[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 1, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6899-S6903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EN BLOC NOMINATIONS
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
An executive resolution (S. Res. 412) authorizing the en
bloc consideration in Executive Session of certain
nominations on the Executive Calendar.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Government Funding
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the reality of the
shutdown that we are in and the efforts underway to find a path out,
which I am optimistic we can, particularly after discussions among so
many colleagues of both parties today on the floor of the Senate.
This is the third time during my nearly 13 years in the Senate that I
have been involved in a shutdown. The first occurred in the fall of
2013. I had been in the Senate for less than a year. Senator Cruz sort
of forced us into a shutdown mode over the Affordable Care Act.
Interestingly enough, many years later, that Affordable Care Act is
still central to this discussion. In late 2018 and 2019, President
Trump forced us into a shutdown of part of the government--the part of
government dealing with the Department of Justice and other justice-
related Agencies--over border wall funding.
The first shutdown lasted for about 2 weeks. The second shutdown--
again, of part of government, not all of government--lasted for about a
month. And they are horrible. The consequences for those affected,
whether they be Federal workers or the citizens who need services, are
horrible.
[[Page S6900]]
No one relishes that in this body, and I am completely confident that
all 100 Senators feel the same way in that this is not a good thing and
that there needs to be a path forward. In Virginia, we feel it pretty
strongly. We have the second-most Federal employees of any State in the
country, and we have an awful lot of Federal contractors whose
livelihoods are affected as well.
We have also seen in the first nearly 9 months of this calendar year
other actions taken, whether it is the cancelation of research grants
or the backtracking on economic development proposals or the withdrawal
of $400 million from the Virginia Department of Health that was
critical to our agency's ability to do contact tracing and help stop
the spread of infectious disease.
So we have seen since the beginning of January a whole series of
actions that have already affected Virginians pretty significantly. We
had an unemployment rate that was low by national standards but went up
every month for 6, 7 months in a row, largely because of these Federal
layoffs. As we reach this moment, it is not a clean break or something
new from what was seen earlier in the year; it is sort of a
continuation of something that has been a pretty painful chapter in
Virginia.
So what are we hoping for or, rather, maybe, not to put words in
anybody's mouth, what am I hoping for out of this?
The House prepared a short-term continuing resolution under
instructions from the President: Do not deal with Democrats. And the
House, with a simple Republican majority, was able to do that and pass
a bill that then came to the Senate.
Once we saw that instruction--do not deal with Democrats--Senate
Democrats, under the leadership of Senator Murray, the lead Democratic
appropriator, said: Well, let's prepare an alternative, not a
nonnegotiable demand but an alternative.
We put that alternative on the table on September 18. We didn't wait
until the 29th of September or the 30th. We felt like, to be fair to
the public, to be fair to our colleagues, let's put an alternative on
the table with enough time for us to kick the tires on it and have a
negotiation before the deadline that we reached at midnight last night.
What is the Democratic alternative compared to the Republican
alternative? Actually, much of it is the same. But I would say the two
elements in the Democratic alternative that are different are two: One,
protecting people's healthcare; and, second, protecting the simple
notion that everybody understands that a deal is a deal.
Let me explain both of these.
On the healthcare side, the reconciliation bill that was passed in
June, together with some other actions of the administration--
particularly unilateral actions of Secretary Kennedy and the President
in withdrawing healthcare funds from Virginia and unilateral actions
thrusting uncertainty into areas like vaccines--they have created a
huge healthcare challenge for Virginians and for Americans.
Again, not to speak for anybody other than Virginians, but I did a
lot of travel around the State in April as some of these proposals were
on the table. I did a lot of travel in July, a lot of travel in August,
and I just did a good bit of travel last week around Virginia. And on
the healthcare side, here is what my constituents are saying to me
about what is now happening:
The effect of the reconciliation bill in Virginia is estimated to
cause about 330,000 Virginians to lose their health insurance. Our
population is about 8.8 million; 330,000 people losing health insurance
is not a small number. This is a big--big--deal. That number of people
who lose their health insurance is essentially what I call the top
layer of a five-layer cake of consequences to these healthcare bills.
