[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 43 (Thursday, March 6, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1596-S1599]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
______
HALT ALL LETHAL TRAFFICKING OF FENTANYL ACT--Motion to Proceed--Resumed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
proceed to legislative session to resume consideration of the motion to
proceed to S. 331, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to
amend the Controlled Substances Act with respect to the
scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, and for other
purposes.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to amend the
Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of
fentanyl-related substances, and for other purposes.
John Thune, Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, Cindy Hyde-
Smith, Tim Sheehy, Katie Britt, Tom Cotton, Pete
Ricketts, Kevin Cramer, John Barrasso, James Lankford,
Rick Scott of Florida, Jon Husted, Markwayne Mullin,
John R. Curtis, Roger F. Wicker, Bernie Moreno.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, a bill to amend the
Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of fentanyl-
related substances, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a
close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer) and the Senator from Wyoming
(Ms. Lummis).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), the Senator from
California (Mr. Padilla), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner)
are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 82, nays 12, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 110 Leg.]
YEAS--82
Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Banks
Barrasso
Bennet
Blackburn
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Cantwell
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Coons
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Durbin
Ernst
Fischer
Gallego
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kaine
Kennedy
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Lee
Lujan
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Murray
Ossoff
Paul
Peters
Reed
Ricketts
Risch
Rosen
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schmitt
Schumer
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Shaheen
Sheehy
Slotkin
Smith
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Whitehouse
Wicker
Young
NAYS--12
Booker
Duckworth
Hirono
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Schiff
Van Hollen
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Wyden
NOT VOTING--6
Cramer
Fetterman
Kelly
Lummis
Padilla
Warner
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Budd). On this vote, the yeas are 82, the
nays are 12.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Trump Administration
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am a big Boston Red Sox fan, and one of
the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez.
Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing
some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were
really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior--
cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the
infield--and bizarre off-the-field behavior. It disrupted the team.
It became so regular that a phrase was adopted amongst the Red Sox
fans: ``That is just Manny being Manny.'' And over the years, it just
was accepted that every year, Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole
bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team, and over time,
it just kind of became accepted that that was a fact of life, a way of
life with Manny Ramirez. As time went on, people reacted with less
hostility. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in
these detrimental forms of conduct.
I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept.
When bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior
even if that behavior is hurting people.
Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments
where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders--the
oligarchs--they steal from people. That is what they do. The leaders
and the leaders' friends just keep a hand constantly in the government
treasury, and they steal taxpayer dollars. They rig the rules of the
economy in order to make themselves fabulously rich. They hurt the
citizens of those countries.
Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of
government, but he is reportedly worth $200 billion. One of his many
houses cost $1.4 billion to build. Supposedly, the landscaping costs on
an annual basis for that house are $2 million alone. That $1.4 billion
house was paid for by money he stole from the Russian treasury. In
other words, he stole it from the Russian people.
Putin and his friends have been doing it for so long and doing it so
openly and brazenly--Putin, for instance, wears a watch that retails
for half a million dollars even though his official
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salary is only $140,000. They have been doing this so openly and
brazenly, they are so public in their corruption in Russia, that it is
just accepted; it is just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his
cronies steal from the Russian people.
That is what is happening in America today. It is heartbreaking for
me to say this, but in the first 6 months of the Trump Presidency,
Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a
stunning rampage of open public corruption. It is not fundamentally
different than what happens in Russia. These are efforts to steal from
the American people to enrich themselves.
Their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a
dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or
dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption or,
maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works; that
government is just corrupt. So the fact that it is happening out in the
open instead of happening secretly--well, it is really nothing new.
But this is not how government works. The things that have happened
over the last 6 weeks are unprecedented. The President and his
billionaire friends are not supposed to steal from us. They are not
supposed to use their power and their access to power, their access to
government levers, to rig the rules to enrich themselves. That has
always been wrong, it is still wrong, and we do not have to accept
this.
So in the next few minutes, I want to try out an exercise. I want to
try to lay out for you as quickly as I can just some of the most
significant instances of blatantly corrupt activity that have happened
in just the first 6 weeks of Trump's Presidency. When you see it all
together, there is no way to avoid a simple conclusion: This White
House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the
country. And just because they are doing it out in the open for
everybody to see doesn't mean it is not corrupt.
My hope is that if you see it all in one place, the gravity of this
moment may hit you. My hope is that my colleagues and the public choose
not to normalize a President or his advisers using the Oval Office as a
blunt mechanism to make themselves even wealthier.
It is our decision--our decision--to have zero tolerance for
corruption. It is also our decision to just decide to become a place
like Russia where our leaders are allowed to routinely steal from us.
So this is a heartbreakingly long list. This is just 20 or so
examples of corrupt behavior in the first 6 weeks of the Trump
Presidency.
