[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 112 (Saturday, June 28, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3603-S3605]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, we are about to enter a historic moment in
this Chamber. We are going to take up a bill called the One Big
Beautiful Bill.
If you have been watching the media over the last maybe 6 months, you
heard all kinds of absolute misinformation about this bill. I had a
chance to read it. I know, Mr. President, you have also. It is an
absolutely historic and transformative piece of legislation that
reverses 4 years of an assault on American workers.
Let me just give you some of the facts. These are indisputable facts,
and I want everybody watching this to remember this as you listen to
probably what is going to be 30-plus hours of complete nonsense from
the other side.
Let's start with No. 1. Nobody who works for a living in this country
knows better what has happened to them over the last 4 years than they
do. They have seen inflation crush them. The price of a home became
unaffordable. The price of an automobile became unaffordable. The price
of groceries became a luxury. You go to the grocery store, and you
bring your normal order to the cashier, and you think, there is no way
that can be my grocery bill. Those were all policies that were driven
by the other side's ridiculous assault on American workers.
What are we going to do about it?
American workers have very seldom actually been represented in this
Chamber. This Chamber has done a very good job representing special
interest groups and lobbyists. But here is what American workers get
out of the One Big Beautiful Bill:
No. 1, to address the price of automobiles--which, by the way, have
been coming down under President Trump's term despite the
misinformation that car prices would soar. Let me say that again. The
price of automobiles has come down in the first 6 months of this
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year versus going up $8,000 during the Biden years.
What are we doing to make it even more affordable to own an
automobile? We are going to allow full deductibility of any interest
paid on car loans if the car is made in America. That is a significant
relief for American workers.
Secondly, no income tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security--a huge
relief. That is probably about $1,500 to $2,500 extra in your pocket
from not having to pay income tax on tips, overtime, or Social
Security.
On top of that, the One Big Beautiful Bill prevents about a $5,000
per American worker per year income tax increase. I imagine the
Democrats are going to come on this floor and fight this bill and say
it helps billionaires when they know--they know--that if we don't pass
this bill, every American worker will pay $5,000 more in income taxes
next year and for all years to come.
Under Joe Biden, we had over 10 million illegals invade our country.
I wasn't born in this country; I was born in South America. I had the
honor and the privilege of being welcomed to this Nation. Who did Joe
Biden welcome? Not legal immigrants like myself but, rather, people who
broke our laws to come here. What was the result? They drove up our
housing prices. They drove up our insurance premiums. They lowered
wages for American workers. They crippled our cities, and crime surged.
So what does the One Big Beautiful Bill do? It funds Immigration and
Customs Enforcement so that we can get these people out of our country.
They should never have been allowed to come here. We have 5,000 border
agents trying to get rid of 600,000 criminal aliens. These aren't just
people who came here illegally--that was a crime in and of itself--this
is 600,000 people who committed another crime, and we don't have the
resources to deport them. This bill gives us the money to do that.
You have kids. I have kids. Raising kids has become really, really
expensive. I was one of seven. My dad was one of 11. My grandfather was
one of 23. I only have four--underperformer. Raising kids is really,
really hard, really expensive. What does this bill do? It gives every
working American $2,200 per child per year--$2,200 per child per year--
to help alleviate the cost of raising kids.
In addition--this is something new and exciting--you have a birth of
an American baby in this country, and the Federal Government will put
$1,000 into a bank account. Companies, your employers, nonprofits--
whatever group wants to--they can put money in that account. That
account will grow with an index. When that child who is born here an
America, an American citizen--by the time they get to be 25 or 30 years
old, they could have a decent little sum of money, a couple hundred
thousand dollars. They can use it for education, for upscaling,
whatever they want. Nobody has ever done that to help American workers
in that way, and we can do that.
Now, look, healthcare is a massive expense. The Acting President pro
tempore is a doctor. He knows what is going on in our healthcare
system. It is crushing working families. What does the One Big
Beautiful Bill do? It provides funding for health savings accounts so
you can use pretax dollars to fund it, so if there is that emergency,
you can have that to tap into--a huge improvement.
