the course of america, change the course of the world. so much of it happened right in the space. i think about the fact that it was 64 years and about a week ago today, just days before his inauguration, president elect john f. kennedy spoke right here in this chamber. in this moment i think of his words, his words which are now inscribed on this rostrum. he talked about what service requires of all of us. courage, judgment, integrity, dedication. those are the values that must guide us in what must be a resolute focus on what people need and how we can work

together to deliver for them. because in this moment our actions matter more than our words. taking on the hard challenges -- >> we will leave this to go live now to the u.s. senate where today lawmakers are considering more of president trump's cabinet nominees. votes are expected later this afternoon on nominations for energy secretary and attorney general. live coverage here on c-span2.

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patients receiving organ transpants, having -- transplants, having surgery, premature infants and those involved in car accidents. regular blood donations can help your neighbor or stranger.

following a national disaster, we often hear the call for blood donations, yet, we often forget about it when those events pass. blood donations are needed all the time. i encourage iowans, i suppose i should encourage all americans, who can donate blood to find their local blood center and donate today. later today we're going to have the first set of votes on the nomination of pam bondi to serve as attorney general of the united states. before we do, speak in support of her nomination. ms. bondi made history as the first woman elected as florida attorney general. she served for eight years and was easily reelected to a second

term because she did such a great job. she fought against pill mills, eliminated the backlog of rape test kits and stood for law and order. there's no doubt that ms. bondi's highly qualified. she's capable of doing the job well and represents main street by at least 77 million americans who voted for change in the 2024 election. this should earn her the same bipartisan support this body gave to attorney general garland, including this senator. i'm disappointed that none of my democratic colleagues on the judiciary committee voted for ms. bondi and i hope the full senate takes a different approach if my colleagues -- if my colleagues won't cross the aisle for this qualified nominee, they'll show that they're intent on opposing

president trump's picks are purely partisan reasons. ms. bondi's ready and able to serve our country and she'll work with president trump to restore faith in the justice department. i urge my colleagues to join me supporting ms. bondi.

mr. grassley: the leader today will be working on the nomination of christopher wright, of colorado, to be secretary of energy. i rise now to speak in support of that nomination. in his confirmation hearing, mr. wright affirmed that he would testify before congress when called upon, and i would also expect him to answer any questions from me and my colleagues here in the congress. i did not have the opportunity to meet with mr. wright, but if i had met with him, i would have told him about the importance of whistleblowers and the need to listen to whistleblowers, any of them, in the department of energy. mr. wright has spoken of the need to build out domestic energy through the use of multiple sources. i subscribe to an all-of-the-above energy philosophy.

some people only like all of the above the ground, wind and solar, as an example. others only like all below the ground, like oil and gas. but when i say all of the above, i mean all above the ground an all the energy that can come from below the ground. iowa fits into this philosophy as a leader in alternative energy production. over 60% of iowa oh, electricity comes from wind turbines which also sustains over 4,000 jobs across the state. iowa's the number one state for biofuel production, ethanol and biodiesel contributes nearly $5 billion to the iowa economy, often supporting rural communities. renewable natural gas is also a growing industry in iowa and i'm

hopeful to have nuclear energy to join the generation mix as well. i look forward to working with mr. wright to continue supporting america's energy dominance through all of the above the approach. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the clerk: ms. alsobrooks. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. thune: is the senate in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. thune: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, last week the senate processed two members of president trump's energy team. we confirmed lee zeldin to be we confirmed lee zeldin to be ... burgum was elected to be secretary of the interior and this week we will vote on chris wright to be secretary of e energy. i talked about how implementing an all-of-the-above strategy. i spoke about the our abundance

of resources and the need to leverage those resources. one of those is america's ability to innovate, the knowledge and capabilities we have to expand the realm of possibility. some of that work is being done in my state at the sanford underground lead facility. others are being done at universities also in partnership with the federal government. it is a big part of the work of the energy government and it is what chris wright has spent his life doing. mr. wright calls himself, and i quote, a science geek, turned energy nerd, turned lifelong energy entrepreneur. end quote. if confirmed, mr. wright will be notable among secretaries of energy for his depth of experience. he has experience in nuclear energy, solar, geothermal, wind power, oil, and natural gas. he's worked on innovations in

