senator Kaine is
    that this version of the giant billionaire and corporate tax cut is so
    much worse than the first version. It is still a tax cut for the
    wealthy that is 852 times bigger than for folks at the bottom of the
    income scale, but whereas in 2017, it was all borrowed--and that is bad
    because that money has to be recouped somehow.
      That means that everybody eventually is either going to pay higher
    interest rates or have their taxes raised or their services cut to
    service all that debt--trillions of dollars' worth of debt. This time,
    Republicans are contemplating not borrowing the money but instead just
    taking it from poor people and middle-class people--just take it from
    them to give it to the billionaires and the corporations.
      The cut that they are contemplating in the House of Representatives
    is a cut to Medicaid. Now, they are also thinking about cuts to
    Medicare, your parents' primary health insurance. They are
    contemplating cuts to the Affordable Care Act. That is the program that
    insures 20 million working Americans, but they are really zeroed in on
    Medicaid.
      They are contemplating such devastating cuts to Medicaid that it
    would eviscerate the program. And maybe you can say: Well, I mean, it
    is Medicaid for poor people, and that is not me. Well, I think we have
    an obligation to try to make sure that everybody in this country--even
    poor children--have access to healthcare, but Medicaid also pays for
    your parents' or your neighbors' nursing home costs.
      If you cut the amount of money that they are talking about out of the
    Medicaid Program, you are literally talking about nursing homes
    shutting down and seniors being out on the street. That is not
    hyperbole. That is what happens if you make these massive cuts to
    Medicaid.
      So what they are talking about this year is not just running up a
    credit card bill in order to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy, they
    are literally talking about putting seniors out on the street in order
    to fund the tax cut for the wealthy.
      The whole thing feels like a scam: the favors being given to
    billionaires that are inside the government; the tax cut that benefits
    the very, very wealthy at the expense of everybody else; the cutting of
    services that help regular people in order to finance the tax cut.
      And whether it ends up being one bill or two bills, the centerpiece
    is still the centerpiece: the transfer of resources and wealth from
    regular people, from the middle class, from poor people to the very,
    very wealthy, the millionaire and billionaire class, the corporations.
      So we are going to tell this story here on the Senate floor, all over
    the country, while this bill moves its way through the process, either
    as one bill or two bills, because regardless of the process, the story
    is still the same: a scam to take money from regular people to make the
    lives of the rich and powerful even more lavish.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from Virginia.
      Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to follow my colleague from
    Connecticut to talk about the impending business before the Senate, the
    2025 budget resolution.
      My colleague talked about this discussion and the Republican proposal
    as a scam. I am going to use a slightly different term, but I bet we
    all know a ``Trojan horse''--a Trojan horse. We all know the story
    about the Battle of Troy when the invaders created this beautiful gift
    of a horse that they then gave to those in the besieged city, but it
    turned out it wasn't a gift. It was an agent of destruction, and that
    is what this budget deal is.
      If the Republican majorities here and at the House cared about the
    budget, we would have an appropriations deal. There was an
    appropriations deal on the table to be taken at the end of the last
    calendar year, but after the election result, the Republican majority
    just decided, we don't want to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate.
    We will kick it into next year, and we will come up with a budget deal
    that we write.
      We would have had an appropriations deal before the end of last year.
    We would have an appropriations deal by March 14. Instead, what
    Democrats are hearing is that the Republicans don't want to do the
    traditional appropriations budget. They want to do a continuing
    resolution, which would be very harmful.
      If my Republican colleagues cared about the budget, they would
    complain about Elon Musk and Donald Trump unilaterally violating past
    appropriations deals that we all voted for and that the President
    signed. If they cared about the budget, that would matter to them
    because a deal is a deal, especially a deal that we voted on.
      Instead, my Republican colleagues are quietly acquiescing to Head
    Start Programs closing, to community health clinics closing or reducing
    services, to veterans hospitals and clinics grappling with serious
    staff shortages.
      Why would my colleagues quietly acquiesce to those kinds of
    violations of appropriations bills you voted for if you cared about the
    budget? This discussion is a Trojan horse. The advertised purposes of
    the bill that is pending before the Senate now are twofold: border
    security and defense.
      Let me take defense first as a member of the Armed Services
    Committee. Do you need to use reconciliation to do defense spending? We
    not only do hundreds of billions of dollars a year in defense spending
    in a bipartisan way, but

