Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)

[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

[[Page S1033]]

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.

____________________