Here it goes. We are going to start on January 17. On January 17,
Trump launches the meme coin. This is maybe the most corrupt of all of
the acts because--what is the meme coin?--the meme coin is essentially
a mechanism by which Russian oligarchs or corporate CEOs can literally
send money privately directly to Donald Trump. Nobody knows who buys
the meme coin, but Trump makes money when people buy it. So it is just
an open sewer valve that allows for anybody who is trying to influence
the Trump administration to be able to secretly funnel money to Donald
Trump.
He reserves 80 percent of the coin. He waits to release that coin
until the price jumps back up again, which essentially means he is
waiting for people who want favors from him to buy a bunch of the coins
to inflate the value so that he releases more and makes more money.
It is a disgusting kind of corruption because this is essentially
Trump just posting his Venmo for anybody secretly to wire him as much
money as they want. We have never seen something like this before,
where anybody who has anything to gain from the Trump administration,
through a manipulation of the value of Trump's meme coin, can funnel
money directly to the President, whisper in his ear: That was me. That
was me that purchased all that coin that jumped up the value that
allowed you to release new coin. Hey, take care of me on the back end.
On January 20, when he is sworn in, he institutes his new energy
agenda. Now, open reporting suggested that during the campaign, he met
with the oil and gas industry, and they cut a deal in which the oil and
gas industry would give him a billion dollars of campaign contributions
in order to receive favorable treatment when Trump was sworn in.
Guess what happens on January 20. Trump unveils his energy strategy.
What does it do? It preferences oil and gas, and it punishes oil and
gas's competitors. It, for instance, freezes all permits on wind
projects, both for the land and the sea. It undercuts permitting
processes, not for oil and gas, but for oil and gas's competitors.
Oil and gas got exactly what they asked for. They gave a campaign
contribution, and they got the favorable treatment.
Five days later, Trump fires 17 inspectors general. What do
inspectors general do? They look for corruption inside of these
Agencies. What do you do if you are trying to engage in corruption, if
you are trying to steal from the American people, you fire the
inspectors general.
Two days later, on January 27, Trump fires Gwynne Wilcox from the
NLRB. This is the National Labor Relations Board. When she is fired,
the National Labor Relations Board cannot function any longer. Why does
this matter? Because the person that has been put in charge of
reviewing the hirings and firings of these Agencies is Elon Musk who,
by the way, has lots of cases before the NLRB--so do the people that
are standing behind Trump during the inauguration. Almost all of them
have active cases before the NLRB. The billionaires supporting Donald
Trump now don't have to worry about the NLRB because, on January 27,
the NLRB is rendered powerless.
Three days later, on January 30, Trump awards more than $800,000
worth of stock to several of the board members of the Trump Media &
Technology Group. This is the publicly traded company behind his social
media platforms.
So now, his Cabinet members, people like Kash Patel and Linda
McMahon, are owning equity in Trump's media platform--equity that can
be cashed out, sold to people who want to buy them out of their
interest at any time. Those people who might want to buy them out--
Cabinet members--could be individuals with issues before the Department
of Education, before the FBI--yet another avenue in which people who
have influence, who want to gain influence inside the Trump
administration have a conduit to be able to move cash from their
pocketbooks, from their treasury, from their bank accounts into the
bank accounts of Trump Cabinet members.
Shortly thereafter, we start to see the weaponization of the DOJ. On
February 23, a civil complaint from DOJ that had been pending against
SpaceX, Elon Musk's signature company, is dropped. Eight days later,
the DOJ drops a case against a Republican Congressman.
On February 19, 2 or 3 weeks later, the DOJ opens up something called
Operation Whirlwind, which seeks to target anyone who dares to try to
obstruct or criticize the work of Elon Musk and DOGE.
Over the course of the first few weeks, the DOJ has turned into an
entity that drops cases against those who are loyal to Donald Trump and
pursues aggressively investigations against those who are trying to
criticize Donald Trump.
On February 1, Trump fires the Director of the CFPB and announces
plans to shut down--to shutter--the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau. Again, very much like the NLRB, this is an Agency that was, at
the moment that it was rendered powerless, investigating Elon Musk and
many of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump. So, once again,
those that have access to Donald Trump, the billionaires that are close
to him, now don't have to worry about labor violations being
investigated by the NLRB. Now, they don't have to worry about consumer
actions being taken against them by the CFPB.
On February 4, there is the first of two extraordinary meetings in
the White House in which Donald Trump convenes his business partners--
his business partners--the Saudi golf league and the PGA, to try to
negotiate a solution to the dispute between those two golf leagues.
Why? Because Trump has a business interest in that
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dispute being resolved. The Saudi golf league plays tournaments at
Trump's courses in the United States. And so, if the White House, using
its official power, can try to negotiate a settlement between those two
groups, Trump stands to make money.