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    twice in the last calendar year, we did supplemental appropriations to
    defense, once in April as part of a supplemental security deal and once
    at the end of calendar year 2024 as part of a continuing resolution.
      We spent 850 billion, and we added to it twice with a bipartisan
    vote. You don't need reconciliation for that. You don't need
    reconciliation to find spending on border security. I have been here
    since 2013. We did a border security bill that was bipartisan that
    spent money in this Chamber. The House Republican majority killed it.
    In 2018, we did a bipartisan border deal in this body that spent tens
    of billions of dollars on border security. President Trump urged
    everyone to vote against it.
      My colleague from Connecticut played a key role in a tough bipartisan
    border security deal just last year. President Trump said vote against
    it. All of those bills had significant budgetary resources to invest in
    border security. Donald Trump and House Republicans opposed them.
      So if there is a track record of being able to do defense spending in
    a bipartisan way, border security spending in a bipartisan way, then
    why are we claiming--why are my Republican colleagues claiming that
    this reconciliation bill is about those two items? It is not what it is
    about. My colleagues have done a good job of explaining it.
      This is about an effort to dramatically cut spending programs that
    support everyday Virginians and everyday Americans and then to take
    those dollars and use them to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest
    Americans and the biggest corporations, taking from people who rely
    upon community health clinics, rely upon Medicaid, rely upon student
    loans, taking those dollars and then using them to fund tax cuts for
    the wealthy.
      My colleague from Connecticut talked in particular about the fixation
    that Republicans have had in slashing Medicaid. We saw it in 2017. The
    Republican priority during Donald Trump's first year was to kill the
    Affordable Care Act, but it went much further than just killing the
    Affordable Care Act.
      Republicans made attack on the core of the Medicaid Program a key
    element, and that is why they ended up losing on the floor of the
    Senate in one of the most dramatic votes I have ever participated in.
    Medicaid is about our neighbors and parents in nursing homes.
      Medicaid pays for more than half of the births in this country. The
    hospitals are reimbursed by Medicaid. Fifty percent of the Medicaid
    budget goes to children--I am sorry. Fifty percent of Medicaid
    recipients are children. Only 20 percent of the budget of Medicaid goes
    to kids, but 50 percent of the recipients.
      When you go after Medicaid, you are going after folks with
    disabilities. You are going after our parents and grandparents in
    nursing homes. You are going against kids. You are going against low-
    income mothers delivering children in American hospitals.
      The tax cuts for the wealthy are not necessarily part of the proposal
    that is before us in the Senate right now, but the House GOP has given
    away the game. The big beautiful bill that is being urged on both House
    and Senate Republicans by the Vice President and the President contains
    the tax cuts for the wealthy that my colleague Senator Murphy has
    described.
      We need to have $4\1/2\ trillion in tax cuts, and just as was the
    case in 2017, they will go to folks at the top. In fact, almost half of
    the benefits of these tax cuts would go to the top 5 percent of
    taxpayers. That is the end result of the process of reconciliation that
    we are starting on today.
      So I would just say: Let's be candid about what is going on here. We
    can't trick people. We can't convince people, oh, this is about border
    security and national defense. We have got a demonstrable bipartisan
    track record to be able to advance in those areas.
      The people that are out there whom the GOP are trying to trick in
    this effort, they are the ones in communities that are complaining
    about Head Start Programs being closed. They are the ones that see
    health clinics reduced or clinics laid off. They are the ones that are
    getting punched because they are veterans.
      The indiscriminate layoffs that are being pushed by the DOGE brothers
    and President Trump hit veterans. Thirty percent of the Federal
    workforce are veterans. It is only about 3 percent of the civilian
    workforce, but if you do mass and indiscriminate layoffs of Federal
    employees, whom do you hurt disproportionately? You are hurting people
    who have served this country and are entitled to respect and gratitude.
    They don't deserve to be treated, in Donald Trump's words, as losers in
    the way that they are being treated with these indiscriminate layoffs.
      These are the people who are being affected thus far by these
    policies of the President. So that is what we are fighting about, and
    that is whom we are fighting for.
      We are going to offer amendments during vote-arama to clarify what is
    going on to try to protect Medicaid and children's nutrition and other
    safety net programs, and we will battle to try to convince some
    Republicans to join us in those amendments.
      But let's just be clear about what this is: It is a Trojan horse-
    effort to amass savings off the backs of everyday people to pour into
    tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don't need help. We need to
    resist it in every way we can. I look forward to joining my colleagues
    in doing so.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
      Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues Senator
    Murphy and Senator Kaine for very strong speeches, and I look forward
    very much to working with them in this fight.
      My colleagues have raised a host of important issues that I want to
    touch on, and I am going to start with the big picture of what is going
    on in America as the Senate careens toward a budget showdown.
      Donald Trump, as of today, seems to consider himself royalty. Elon
    Musk seems to believe he calls the shots. They are trampling over the
    Constitution and violating laws as they try to rip apart so much of
    what makes America special, and they are clearing the way for financial
    predators and financial scammers to steal from innocent Americans.
      They are gutting medical research. Days after the deadliest airplane
    crash on American soil in decades and when more plane crashes seem to
    be happening by the hour, they fire hundreds of people who work on
    airline safety.
      They are slashing the university system, which is the envy of the
    world and a huge source of economic growth and opportunity in America.
    They fired hundreds of people who manage our nuclear arsenal because
    whomever in DOGE ordered those fired didn't seem to have any idea what
    the Department of Energy does.
      The national parks closed because they don't have enough staff, and
    that is going to be a disaster for rural communities that depend on
    tourism. Farmers missed payments they are owed. Nobody I know voted for
    this chaos.
      Now, I heard firsthand from Oregonians this past weekend at townhall
    meetings. Thousands of Oregonians, according to the press, were in
    attendance. They shared their real fears and legitimate concerns about
    how this slash-and-burn approach we are seeing from Trump and Musk is a
    recipe for a lower quality of life in America and people will lose
    their lives as a result of these attacks on healthcare and medical
    research.
      Unfortunately, there has barely been a peep from Republicans. In
    fact, I have heard more support for Trump than criticism of this
    lawlessness from the other side, and it is business as usual here in
    the Senate.
      What is so important to my colleagues on the other side that they are
    letting Trump and Musk get away with this destruction? It is another
    round of breaks for billionaires and big corporations. That,
    colleagues, is the Republican prize at the end of this process. That is
    Trump's plan to pay back his supporters who bought the election for
    him.
      Now for some specifics. The centerpiece of the plan is extending his
    2017 tax law at a cost of more than $4 trillion. Ultrawealthy
    individuals who rake in millions each year would get tax breaks of
    hundreds of thousands of dollars. Families who live paycheck to
    paycheck, as my colleagues have been talking about this afternoon,
    would be