That is consequence one, people lose insurance.
Consequence two is people who have insurance see their premiums go up
dramatically. Premium notices are coming out from insurance companies
in Virginia, and they are suggesting that premiums this year in
Virginia will go up by at least 20 percent.
Why does that happen? There are two reasons: The reconciliation bill
that was passed by the Republicans in June phased out premium support
for low- and middle-income people buying health insurance on the
exchanges. The Republican bill extended tax cuts for the wealthiest but
phased out premium support for low- and middle-income people buying
health insurance. So that causes premiums to go up.
The second thing that causes premiums to go up is when you increase
the number of people with no insurance, they go to the emergency room,
and they are not able to pay. So providers provide treatment, but then
they have to charge that off to somebody, and it tends to get charged
off to people who have health insurance.
So the combined effect of ACA premium support going away and a whole
lot of free care that has to be paid for by somebody causes insurance
rates to increase. This is happening in Virginia, and it is happening
around the country.
That is the second layer of the five-layer cake of consequences of
what happens when the reconciliation bill passes.
The third layer is this, and this is a really, really troubling one:
Providers close down. Hospitals and clinics close down when Medicaid is
affected; particularly hospitals, for whom Medicaid is a huge portion
of the revenue stream coming into the hospital, find that they can't
make it work.
A national organization that looks at hospital fiscal soundness has
put about 300 hospitals in the United States on a list of hospitals
that are in danger because of the Medicaid cuts. Six of those hospitals
are in Virginia, and they are all in rural Virginia. Rural Virginia
tends to be a little bit older than the rest of Virginia and tends to
have a little bit higher Medicaid population than the rest of Virginia.
So the hospitals that are in danger by the reconciliation bill are
rural hospitals.
It is not just hospitals that are on the list of potential closure.
Within the last month, a prominent health provider in the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia--a rural part of our State--announced that they were
closing three primary care clinics in small Virginia communities
because of the reconciliation bill. The cuts made to Medicaid in the
reconciliation bill made them realize that they could no longer keep
these clinics open.
So the third consequence of this reconciliation bill is, we have got
people losing insurance; we have got premiums going up; and now we have
providers closing.
The fourth consequence is pretty obvious: When providers close,
people get fired, so people lose their jobs. Frontline healthcare
workers who are doing good work in the communities and having people
rely on them, they lose their jobs. That is consequence four.
Then, consequence five is one that I know well as a former mayor and
Governor. I kind of call it the loss of your future. It is one thing to
lose your health insurance; it is one thing to pay more; it is one
thing to lose your provider; it is one thing to lose your job, but if
you are a mayor or a chairman of a county board of supervisors or a
Governor, for that matter, and you are trying to encourage economic
development, a new business to move into a part of the State or a
business that is in a part of the State to expand, a question you are
going to get asked is: Tell me about the healthcare network in this
community. I may be moving executives here. I may be trying to hire
people here.
And if you have to look them in the eye and say: We used to have a
hospital, but we don't now or we had primary clinics that have closed
down and now you have to drive farther to get primary medical care, I
can tell you, I have been in economic development discussions with
businesses over the course of my 31 years in public life and seen the
lights just go out in their eyes: You know, you have just told me
something that has convinced me I may not know where I am going, but I
know where I am not going.
One the quickest things you can do to turn that light off is to make
a prospect worried about whether the employees and executives and their
families will have access to good healthcare.
So on the healthcare piece of this, what Democrats are asking for by
way of an alternative--not a nonnegotiable but by way of an
alternative--is let's go into the changes that were made in the
reconciliation bill and fix them.
[[Page S6901]]
I have Republican colleagues who say: We don't want to completely
reverse them because there are some things about the ACA premium tax
subsidy we don't like. We would like to design them differently. We
would like to negotiate.
I am completely open to that, but I do think we ought to try to fix
them.
I am heartened that a number of Republican colleagues have said: You
are right. We should do that.