On February 6, something absolutely stunning happens. Pam Bondi, the
AG, issues a memorandum in which she proposes to dull the criminal
enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
If you are representing a foreign government before the United
States, you have to register so that we know if you are acting on
behalf of American interests or you are acting on behalf of foreign
interests.
In the prior Trump administration, Trump officials got in big trouble
for secretly working for and getting paid by foreign governments
without registering.
Well, what has Trump announced? That they are going to limit the
applicability of the enforcement of that statute, making it much easier
for Trump's friends, for his MAGA crowd, for the people who show up to
Mar-a-Lago to get paid quietly by foreign governments in order to
influence Donald Trump.
On February 10, maybe aside from the meme coin, the most stunning act
of corruption--the Eric Adams quid pro quo, in which Eric Adams,
indicted for corruption, is let off the hook. His charges are dismissed
in exchange for the mayor's pledge of political loyalty to Donald
Trump. They literally went on TV and announced the deal--that they were
getting rid of the charges against Eric Adams as long as the mayor
pledges political loyalty to the President.
That was so corrupt that six or seven DOJ officials resigned because
they refused to withdraw those charges. But the deal went through
because the seventh or the eighth or the ninth official finally filed
the withdrawal.
And now, in America, it is 100 percent clear, if you want to get away
with corruption, if you want to steal from your constituents and you
are an elected official in this country, all you have to do is just
sign up for political loyalty to Donald Trump, and he will instruct the
Department of Justice to let you get away with it.
On February 10, Donald Trump directs the DOJ to pause enforcement of
U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Come
on--like come on. He instructs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S.
laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas.
Here is an example. Goldman Sachs was engaged in outright bribery.
They were paying bribes to Malaysian officials so that they could get a
contract to manage the resources of the Malaysian sovereign wealth
fund.
American companies should not be overseas bribing foreign
governments. That compromises America's reputation and America's
national security. But now, you are going to pause enforcement of the
laws that stop American companies from bribing foreign governments
because corruption is now being normalized.
This is what you do if you want to normalize corruption; it is that
you make it legal for American companies to engage in corruption
overseas. That makes it easier for Trump to get away with corruption
here.
Two days later, on February 12, the announcement comes out that the
State Department is going to buy $400 million in armored Teslas.
OK, so now it is getting even more blatant. It is getting even more
brazen. The State Department is just going to buy a whole bunch of
product from Elon Musk--product that they were not previously scheduled
to buy.
It is true that the Biden administration had a blueprint that it was
going to buy some electric vehicles, but it was around $483,000 worth
of vehicles. Trump revises that blueprint of spending so that now the
Federal Government is going to spend $400 million on armored Teslas
from Elon Musk.
Let's see. That is February 12. That same day, Elon Musk's people
infiltrate the Department of Labor, and reporting suggests that, during
that infiltration, Elon Musk's personal representatives get access to
enforcement information at OSHA, not only against Elon Musk's
companies--and, by the way, SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is
nine times higher than the industry average--but, also, workplace
safety violations against Elon Musk's competitors.
Here is the message: If you are close to Donald Trump personally, if
you support him politically, you can get secret access to enforcement
data against your companies and your companies' competitors. That is
what happens on February 12.
Three days later, there is some suspicious firings at the FDA--again,
related to Elon Musk's personal financial interests. Elon Musk owns a
medical device company called Neuralink. It is currently being reviewed
by the FDA. And guess what. On February 15 and 16, all over a weekend,
there are 20 people fired from the FDA's Office of Neurological and
Physical Medicine Devices--fired by DOGE, run by Elon Musk.
Clear message: You are going to get fired if you aren't on the right
side of Elon Musk's application.
Now, whether that was explicit or not, if the guy who is firing you
has a pending application before your Department, aren't you going to
think twice? Aren't you going to think twice about ruling against his
interests?
This is why this is unprecedented. It feels normal because it has
been happening every day. But never before in American history have we
allowed someone who has a pending application for approval of a
medicine or a medical device to be able to personally decide who gets
hired and who gets fired at the regulatory Agency making the decision
over that medical device.
But, now, this stuff is happening every day because, on February 15,
as well, that same weekend, there is an announcement that the FDA cuts
are going to be even deeper, perhaps as big as 50 percent. That means
that hundreds of drugs and devices won't get approved at the FDA.
And you know who benefits from that? The folks that are selling the
snake oil products.
And guess who is selling the snake oil products? The people who work
for Donald Trump selling ``vita gummy scams.'' The Director of FBI is
selling vaccine reversal pills. When the FDA gets gutted, it is the
people who sell those unregulated products who stand to gain.
On February 19, 4 days later, we find out that the IRS is going to be
cut by 7,000 people, and the biggest chunk of the folks who are going
to be laid off are the people who do the audits of the billionaires and
the millionaires and the corporations.