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    lucky to get enough to cover groceries for a week. What an outrageous
    imbalance.
      Trump and Republicans want typical Americans to be satisfied with
    peanuts compared to the growing fortunes of Elon Musk and Trump's other
    billionaire donors, and it is not just a bunch of extensions. Trump
    wants even more breaks for big, profitable corporations. Senate
    Republicans want new giveaways to the ultrawealthy.
      How would it be paid for? By booting tens of millions of Americans
    off their health insurance, increasing child hunger, laying off
    hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers, and raising the cost of
    living here.
      The Republican chair of the House Budget Committee had a whole list
    of destructive proposals a few weeks ago. Dozens of pages long, item
    after item, it looked like the kind of plan you would design if your
    goal was to wipe out the middle class in America and push tens of
    millions of families into poverty.
      But this was a real document from a Republican committee chair. A
    couple of lowlights stuck out to us on the Senate Finance Committee.
    Trump and Republicans want to take a wrecking ball to the Medicaid
    Program. It is a devastating prospect for tens of millions of
    Americans, and I heard about it in Oregon all this weekend.
      Medicaid pays for two out of three nursing home beds. Where do
    American families turn when nursing homes no longer accept Medicaid due
    to these Republican cuts? What my colleagues are saying is who is going
    to take care of our parents and our grandparents?
      Medicaid covers 30 million kids. That includes half of all American
    kids with special needs. Cuts to Medicaid will set these kids back for
    the rest of their lives. Hospitals, nursing homes, other providers in
    rural communities all over America barely hang on. They depend on
    Medicaid. If the Republican cuts go through, rural America is going to
    become a healthcare desert.
      The clean energy tax cuts, which I worked on for a full decade, are
    another disaster in the making. Republicans are looking at wiping out a
    host of tax incentives for clean energy to pay for a big chunk of their
    handouts to the top.
      Nobody is rooting harder for Republicans to succeed on this than the
    Chinese Government. That is because if Republicans follow through and
    gut the clean energy tax credits that we passed in 2022, it will be a
    total surrender to China on clean energy. Hundreds of thousands of
    American jobs would be destroyed. Energy prices will jump, and that
    will hurt working families and small businesses.
      The jobs and investment we have attracted to America over the last
    few years, that goes to China and other countries that win the clean
    energy arms race at our expense.
      If you look at that document from the House Budget Committee chair,
    it is one item after another that is going to clobber typical families
    and communities across the land. They are looking at a tax increase on
    single moms. They are considering a tax increase that will raise the
    cost of owning a home. They are considering cuts to infrastructure that
    will hurt local economies. They are even considering taxing
    scholarships for kids looking to go to college.
      The only people who won't feel the pain of these hardships are the
    ultrawealthy, people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. There is a game
    of hide the ball happening here in the Senate, with this first
    resolution that hides all the unpopular plans in the second bill that
    comes down the pike.
      Over in the House of Representatives, they are trying to cram it all
    into one bill. In the end, the process here in Congress won't really
    matter to the people whose lives are made worse by the painful cuts
    Republicans are preparing to inflict on the country.
      The reality is, this agenda goes hand in hand with the lawlessness we
    are seeing from Elon Musk and Donald Trump. My view is, this amounts to
    pillaging the government. They are breaking vital programs at Agencies,
    and there is no sign they care about the people who are hurt so greatly
    along the way.
      Donald Trump even admits out in the open that it is causing pain--his
    words, not mine. And here in the Senate, Republicans are getting ready
    to add to the cuts, and they are getting ready to give even more tax
    handouts to the top: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the billionaire
    donors who support them.
      As my colleagues have said this afternoon so eloquently, we are going
    to shine a light on this floor on the destructive agenda of the
    Republicans as the debate continues. The American people do not support
    what is happening here in the Senate or what Donald Trump and Elon Musk
    are doing to their government. We are going to do everything we can to
    stop that. I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
      Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I was here to speak on the across-the-
    board cuts that the Forest Service is facing in Colorado, but I was so
    glad to hear my colleagues from Connecticut and Virginia and Oregon
    talking about this tax bill. I want to add just a couple of thoughts to
    it.
      First of all, I appreciate so much what they were saying because the
    American people are struggling, and it is not just with inflation. It
    is with an economy that, for 50 years, has worked incredibly well for
    the wealthiest people in our country and hasn't worked for anybody
    else.
      It used to be the American dream. That is how we knew our country was
    working--when, if you worked hard, you could get ahead. Even more
    important to most Americans, when you worked hard, you knew your kids
    were going to get ahead. And we are at a moment in American history,
    for the first time, when our kids, people that are 30 years old, are
    going to earn--half of them are going to earn--less than their parents.
    And people all over the country are looking at it and saying: That is
    not the America that I recognize. That is not the American dream.
      And it is not the American dream.
      Today, in the United States, the top 1 percent of people own 20
    percent of our income. The bottom 50 percent own 10 percent. The bottom
    50 percent own half of what the top 1 percent have.
      Some people might say: Oh my God, that is just a natural feature of
    the way our economy works or the way capitalism works.
      It is not, even in this country. Twenty-five years ago, that wasn't
    true; it was reversed. Twenty-five years ago, the bottom 50 percent
    earned twice as much income as the top 1 percent. And that has flipped
    since Ronald Reagan came here with his trickle-down economics that my
    colleague from Connecticut was talking about, with a tax policy that
    was all about rewarding the wealthiest people and the folks who were
    outsourcing jobs from the United States of America.
      And now Donald Trump is here to do it again, as he did when he was
    President the last time. He went to the Mahoning Valley in Ohio, after
    passing that tax bill, and said: You are welcome for your middle-class
    tax cut.
      But 50 percent of it went to the wealthiest 5 percent in our country.
    He gave a little tip, as the Senator from Connecticut was saying, to
    working people in our country to obscure the fact that what he was
    doing was giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people.
      And I will finish just by saying this. Sometimes people say: That is
    not surprising, Michael. They are the richest people. So maybe they pay
    the most in taxes; maybe they should get the biggest benefit.
      The reality is very different because somebody is going to have to
    pay for this bill. It is either going to be the cuts that they are
    going to make to Medicaid, which are cuts to a program for healthcare
    coverage for people in this country that are poor or working poor, or
    they are not going to pay for it at all.
      And if they don't pay for it at all, the people who are going to have
    to pay for it are the kids of police officers and firefighters all over
    our country who are going to have to pay the debt that is incurred by
    Donald Trump's tax bill, which is what happened the last time.
      The chairman will remember that. They didn't pay for it the last
    time. And when they didn't pay for it the last time, every working
    person in America is having to pay for it because of the interest rates
    that are on our national debt.
      My friend from Virginia was the mayor of Richmond. This tax policy is