technology that has reshaped the energy industry and he's seen what energy can do to improve human lives, bring people out of poverty and remake entire societies. mr. president, chris wright is passionate about energy. he knows it's one of our most important assets and he's ready to get to work. our colleague, senator hickenlooper, has known chris wright for many years and he described him not only as a successful entrepreneur, but as i quote, an scientist who is open to discussion and someone who has that ability to assess what is possible and what isn't. end quote. chris wright will be an asset to president trump's energy team, and i look forward to seeing what he can accomplish for our country's energy future. mr. president, the senate will also soon vote on the nomination of former congressman doug collins to be secretary of veterans' affairs. caring for the men and women who

have served our country is an important obligation and one that president trump takes very seriously. veterans are a top priority for the trump administration, just as they were in his first term. to carry out this important mission, president trump has tapped someone with a servant's heart. the son of a georgia state trooper, doug collins couldn't shake the feeling that he had a duty to serve. after college, he served in the united states navy. still feeling called to ministry, he went to seminary and pastored a church. after the attacks of september 11, he knew his country needed him again. he joined the air force reserve in 2002 and still serves as a colonel and chaplain. in 2005, mr. collins began law school, and within a few months of graduation his unit was called up to go to iraq. as a flight line chaplain at one of the largest u.s. bases in iraq, doug collins met and prayed with troops on the front

lines of it operating iraqi freedom. he spent time in the hospital visiting injured servicemembers, praying with them and giving them companionship in their recovery. turning to public service, mr. collins brought that same servant's heart to atlanta and washington, representing his native north georgia. so when president trump asked him to serve as v.a. secretary, it's no surprise that he once again answered the call to serve. mr. president, there was a moment in mr. collins' confirmation hearing that struck me. he said, and i quote, the v.a. does not exist in and of itself. it exists for the veteran, end quote. doug collins has comforted wounded soldiers, he's taken calls from servicemembers contemplating suicide, he understands what it means to serve the veteran. i look forward to confirming him in this role and working with him to jape hold our nation's -- to uphold our nation's

commitment to those who have served. mr. president, i yield the floor, and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the clerk: ms. alsobrooks.

thanks for giving us your time. two of the approach you see , what would you say --

residents use of executive

power, thank you for giving your time. >> i'm happy to be her we seen him use his power a little over a week now, almost two. what would you say his approach? >> that's a pretty question because there are several things going on at once. in one sense, president trump is using executive orders to establish themes and programs is talked about in the campaign giving directives to executive agencies to line them up along is policy objectives and perhaps start action but there are other executive actions that raise serious question and for a chance to follow up on the.

in some sense, the supreme court heat up the power. >> i'm just -- i've had this question from reporters will not talking about second. the president is doing unusual things as far as removals. there is a direct connection between what they been doing

zero five and what president trump is following up on the removal cases in the free enterprise or especially the law case in 2020. >> can you elaborate when it comes to these cases, where has the president applied his power? >> i also should have said all of these cases and the concept which we really started hearing about in the bush to administration for from the court. he and who gets to fire whom.

the real issue is control and power over direct power over the executive branch so those decisions had to do with extending the reach of presidential authority to fire, for example until the law decision you couldn't remove consumer finance protection board dismiss president trump and did it again and invite his own people and.