I have said to my Republican colleagues: Coming up with a fix, even
if both sides want a fix, I know this is not going to be a snap
decision. There are details. You have to dot the i's. You have to cross
the t's. You have to analyze what the downstream consequences of any
changes in the fix are. I know that that is a substantive discussion
where the details matter. I am not expecting that we would all reach an
agreement immediately.
So on the first point, where the Democratic proposal is different
than the Republican proposal, I fully expect that this would be a
negotiation that would take some time. We needn't wait to open the
government until that negotiation is completely done. We should commit
to the negotiation and get in the middle of it and sit around the table
and figure it out. But we needn't wait, in my view--again, this is me,
not the caucus, not anybody else. This is me. We needn't solve the
entire problem in order to reach a position where we fund the
government and reopen it. We can do it over the course of a time period
that I think is being discussed in this body.
The second feature of the Democratic proposal that is important to
reach an accord on, I believe, is a simple notion that a deal is a
deal. A deal is a deal. If we reach a funding agreement--and some have
characterized the Republican proposal as a clean CR, but I would
actually say it is not a clean CR unless you are guaranteed that the
parties will honor it.
Whatever we do--if we do something for 30 days or if we do something
for 45 days--I think it is only fair to ask that a deal be a deal; that
Congress fully live up to it but the White House fully live up to it as
well.
We have seen, throughout this year already, congressional deals
undone by the President unilaterally: tens of thousands of people
fired, economic development projects that had been announced and
celebrated canceled, funds to public health Agencies taken back. Again
and again and again, we have seen, in Virginia, unilateral actions
taken by the President that, in our view, undo what Congress and the
White House had agreed to in previous budget resolutions. So it is not
unreasonable for us to say: Well, if we are going to do a short-term CR
to try to find the path for a full-year appropriations bill, we would
just want an agreement during that 30 or 45 days--whatever it is--that
a deal is a deal; that we not write it, agree to it, celebrate
reopening the government, and then have President Trump on day two
start to fire a whole lot of people or claw back more money from the
Virginia Department of Health or cancel more economic development
projects in Virginia. Let's just say a deal is a deal. Congress will
live by our piece of it, and the White House would live by its piece of
it.
Virginians get this. I was traveling around this weekend, and
Virginians do not want the government to be closed. They want it open.
They said to me: Keep the government open.
I said: We want to get that deal just like you do. We want to get a
deal.
But if I said to Virginians: And on that deal, Congress should live
up to it, right?
Right.
And on that deal, the President should live up to it, right?
Right.
People get that a deal is a deal. It is not a complicated theory of
government or an argument about democracy; it is just basic fairness
that when parties reach an agreement and shake hands, that both parties
have to honor it.
So what I am looking for very significantly in these discussions is
an agreement from the White House that whatever the short-term period
is, they will not take punitive actions against my State, against the
State of Indiana, against the city of New York, or against anyone, or
against any particular program that is part of a congressional
appropriations bill that is already in process; that they will not
selectively pick out programs to attack or individuals to fire during
the course of that agreement.
I think we have to have that longer discussion about an alternate
yearlong appropriations bill, about a deal is a deal, but all I am
looking for here and all Virginians are looking for here is that we
would reach that agreement during the pendency of some short-term CR as
we try to negotiate a full-year agreement.
We can do this. We can do this. We ought to do it.
For a reason of fiscal conservatism, during the last shutdown in
2018-2019, I was able to sort of strategically put a bill on the floor
on a day much like today, a Thursday during the shutdown, and get
colleagues to unanimously agree with the principle that in the event of
any shutdown, Federal employees would get backpay.
It used to be, in the old days, if there was a shutdown, you had to
fight about backpay after, but now there is a backpay guarantee. When
there is a shutdown, people are guaranteed backpay. So that makes
shutdowns really foolish, like, you are going to shut down; you are
going to lock people out of their office; you are going to tell them
they can't do the work; and then you are going to write them a paycheck
anyway.