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    one--and I know my colleague from California wants to go; so I am going
    to stop. But this tax policy is equivalent to the mayor of Richmond
    waking up one morning and saying: I am going to borrow more money than
    we have ever borrowed in the city's history.
      And I would say to him: I am worried about that. What are you going
    to do with that money? I am worried about what you might spend it on.
    Tell me what you are going to spend it on.
      Are you going to spend it on parks?
      No.
      Are you going to spend it on infrastructure?
      No.
      Are you going to spend it on mental health, which we desperately need
    all over the country?
      No.
      Early childhood education, K-through-12 education, the university in
    our community?
      No, no, no.
      What are you going to do with all this money that you are borrowing?
      Well, I am going to give it to the two richest neighborhoods in
    Richmond, VA, and I am going to expect that it will trickle down to
    everybody else in Richmond.
      You would be run out on a rail for doing that, which is why no mayor
    in America has ever done that. No Governor in America has ever done
    that. And Donald Trump is about to try to do it for the second time--
    for the second time.
      And I hope that people in this body won't be fooled by it, because we
    saw it before.
      And we could get a big bipartisan vote in this Senate to begin to
    reestablish a set of economic rules that is actually lifting the
    fortunes of the vast majority of people in this country, instead of
    giving these tax cuts to the people in America who need it least.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
      Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, it is a great day to be a billionaire in
    America; for the rest of us, not so much. Egg prices are the highest
    they have ever been. Rent is through the roof. Prescription drug costs
    are squeezing families and seniors. But billionaires like Elon Musk--
    billionaires--are doing just great. In fact, they are about to be doing
    a whole lot better because, if Donald Trump and my Republican
    colleagues have it their way, they are about to get another massive
    handout--a $4.5 trillion handout, to be precise--yes, trillion with a
    ``t''--and one that will explode the national debt.
      This bill, the one we will all, but certainly soon, consider on this
    very floor, reads like a thank-you card to the ultrawealthy. It
    supercharges the President's 2017 billionaire windfall.
      But how, we should ask, are we going to pay for it? Well, we already
    know; don't we? They are going to come after Medicaid. Forty-four
    percent of their proposed cuts to fund this tax cut for billionaires
    are to Medicaid.
      They are going to come after Medicare and healthcare generally. They
    are going to come after the services that keep our veterans housed, our
    communities healthy, our children educated. All of it--all of it--is on
    the chopping block, and here is the thing: They are already chopping
    away.
      So let's be crystal clear about what Republicans are asking us to
    consider. It is a smash-and-grab, targeting not the local store but the
    national Treasury--a cash grab from the programs that keep so many
    hard-working families afloat and what will be the biggest wealth
    transfer in modern American history, and in exactly the wrong
    direction, from the working and middle-class families to the uberrich,
    at a time when billionaires need it the least. Now, don't get me wrong.
    I am all for people succeeding beyond their wildest imagination. But
    like everyone else, they should earn it through hard work, not by
    stealing it from working people.