So, once again, Elon Musk and the people standing behind Donald Trump
on inauguration day are going to get off because the IRS just had its
enforcement powers--its audit powers--absolutely gutted.
That same day, on February 19, we start to receive word that
advertising on Elon Musk's platform is starting to grow again. And the
reporting on February 19 indicates that American companies have come to
the collective decision that they need to keep advertising on Elon
Musk's platform because Elon Musk has so much regulatory power inside
the Federal Government that they need to make sure that they are paying
Musk through Twitter and through X, so that if they ultimately need
something from the Federal Government, they can get it.
This, again, is why we have never, ever in the history of this
country allowed for the richest man in the world, somebody who controls
major companies, to also have an official position inside the
government, because, of course--of course--it opens up these clear
avenues where people are going to do business with him privately to try
to curry favor with him publicly.
I am not done. It just keeps going. The next day, on February 20, the
CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices' monthly meeting is
canceled and not rescheduled.
So we were very worried that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who makes money
off of his attacks on vaccines, would continue those attacks when he
took over HHS because, if faith in vaccines continues to plummet, it is
very likely that RFK, Jr., will make money. Why? Because the not-for-
profit that he will likely return to--the company that he will return
to after he leaves--makes money as vaccine misinformation spreads, and
he also continues to collect fees for referring cases to a company that
handles claims of personal injury due to vaccines.
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And so when the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is
canceled, it is a clear indication that, yes, this campaign of assault
on vaccines is going to continue, which--not surprisingly--is likely to
make RFK, Jr., even more money.
On February 26, we see Trump's MAGA hats that are for sale on his
website displayed in the Oval Office. And it is just a reminder that so
many people inside Trump's universe continue to sell merchandise on the
side in order to make money.
Donald Trump has always done this, and we have just kind of accepted
it, even though it is a kind of corruption in and of itself. But Kash
Patel, the Director of the FBI, is still selling Kash-branded
merchandise, even while he is going to run the FBI. Elon Musk and
others are selling DOGE merchandise.
So as they trumpet their brand inside the government, they are making
money off their brand outside of the government. On February 26, maybe
the third most significant brazen corruption happens. News breaks that
Elon Musk is just going to have the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon
that has been in the works for years and instead just substitute in
Starlink for Verizon. Just extraordinary that this is happening in
plain view of everybody.
Elon Musk takes his private company, uses his access to government to
just shove out of the way his competitors and instead insert himself
and his company. Again, we have never seen this ever before in American
history, and now it is happening on a daily basis.
And now we get to this week. This week, Wired reports that guests are
paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and
business leaders are being targeted with advertisements that sell
access to a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States
for $5 million.
Come on, like seriously, there are advertisements that say if you are
a business CEO and you pay $5 million to Donald Trump, you can get a
meeting with him. Like, this isn't OK. And yet because it happens every
single day, every single day, they are asking for us to pretend that
this is normal.
This is just 6 weeks. It is just 6 weeks, and the last thing on the
list is an offer to meet with the President for a million dollars or $5
million. If any previous President had sent out an advertisement
suggesting that you could meet with them for a payment to them of a
million to $5 million, in and of itself, we would deem that to be
unacceptable.
But Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe that because they have
arranged this dizzying pace of corruption in which not a day goes by in
which something doesn't happen inside our government in which Elon Musk
or Donald Trump use their power in order to rig the rules to enrich
themselves, that we are all going to feel that it is normal.
This is how democracies die. Democracies die when the very powerful
people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically that
we come to believe that it is normal.
And listen, I understand that many Americans may think that all of
this stuff just used to happen quietly, and the only difference is that
Trump and Musk are just putting it all out in the open. And I am not
saying that there haven't been instances of corruption. Democrats and
Republicans in this body have been accused of and convicted of acts of
corruption.
It has been a fact of life in American politics for a long time, but
never before has the corruption happened this openly or this
frequently. And so I lay it all out for you this afternoon in the hopes
that it is not too late for us to decide to stand up as a body and as a
nation to say that this isn't OK.
The Trump meme coin is not OK. It is not OK for people who have
interests before the Federal Government to be able to anonymously
funnel money to the President of the United States. It is not OK for
Elon Musk to have access to the Department of Labor enforcement data
against him or his competitors that nobody else gets access to.
It is not OK to just cancel contracts that were going to Musk's
competitors and substituting his own business just because he has the
ability to do it as a friend of Donald Trump. The rule of law matters.
Doing things by the rules matter.
This level of corruption was not occurring behind the scenes prior.
It is not just that the cover got pulled off of it all, and it is our
decision as a body and as a country to decide not to normalize this
scale of corruption.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). The majority leader.
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