The fiscally conservative answer, when there is a backpay guarantee,
is to end this quickly so people can go back in their office and serve
their fellow Americans.
The fact that we, I believe, have narrowed the point of division down
to can we find a path forward to negotiate healthcare fixes, even if we
don't agree on all the details right now, and can we reach an agreement
that a deal is a deal, which is a reasonable request--I believe those
are the two issues that are on the table. And they are issues that we
are eminently capable of solving and solving very soon. And I am going
to do everything I can with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to
make sure we do.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Healthcare
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I believe every Senator knows and agrees
that our constituents are concerned about the cost of healthcare. Just
this morning, I heard some of my Republican colleagues also talking
about healthcare affordability. The difference is, I think our
Democratic side of the aisle wants to do something about it now. We
want to fix one of the biggest health insurance spikes that we are
going to see locked-in in 2026 in just a few weeks. We want to do
everything we can to stop that.
We know that when you kick Americans off of their health insurance,
it hurts all Americans. Democrats know that a vague promise to fix it
in the future doesn't help us solve the problems of healthcare delivery
today. And we know that the problem is worse than we even imagined just
a few weeks ago.
Yesterday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a new report on how
expensive the premiums which the ACA expiration--the Affordable Care
Act expiration of those premiums--may cost American families. The
answer is, it is going to hurt a lot. The new report found that out-of-
pocket premiums for a single person would more than double on average
next year if the enhanced premium tax credits expire.
That is, we have had insurance commissioners and various offices
across various States trying to make guesstimates about this, but
increasing from $880 a year to $1,900 a year in 2026 just shows you how
dramatic that situation could be for American families. These are
families who will have to shoulder these unnecessary increases. They
will be on top of all the other inflationary issues that they are
dealing with now, issues like household goods, gas prices, electricity,
housing, groceries, and now we want to throw at them healthcare costs.
We are very clear on our side of the aisle: We want the maximum
amount of people to get health insurance, drive down uncompensated
care, drive down everybody's cost, and deliver good healthcare for our
citizens. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured
rate was cut in half from almost 16 percent--roughly 15.7 percent
[[Page S6902]]
in 2010--down to an alltime low of 7.7 percent in 2023. So the result
is not just healthy Americans having their cost decreased by taking
uncompensated care out of the system. It is remarkable progress towards
getting everyone covered and having net savings for everybody.
We know that the current majority on the other side of the aisle,
they are no fan of the Affordable Care Act. They are no fan even of
universal coverage. If you can imagine, we are not even being
prescriptive. We just say, ``We want to see universal coverage.'' We
want everybody to have health insurance. Not only do they not agree
with that, they have tried to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act
50 times in the past decade--50 times they have gone after the
Affordable Care Act, and they have failed.
One time, thanks to the courage of the late Senator John McCain and
two of my other colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the last
significant threat to our healthcare system was defeated in 2017. Maybe
some people here still working on the floor remember that dramatic
moment.
But now, with the passage of this budget reconciliation act in July,
Republicans are trying to reverse the progress of the Affordable Care
Act. Congratulations, you are having an effect. You are taking that act
and healthcare out of the system. You may be trying to do it in a sneak
attack. You may be trying to do it in a vague way, but we are on to the
fact that you are trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, and you
are trying to get rid of the ability for Americans to get affordable
insurance coverage.
So what now? What are we going to do to prevent rural hospitals from
closing? Everyone knows that $50 billion in your slush fund that was
part of the reconciliation bill is not enough to save rural hospitals,
even if he uses it, even if the President would use it just on so-
called red States, it is not enough. And now, you are going to say that
15 million Americans who no longer have the Affordable Care Act
marketplace plans or the Medicaid coverage that was stripped out of the
healthcare system, we are not going to have that.
So you have no ideas on how you are going to help keep people insured
or keep these hospitals operating. So, instead of meaningful
negotiations, my colleagues have decided they don't want to tell us
what their ideas are to deal with the current crisis. It is not a next
year problem; it is a today problem. So instead of using jurisdictional
powers like the Finance Committee--they could have come up with a
solution. They could have come up with a meeting today. Instead, they
were having a hearing on cryptocurrency.