      All of this comes as Elon Musk and Donald Trump seek to co-opt every
    lever of government to go after anyone who dares stand up to them. When
    I called out Musk for seeking access to Americans' personal banking and
    financial data from the IRS, he retweeted one of the replies and aimed
    it at--well, me, yours truly.
      It read:

           He's not trying to snoop around my personal finances. He's
         trying to snoop around yours--

      Meaning mine.
      They are not even hiding it anymore. The goal has never been to cut
    government waste or make government more efficient. No, the goal is to
    help their wealthy friends and go after anyone who dares criticize them
    or holds them accountable. They plan to use a weaponized IRS, a
    weaponized DOJ, and a weaponized FBI to investigate and prosecute and
    persecute Donald Trump's enemies, not just elected officials like
    myself but anyone who steps out of line: business owners, big or small,
    who could be next in line for an audit if they express their opposition
    to the President and what he is doing to hurt them with tariffs or
    anything else, or journalists who write stories that the President
    doesn't like--anyone--because anyone standing up to them is standing in
    the way of their very simple, well-demonstrated goal: One-man rule--
    give Donald Trump all the power, so he can take from the poor and give
    to the rich to feed his ego and bank account and that of his pals.
      Remember the winter of 2023? Donald Trump stood at the gold-plated
    Mar-a-Lago podium and told a room full of the richest people in
    America:

           You're all people that have a lot of money. . . . You're
         rich as hell. . . . We're going to give you tax cuts.