>> asked about the executive power joining us in conversation (202)748-8001 publicans. looking at removal power for what has the court during given to the president but the myers

decision in the 20s of all things humphreys decision in 1935, 90 yourself. the recent news stories the removal authority and independent regulatory agencies such as federal trade commission, securities exchange commission and president trump specific action and this is a thin layer operating in charge of these agencies designed by congress that they should have terms and can only be removed for cause the president should

have authority over cabinet level agency's and no question about that. an uneasy compromise and agencies. the serious questions about the sign embracing the executive model announced in the myers decision. entire executive branch. that would be big news.

it is about control and president trump nearly wants to control in the direct sense, the entire executive branch of government. and do not want to ignore those. executive power and why it's grown so much since then the

presidential power and doesn't give a lot of detail about the structure of the executive branch. missus the source, it is a famous in the constitution. it talks about executive power and the only dissent saying all

of executive power and unlimited power of even in the face of congressional statues to the contrary and real-world implications. >> democrat line, griffin, good morning, go ahead. >> in my opinion what trump is doing, eliminating supervisory roles. and him in charge of social security so what that is going

to do forcing some down our throats and no more recourse and then they will so long to medicare cuts and billionaires are in charge control of the fbi and federal law enforcement agencies. they are no longer in place. if you ashes him or fight. >> the removal within with no

more but what is the power? >> an independent agency they are some of the stories about the food and drug administration but these are not independent agencies. elements may be fbi in the process that was on the hearings, pam bondi for example but there is another issue talking about the department of justice but issue is a post- watergate understanding the department of justice should

operate independently that arm's-length. first term when he doesn't have much time for the doesn't believe in the area. the action the supreme court had been more mindful of what some of us record as watergate the decision would come out that way because next -- possible concerns is a little telegraphic but legal thinkers including people on the court obviously don't have the same respect with respect to the fbi and d.o.j. as to the people on the trump

administration and possibly the supreme court as well. >> this is george. >> good morning. like to know when has the president crossed the line, what was the line be? they do to stop them. >> if this is about possible interference payment systems, think there are enough details on why he's asked for permission to scrutinize the department of the treasury. i think they are early days as far as for the reps sunday evening is a trump interested in terms of the d.o.j. fbi angle, i

think this is a desire for more control and it's often a limiting case no one would be in favor of presidents directly controlling of previous prosecuted and who doesn't but that may be another way to engage is, is it really true the supreme court would back of president trump on these removal questions? i'm not saying it is guaranteed at all. i think the judiciary is going to be a chest like it was first term. as an assault lost a lot of the cases can court. i think that is born to say. >> is going to ask you to elaborate. can you elaborate for most

receive court? >> to the extent that is on control of the department of justice, i'm not quite sure how that would is the one was trying to get across is the supreme court kind of giving trump, for he knows of or not a green line to challenge agencies as well as undermining the civil service it is unclear how far they let trump go anyway.

in all the cases mentioned there is an indirect effect we have to pay attention to. >> andrea in north carolina, democrat line. and how much we rely the

president tomorrow with think we cannot stop trump. >> to the extent you are raising this amendment, limiting the president to two terms, i really don't see a magic way around that. about executive order. in this impoundment they did mention, there are a lot of issues here is one of the ways

the president is in theory. raising, what is the worst case? i'll stick with my watergate era observation about what would happen on this understanding on this collapse of it did collapse, that means worst case scenario was asked about in the pam bondi on the enemies list and will direct a government agency to go after the people on the list and people complain they will be on the list. before our very eyes, an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of

the federal government. friday night, the so-called department of government efficiency led by billionaire elon musk gained access to the treasury department's tire system of -- entire system of payments including social security and medicare benefits and americans' tax refunds. i'll say more on this in aempt movement but that was not all. this weekend, doge staffers also executed what can only be described as an illegal seizure of the u.s. agency for international development, or usaid. we don't know who these doge staffers are. we don't know if they have security clearances. we don't know what legal authority they have to access usaid facilities, if any. we do know a few things. first, we know that usaid has been ceil ripped apart. it's offices have been closed, it's contracts broken, funding

for its programs which protect american interests around the world have been halted and secretary rubio said in an interview he's been named the active administer and they are reviewing. who is he kidding? there's virtually nothing left of usaid to review. even the lifesaving assistance he claims are exempt are not moving. second, we know shutting down us aid puts american security in danger. u.s. aid programs preserve america's influence in africa, asia and regions across the world. our humanitarian efforts are critical for fighting ebola. it is essential for countering terrorist activity. at the time of soaring egg prices, shutting off u.s. aid programs that fight the global spread of bird flu is utterly asinine. if america retreats from the rest of the world, china will