If you thought this issue was so important, why didn't you have a
hearing today on how to make health insurance more affordable for the
American people? Even if you didn't want to address this particular
idea, how is it that you want to have a meeting on cryptocurrency or
give tax breaks to oil companies, but you don't want to deal with the
health insurance problems of the American people? So instead of working
with their counterparts or the House of Representatives--oh, wait, the
House of Representatives, they are not even here, and yet we are in
this situation.
So who are you neglecting? You are neglecting your constituents. You
are neglecting 5 million Americans, including 80,000 Washingtonians,
who are not going to be able to have affordable insurance by the end of
this year. They will have to make a decision in November and December,
but we already know from projections, 80,000 of them will make a
decision because they just simply can't afford it.
Back to those numbers that were on the chart earlier: When you look
at households and incomes, somebody might say, ``Oh, well, somebody
might be able to afford $840.'' Well, not if you are a family of four
on $40,000. You are not going to afford that if you are on $75,000 of
income, and now, you are going to pay $3,368 more--or even $90,000 of
income. I got news for people: Seattle is one of the most expensive
places in the country to live, and coming up with now, all of a sudden,
$3,000 more for health insurance that you didn't think you were going
to have to pay? People are going to make the wrong decisions.
God forbid that these people get sick or have a condition that is
really life-threatening, and who is going to be responsible for taking
this out of the system because people don't want to come up with a
solution today? It is not that hard. We can extend these tax credits.
We can have affordable health insurance in the market. We can talk as
an organization of people who--by the way, Finance Committee is charged
with looking at this issue and discussing it. That is why we fought so
hard in the Affordable Care Act for something called the Basic Health
Program, which covered people under the 200 percent of the Federal
poverty line and provided more important health insurance.
But right now, we need to act. We need to say to families who are
going to be threatened by this that we can work together and we have a
plan. And our plan is going to be able to be implemented immediately.
What is more important than having millions of Americans lose their
health insurance? And then basically say, ``We don't really care about
this, when we already are teetering on so much inflation, so many
affordability issues, so much of people struggling.'' And if people
think we really recovered from a post-Covid era, we haven't. People are
still struggling with the aftermath and the effects of that, and now,
we are basically saying we are going to add to your insurance.
So, as I did a few days ago here on the Senate floor, I came and
talked about how States are now putting these numbers out, a lot of
States. When I found this out this summer, I did many events across the
State of Washington trying to bring awareness to the public about this,
and I found out that some States were really trying to hide the ball--
like they literally didn't want to tell people these costs were going
up. Maybe they thought they were going to wait until after the
enrollment period opened, when there was nothing you can do much past
that. But these States are seeing astronomical costs for health
insurance--the State of Texas, a 39-percent increase; Arizona, a 48.95-
percent increase.
So, somehow, these numbers were not available to the broader public,
and we published a report last week making sure that the biggest
insurers in that State--and we were projecting what the State's
insurance commissioner or other groups and organizations were saying
that this increase is. And now, the Kaiser Foundation is putting an
even brighter light on what those numbers are, saying that probably
that most people will just see an actual doubling of their premiums.
So how can it be okay to--and even if you thought, ``Well, okay, 5
million Americans, they are just going to be short changed. No
problem.'' It is not that. It is when those people don't have health
insurance, it affects the whole system. It takes that progress we made
in the uninsured rate, driving it down from 16 or so--15 percent to 16
percent, down to 7 percent, and it means that you are not raising the
cost on the entire system by seeing a bunch of people with
uncompensated care.
We did this to cover citizens because it was the smart thing to do,
and my colleagues should just come to the table and say, ``We agree. We
need to fix this now. We agree that an open enrollment period that
starts as early as October 15 in one or two States and starts for
everybody November 1 is on us now. And if we don't send the right
signal, this is the catastrophe that is going to happen for people, and
that we really do care about affordable health insurance.''