      Most of my California constituents are not ``rich as hell''--far from
    it--and Donald Trump couldn't care less about them. The vast majority
    of them make less in a decade than it costs to pay the million-dollar
    membership fee at Mar-a-Lago, let alone the amount necessary to get a
    gold-plated promise from the now-President that their taxes will get
    lowered.
      But for this administration, it has never been about ordinary
    Americans. And if you look at what Donald Trump is proposing here, the
    priority is exceedingly clear. If you look at what Elon Musk has done
    over the last few weeks, his priority is pretty damn clear as well.
      A single mother choosing between paying rent and buying groceries,
    that is not the priority. A veteran wondering if the housing assistance
    that helped them get off the street is going to dry up, that is not
    their priority. But that billionaire who wants another yacht, now that
    is their priority. When a CEO wants another corporate loophole, that is
    the priority.
      Now, of course, they won't put it that way. They will tell you this
    is about spurring investment or creating jobs or unleashing the power
    of the free market. We have heard that story before. Remember 2017,
    when Donald Trump gave trillions to the wealthy and promised these tax
    cuts would pay for themselves? Guess what--and you won't believe this.
    They didn't. They didn't pay for themselves. In fact, they exploded the
    deficit by as much as $2 trillion. And now they are telling us the only
    way to fix the hole they dug is by cutting services for the Americans
    who actually need them and, of course, more tax cuts for rich people.
      We all heard it when they told us: If we just cut corporate taxes a
    bit more, the savings are sure to trickle down to working families.
    Well, they didn't. Corporate profits hit record highs. CEO bonuses
    soared, but wages--wages for regular people--they barely budged, to the
    point where it would take an average worker at an S&P 500 company
    almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year. Just think
    about that for a moment. It would now take an average worker at an S&P
    500 company almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year.
      How is that right? How is that fair? How is that good economics? And
    how could they possibly want to make that worse?
      What is their goal? To provide another tax cut for the wealthy so
    that it will now take 300 years for an average worker to make what
    their CEO makes?
      We are hearing the same pitch all over again, but, I will tell you,
    what has changed since 2017, since that last big give-away? Nothing.
    Nada. Bubkes. They want you to believe that we can afford to shower the
    wealthiest people and corporations with even more tax breaks, but we
    can't afford to pay Federal workers, including a ton of veterans who
    dedicated their lives to serving this country at home and abroad.
      Now, we can hand trillions to millionaires and billionaires, but we
    can't afford to help families afford childcare, or hire firefighters,
    or fund critical

    [[Page S1036]]

    cancer research--that the real problem, they would have you believe, in
    the richest country in the world is the program that helps seniors
    retire with dignity.

      At the end of the day, governing is about choices. The choices aren't
    always easy. There are very few clear choices in a complex and robust
    democracy, but this should not be a hard choice, because today we are
    not asked what we can afford. We are asked what we choose to afford. We
    could choose to invest in our children, in our workers, in our future;
    or we can choose to hand the wealthiest Americans another tax cut they
    don't need. We can choose to honor the commitments we made to seniors,
    to veterans, to families struggling to get by; or we can choose to
    break those commitments just to make sure that Elon Musk's tax bill
    stays as low as humanly possible. After all, launching your car into
    space isn't cheap.
      We could choose to build an economy that works for everyone, or we
    could choose to keep writing blank checks to those who already have
    more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes or 200 or 300.
      Donald Trump has made his choice. Elon Musk has made his choice. What
    will we choose?
      Donald Trump and Elon Musk would have you believe that America is
    broke.
      America isn't broke, but it is broken for so many people who actually
    do the work.
      So, no, it is not a great day to be a teacher struggling to pay the
    rent or a nurse working a double shift just to afford groceries. It is
    not a great day to be a retiree watching Social Security and Medicare
    under attack. But it is a great day to be a billionaire in America, and
    that, my colleagues, is exactly the problem.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The Senator from Hawaii.
      Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, when I immigrated to this country from
    Japan, as a young girl, I spoke no English. But when I enrolled at Koko
    Head Elementary, I met Ms. Petri, the school librarian who read to us
    every week. It was Ms. Petri who helped me learn English and instilled
    in me a lifelong love of reading. The public education I received at
    school at Koko Head Elementary, gave me--a girl from very humble
    beginnings--the opportunity to get ahead.
      My story is not unique. Our public education system has enabled
    generations of Americans to get ahead and has been essential to our
    country's economic success and global leadership. But despite their
    promises to make life better for working Americans, Donald Trump, Elon
    Musk, and their billionaire buddies have set their sights on gutting
    support for public education. Trump has made no secret of his desire to
    eliminate the Federal Department of Education altogether.
      Thankfully, the Department of Education was created by Congress, and
    only an act of Congress can eliminate it. But, even so, Trump's assault
    on the Federal Government is already undermining the Department's
    ability to meet its mission of supporting our Nation's students and
    teachers. And in their quest to give trillions in handouts to Trump's
    billionaire buddies, Republicans are poised to gut the Department of
    Education and programs on which millions of American children rely.
    They have no problem eliminating Federal funding for programs that
    support low-income students, low-income schools, students with
    disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, and much more.
      Just look at Project 2025. They want to eliminate funding for title I
    schools, which supports low-income students. We are talking about
    funding for 49,000 title I schools throughout the country, including
    170 schools in my State of Hawaii.