Of course, let me just be crystal, crystal clear: This bill does not
touch Social Security in any way whatsoever, even though I have had to
listen to my colleagues over and over and over again, for the last 6
months, say that we are eliminating, crushing, destroying Social
Security. We do not touch Social Security. We don't touch Medicare at
all. Let me repeat that. We don't touch Social Security or Medicare.
Despite how many online videos they do or how many press interviews
they do or how much time the media repeats that misinformation, we
don't touch Social Security or Medicare.
Now, on Medicaid, here is what we do: We strengthen it. In fact, in
my State of Ohio, the hospitals will get more money to provide Medicaid
to the people who need it: the disabled, pregnant women, children,
older Americans who are in need. We are giving them more money. We will
spend more money on Medicaid with the One Big Beautiful Bill than if we
don't do it. Is that something that you have heard from the other side?
Completely the opposite. What we are doing is we are eliminating waste,
fraud, and abuse which has been rampant in that system, and we are
starting the process of reforming the way the States and the Federal
Government's relationship works in Medicaid. The States have abdicated
that responsibility. We are working to reset that in a very, very
methodical way.
For working Americans who are able-bodied, we are asking to do what
Bill Clinton wanted, which is to put a work requirement on able-bodied
adults. Let's define that. What does ``able-bodied'' mean? It means one
between 18 and 60, with no disabilities and no dependent children. You
can work. And what is the work requirement? It is 80 hours a month of
either work, volunteering, community service, or upscaling, which is
going to a place like, for example, Cuyahoga Community College or Kent
State University or Columbus State University, where they can go in and
get a skill that allows them to come into the workforce.
It is very, very commonsense and not controversial at all, but you
will hear the other side saying that we are kicking 60 million off
health insurance.
I can't even count how many meetings I have had with my Republican
colleagues. As the Acting President pro tempore knows, we meet quite
often. We have hundreds and hundreds of meetings. Our North Star--the
center of gravity for our party--is, how do we help Americans? See,
putting America first means that we are going to put our resources to
helping American citizens. The other side? They want to give hundreds
of billions of dollars to illegals. They want to have States be able to
take that Medicaid money that is for American citizens and give it to
people who shouldn't even be in this country. That doesn't even pass
the commonsense, basic test.
So what the One Big Beautiful Bill does is it strengthens Medicaid
for generations to come. I am very proud of that part of the bill. As
the infomercial would say, ``But wait. There is more.''
Biden and the radical Democrats made the world more dangerous. If you
had turned on the TV any day of the week for the last 4 years, every
part of the globe was more dangerous because of the weakness of Joe
Biden. The One Big Beautiful Bill makes a historic investment in our
military. Our military was demoralized, depleted, stretched too thin,
out of basic equipment. We invest in that.
What has happened already? Record recruitment. In fact, the gentleman
who worked with me on the campaign, Robby Brooks--he can't listen to
this because he is in basic training with the Marines. He met Secretary
Hegseth in my office. In fact, my entire office gave him a standing
ovation when he came in to talk to me during his nomination process.
Robby was so inspired by Secretary Hegseth that he came to me the next
day, much to my dismay because Robby was a great member of the team,
and said: Do you know what? I never thought about it in my life. I am
24 years old. I am going to go be a marine because I love this country.
That is what we are doing--a historic investment in our military and
in our Coast Guard. The drug cartels are bringing in all kinds of
illicit drugs, not just by land but now by sea, and we are making
certain that we have the resources to protect our mainland.
For anyone who has flown lately--especially those of us who come to
Washington, DC, every week--you fly; you know the delays; and you know
what is going on with our air traffic control system. This air traffic
control system should have been addressed years ago, well before the
Acting President pro tempore and I got here. Decades, honestly, before
the Acting President pro tempore and I got here, this should have been
dealt with. They talked about it. Every Secretary of Transportation and
every President talked about and acknowledged that our air traffic
control system was a mess and that it needed to be modernized. What
does the One Big Beautiful Bill do? It makes a historic investment in
our Nation's air traffic control system--something that will help every
American. That is what this bill does.
Now, here is the last piece: My Democrat colleagues will talk about
how
[[Page S3605]]
this adds to the deficit, which is factually inaccurate. Actually, for
the first time in my lifetime, we have a bill before Congress that will
reduce spending. We have never seen that. They passed something called
the Inflation Reduction Act that blew a hole in our deficit; that did
the exact opposite of reducing inflation. In fact, inflation went up.