At a time when we already have price increases in, as I said, a lot
of household items, now is not the time to put healthcare on the list
and crush families with this extra burden. Let's sit down and get this
done.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Government Funding
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, well, I am coming to the floor today
as we find ourselves in the middle of the Schumer shutdown, and this is
a time where, indeed, instead of being in the Schumer shutdown and
having these shenanigans taking place, we should be in the middle of
working hard for the American people. If we were not in this shutdown
and our attention focused on that, we could be working our way
[[Page S6903]]
through the NDAA, our National Defense Authorization Act, and we could
be passing our appropriations bills through regular order.
But what we know is this is something that the minority leader has
been working on for weeks. It is what he wanted. He thinks that it is
going to benefit the Democratic Members of this Chamber.
I just really think he is sorely mistaken on this because the
measure--the continuing resolution in front of us--is a clean CR, which
means it is funding that is going to continue at levels where they
were, for a period of about 7 weeks, while we finish exercising our due
diligence and passing the appropriations bills.
Now, this is something that--this shutdown didn't have to happen, but
as I said, it is something that appears to have been in the works and
something that was really desired by those on the left.
We have heard, of course, that the minority leader is not wanting to
face opposition from the left there in New York, and because of that,
of course, what we are seeing is that our Nation's business has come to
a halt.
Last night and then again today, all but three of the Members of the
Democratic conference voted against a stopgap funding measure, our
clean CR, that would have kept this government running through November
21. Keeping the spending at current levels, this measure would have
given us the time we need to be working on these appropriations bills.
It would have kept us moving forward and kept us from wasting time.
One of the things I think is so important is that shutdowns are
expensive, and this is something that ends up costing us money every
time we do it. And, of course, we have quite a bit of national debt.
Now, when we talk about completing our appropriations bills and
setting our spending limits for the year and fulfilling that budget
document, that portion--we have our budget document. Then we move to
our appropriations bills.
Well, Senator Collins of Maine, who has led the Appropriations
Committee, has done an outstanding job working with Republicans and
Democrats on that committee, building out this appropriations process,
making certain that bills moved out of the Appropriations Committee and
that they are making their way to the floor.
One of the things that is so interesting is that 8 of the 12 bills
that came out of the Appropriations Committee came out with broad
bipartisan support. So if you have got measures that are coming out
with broad bipartisan support, why would you not move them to the
floor? Why would you not want to finish out this appropriations
process?
And, of course, it should have been finished by September 30. It was
not finished by then. So we are hopeful that by November 21, this
process can be complete and that we will be moving from a Biden budget
to a Trump and Republican budget, which, by the way, is what the
American people voted for when they gave a mandate to President Donald
Trump on November 5.
Now, I mentioned the 12 bills, and 8 of the 12 have come out with
bipartisan support. Three of those bills--our Agriculture, our Leg
Branch, and our MILCON-VA--have already passed off the floor, and they
did so with wide bipartisan votes. This is something that, yes,
indeed--yes, indeed--we need to make certain that we continue to push
these bills. Now, by passing these approps bills, we are ensuring that
we get onto the budget the American people voted for.
Well, this is not what our colleagues across the aisle are saying
they wanted. They don't want the clean CR. They are not wanting to move
forward on these bills. Instead, their measure for keeping the
government open and running is holding government basically hostage, if
you will, for $1.5 trillion in additional spending--$1.5 trillion.
Our national debt is north of $37 trillion. It is climbing. And, of
course, adding another $1.5 trillion for a few weeks is really
irresponsible. In this, they are basically trying to undo what we did--
the steps and the progress that we made when we did the Big Beautiful
Bill, which is truly--truly--a bill for hard-working Americans.
So I would encourage my colleagues across the aisle: It is time to
come to the table. It is time to pass the stopgap measure, the clean
CR. And I would remind my friends that since last year, they have voted
for these funding levels five times.
So let's come together. Let's get this passed. Let's get back on
track to pass these appropriations bills. Let's keep the Federal
Government open and working.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
____________________