      They have no problem coming after Federal funding for programs that
    provide afterschool care, childcare, and even school meals. None of
    this is hypothetical. Cutting afterschool programs could make life even
    harder for working parents already struggling to make ends meet.
      Republicans don't seem to give a rip about the millions of children
    in their schools. They care about one thing and one thing only:
    delivering for their billionaire buddies. But Democrats care about you,
    about your family, and about your children's fundamental right to a
    quality public education. That is why Senator Peters and I will be
    introducing a series of amendments to this massive, misguided budget
    proposal to fund a giveaway for billionaires at the expense of our
    kids. Our amendments will protect our schools and the services children
    and families rely on, including an amendment to protect school meals.
      This is a simple amendment. It would prevent any reduction in funding
    for the National School Lunch Program and Breakfast Program, which have
    been wildly successful in feeding 29.6 million children at 95,000
    schools nationwide every single day, including 93,000 children in
    Hawaii, 102,000 children in South Dakota, 518,000 children in South
    Carolina, and many, many more. Every single State has thousands of
    children who rely on the school meals paid for by the Federal
    Government.
      From coast to coast and beyond, these programs keep our kids from
    going hungry. For many kids, school meals are the only meals they can
    count on all day. I can't believe we are standing here fighting over
    whether or not kids have the right to eat, but apparently even that is
    controversial to my Republican colleagues.
      So here we are. It is simple, Mr. President. We have no business
    depriving our kids of lunch to fund massive giveaways to Trump and his
    billionaire buddies. It is that simple.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
      Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on an issue that will
    affect millions of hard-working families, seniors, children, veterans,
    and any American who relies on essential services.
      As we will soon see, Republicans are going to use the budget
    reconciliation process--a tool that was originally designed to help
    rein in wasteful spending and lower the national debt--to pass massive
    new tax cuts for billionaires and the ultrawealthy. To pay for these
    tax breaks, they are proposing devastating cuts to vital programs that
    people in my State of Nevada rely on, including Medicaid, SNAP,
    supplemental programs for women, infants and children.
      Let me say that again. Congressional Republicans are going to cut
    critical government programs like Medicaid and SNAP in order to give
    the wealthiest Americans even more tax cuts. You got that right.
      Their policies are, well, billionaires win and families lose. This
    isn't fiscal responsibility; it is moral negligence. This isn't just
    about economic policy; this is about the livelihoods of everyday
    Americans.
      At a time when Nevadans are already grappling with economic hardship
    and the rising cost of living, these actions by my Republican
    colleagues are just plain wrong. They are just out of step. Instead of
    using this budget process to provide relief for hard-working families,
    Republicans are exploiting it to push through policies that benefit
    billionaires like Elon Musk while leaving millions of Americans--I will
    say everyday, hard-working families, regular people, everyday people--
    leaving them all behind, leaving you in the lurch. Again, their motto
    seems to be ``billionaires win, families lose.''
      Let's remember what Senate Democrats did with the budget process when
    we were in the majority. Anybody remember? Well, we gave Medicare the
    power to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. We capped the
    cost of insulin at $35 a month. We helped hard-working Americans who
    are being crushed by high costs. We stood up to corporate interests on
    behalf of the middle class. Now my Republican colleagues are in the
    majority. What do they want to do? Well, again, billionaires win,
    families lose. They want to give additional billions in tax breaks to
    the wealthiest Americans while the rest of us are footing the damn
    bill.

      The numbers tell the story. Extending these tax cuts would give the
    top 1 percent of earners--those making roughly $750,000 a year or
    more--a tax cut averaging more than $60,000 a year. I am going to put
    that in perspective for a moment. The tax cut that the top 1 percent
    would get is more than the total income of most families who rely on
    Medicare or SNAP or just most families in general. It is the top 1
    percent.

    [[Page S1037]]