Let me give you an example of what that bill did, because I don't know
this has been well-reported.
If you are a multimillionaire--in fact, they like to talk about
billionaires now because most of them, by the way, are millionaires. I
am not sure how that happened. That is a different conversation for a
different day, but they like to talk about billionaires. You could have
a billionaire walk into a Rolls-Royce dealership--a billionaire walk
into a Rolls-Royce dealership--buy a $500,000 Rolls-Royce and decide to
lease it, and the Democrats will give that billionaire a check for
$7,500 to offset the cost of that Rolls-Royce.
What does this $7,500 credit do for you on a Rolls-Royce? Well, the
umbrella that comes in the door is $12,000. It doesn't quite cover the
cost of that. The monograms on the headrest are about $5,000, so you
can cover that with the $7,500. You won't cover anywhere near the cost
of the audio system, which is $22,000. Think about how sick that is.
They come on the floor and say that we are helping billionaires when
they are giving $7,500 checks to people who lease these kinds of cars.
Sick.
What are we doing? We are getting rid of all of these green new
scams. We are cutting the budget deficit. We are finally implementing
fiscal responsibility. It is the reason in the last 6 months this is
what we have seen: Inflation has never been lower; gas prices are way
down; egg prices are way down; and the stock market is at a record
high. Remember the stock market that the Democrats were saying was
going to be 1932 all over again just 60 days ago? A record. Not a
record this year but an alltime record. They said tariffs were going to
destroy the economy. Not true. This One Big Beautiful Bill does all of
these things and reduces our deficit.
What is holding us back? Why can't we pass this piece of legislation
that helps working Americans?
I am old enough to remember when the Democrat Party was the party of
the working class. This is the kind of bill that most Democrats would
have advocated for 20, 30 years ago. The center, the North Star, the
guidepost for this bill is, does it help our middle class? Does it help
working Americans? This bill does that in the ways that I just
outlined. You would think that the Democrats would rush to the floor to
vote for this thing. Instead, they will mischaracterize it every step
of the way. I just laid out the facts. The bill is 940 pages long. If
you want to read it, read it for yourself. Don't believe what you hear
in the media. Don't believe what the Democrats are going to tell you.
Believe what I just told you because these are facts that are
indisputable.
In fact, I will close with this:
I will guarantee that there is not one thing I outlined here today--
any of these aspects of the bill--that my colleagues will dispute,
because they can't, because it is in the plain text of the bill.
Instead, what they will do is they will use cliche lines like we are
taking away health insurance from people who need it to give it to
their billionaire buddies. Do you mean like George Soros? Do you mean
like the founder of LinkedIn, who funded all kinds of nonsense? Those
billionaires, right? Look, do you want to find the center of gravity
today for the Democrat Party? Go to Martha's Vineyard where the average
home is $30 million. That is their North Star.
What is our North Star? Communities in the Acting President pro
tempore's State and communities in my State, like Chillicothe, OH. That
is the center of gravity for our party. It is a new party. I will
acknowledge that. The Republican Party of today is not the party that I
knew 20 or 30 years ago. It was a mistake that we weren't thinking
about the working class in the way we are today, but here we are, on
the verge of passing One Big Beautiful Bill.
Now, look, if you are an American watching, I see why you are
confused. If I were somebody who was reading that all day, for example,
in my hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I would
probably think something different because it is all propaganda from
the other side. I just laid it out. I challenge anybody in the media,
anybody listening to this, any of my Democrat colleagues to come out
here on the floor and go line by line in what I just said and tell me
what I just said is not true.
This is what this bill is all about. I am so proud that I had the
honor--the honor--of even being a tiny part of putting together a bill
that is so historic and so transformative. I urge all of my Republican
colleagues--all of my Republican colleagues, every single one of them--
to come out here on the floor. Let's get the motion to proceed going.
Let's get the bill passed. Let's get it back to the House.
To my House colleagues, come back, and get this bill done, and let's
celebrate July 4 with the greatest bill ever passed by the U.S.
Congress.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from the great State of
Texas.
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