      The two programs Republicans are planning to cut, Medicare and SNAP,
    they are going to cut them in order to pay the tax cuts--trillions of
    dollars--for who? Elon Musk and their billionaire buddies. So you heard
    that right. These expanded tax cuts will cost the Federal Government
    $4.2 trillion.
      You might be asking yourself, wait, so how are Republicans going to
    pay for all of this? In order to help offset some of that cost, they
    are going to decrease funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other services
    that support people with disabilities and elderly individuals.
      Medicaid alone provides health coverage to almost 80 million
    Americans, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities,
    like I said. And these cuts would directly harm some of the most
    vulnerable people in our society, making it harder and harder for them
    to get the kind of lifesaving care or just any care that they may need.
      In my State of Nevada, more than 800,000 people rely on Medicaid for
    their healthcare--800,000. Any reduction in its funding would leave
    these individuals--some of them our friends, our neighbors; they go to
    church with us--a reduction in funding is going to leave these
    individuals without access to affordable healthcare or the ability to
    see a doctor.
      Similarly, SNAP is a lifeline for millions of families seeking to
    feed their children--just feed their children. It feeds our seniors. It
    helps our working parents. It is estimated that more than 40 million
    people rely on SNAP just to put food on the table. Nearly one in six
    people in Nevada benefited from SNAP last year, the majority of whom
    are children. You have that right--one in six people benefited from
    SNAP in Nevada. The majority of them are children.
      So we are talking about parents who rely on this program to make sure
    that their kids don't go to bed hungry or that they have breakfast
    before they go to school. They are feeding hungry kids. But Republicans
    are proposing cuts to SNAP that would affect millions of families,
    driving up food insecurity, placing an additional burden on those who
    can least afford it.
      On top of these cuts, you have to consider the cuts that the Trump
    administration has already made, actions that are hurting veterans'
    services, healthcare, and good-paying jobs rebuilding our
    infrastructure.
      The Trump administration has already made cuts to the staff of the
    Department of Veterans Affairs, including the people that staff the
    Veterans assistance hotline. These cuts are going to have a severe
    impact on our veterans. They served our country with honor. They
    deserve the best possible care when they return home. Cutting doctors
    and nurses and counselors and people who answer the help line--how is
    that helping those who protected us, who keep our homeland safe? We owe
    them that. Well, these cuts aren't showing that at all.
      The administration has already targeted Medicare for staffing cuts
    that could undermine healthcare access for seniors across the country.
    Nearly one in five seniors depends on Medicare for their healthcare
    needs, and for many, it is their only source of care. Letting go of
    Medicare employees will impact seniors' ability to access this literal
    lifeline.
      We have also seen attacks from the Trump administration on job-
    creating infrastructure projects like those authorized in the
    bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act. These
    projects--well, what I want to tell you is that they support good-
    paying, American jobs--good-paying jobs in construction and engineering
    and public works. They fix our roads and our bridges and our trains,
    our grid. It matters. They build the rail systems that help connect our
    communities. These are American jobs on American roads, on American
    rail, on American bridges. We should be keeping these jobs and
    investing in our infrastructure. These are the folks who help modernize
    our airports. I can tell you, in my State of Nevada, they support our
    travel and tourism jobs--a top industry for us.

      These jobs modernizing our airports and our infrastructure help
    everyone across this country, every American--American jobs in America
    for Americans.
      We should be investing in our infrastructure, but the cuts made by
    the Trump administration mean that projects all over the country are in
    limbo. Even delayed projects are going to cost jobs and make it harder
    to rebuild our Nation's infrastructure.
      In Nevada, we know how important infrastructure investments are to
    keeping our economy moving and our communities safe. We are talking
    about jeopardizing projects to build new solar energy installations and
    even expanding access to high-speed internet. For us, that is nearly
    half a billion dollars' worth of Federal funding that has been
    allocated for Nevada to connect rural communities across our State to
    just reliable internet.
      The loss of funding for projects like this one just doesn't stop at
    people accessing the internet; it will hurt people who are counting on
    the jobs a project would create, particularly in our rural communities.
      The numbers here are staggering, and the impact is undeniable. We are
    talking about cuts that have the potential to impact millions of
    people--people who are working hard every day to make ends meet, to
    provide for their families, and to ensure they can live with dignity.
      These existing cuts, coupled with the Republicans' proposed budget
    cuts, are just going to be devastating for American families, and the
    fact that these cuts are being made to give billionaires even more tax
    breaks--well, it is unconscionable.
      The American people deserve better. They deserve a government that
    works for them, that works for our families, not for the ultrawealthy.
      At the end of the day, Republicans have to decide who they are
    fighting for because right now, with this budget proposal, they are
    fighting for billionaires and the largest corporations that have
    already benefited from their 2017 tax cuts.
      We cannot and we must not turn our backs on the American people. We
    cannot allow billionaires to get richer on the backs of everyday
    Americans. We cannot let the motto be for this administration
    ``billionaires win and families lose'' because families are the
    backbone of America--families are the backbone of America--and they
    deserve respect and attention, and we cannot allow the billionaires to
    break their backs.
      So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together
    and put the American people first--people over billionaires. Let's work
    together to strengthen our economy, protect our vital programs, and
    ensure that everyone, regardless of their wealth or status, has an
    equal opportunity to succeed.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

                              ____________________