fill the void. russia's influence will grow. hatred against the u.s. will keep rising. our diplomatic influence will disintegrate. third, we know that unilaterally closing usaid is illegal. donald trump does not have the authority to raise -- to erase an independent agency created by congress. nor can the department of state absorb usaid, especially because now there's basically nothing left to absorb. we also know that is just the beginning. if doge attacks usaid today, then you can be sure they will move on to another target tomorrow. who knows, maybe it'll be the postal service or the irs or even the social security administration. they could be next. or maybe our national security agencies. we also know something else -- by shutting down usaid doge is doing the work of russia and china at the expense of the united states.

in two weeks doge has done more to erode american global influence than russia and china have been able to accomplish in a long time. for russian president and putin ally, medvedev, even celebrated doge's activities online. russia is elated by what doge is doing. both ruler and china hate the work of usaid because it limits their own influence on the world stage and now china and russia have in effect their own propaganda machine. -- within the federal government. this is dangerous. this is against america's interests, and president trump needs to show some leadership and rein in doge before it inflicts more harm on america's national security. finally, doge's behavior is spar 6 a troubling pattern of russian and chinese communist sympathizers increasing their influence on american foreign policy. a few days ago donald trump

named darren beaty as active under secretary of state. mr. beatty has long pushed the chinese communist party line on the uighur genocide. he has repeated russia's propaganda on the ukraine war. he has even advocated that the u.s. make a deal to allow klein to take over taiwan. and now he has one of the most senior positions within the department of state and oversees a large swath of american diplomatic work. make no mistake, doge's conduct cannot be allowed to stand. republicans in congress must join us to take action to restore the rule of law and stop any potential lawbreaking any doge. doge is spreading across the federal government like a virus and the american people -- and it's the american people who will pay the price when their benefits and payments are taken away. on treasury -- or are -- are

illegally taken away. last fright friday, doge gained access to the treasury department's payment systems and to the most sensitive information of every u.s. citizen. doge was handed the social security daft every american citizen. he gave doge access to america's personal tax refund data, he gave doge access to the american people's medicaid, medicare data, veteran benefit data. wait of all, we don't know what doge intends to do with this information. if you want to know how an unelected government operates, look no further than doge. doge staffers, whomever they are, have unprecedented access to the most sensitive payment data in the entire federal government. unprecedented access, with no transparency, with no guardrails, and, guess what? the one independent watchdog who could have provided oversight was fired by donald trump over a

week ago. the treasury secretary must revoke doge's access to the treasury payment system at once. if he does not, congress must act immediately. that's why leader jeffries and i will work together on legislation to stop unlawful meddling in the treasury department's payment systems. we must protect people's social security payments, medicare payments, and tax refunds from any possible tampering by doge or other unauthorized entities. that's what leader jeffries and i will hope to do. we'll work to do. jefferies. let's be very clear. doge is not a real government agency, it has no authority to make spending decisions or shut programs down or to ignore federal law. doge is a shadow government without accountability or transparency or regard for the rule of law. the american people did not vote to let doge get ahold of doge's

social security numbers, to give them a chokehold on treasury payments is outlandishly dangerous, it is like letting a tiger into a petting zoo and hoping for the best. the bureau of the fiscal service which oversees these treasury department payments, executes over one billion transactions a year worth over $6 trillion. if these payments were accidentally halted or ma nip lated it could paralyze the economy if we're not careful. one mistake and people's social security payments could be stop, loans to businesses could be in danger. the treasury department is using extraordinary efforts to make sure we do not default. this all begs the question, what

does doge really want with all of this data. what possible reason is there to give extremists, right-wing extremist people social security payments, medicare payments and personal information? will doge try to halt social security or medicare or medicaid? god forbid. will doge stop funding program by congress that donald trump he doesn't like? what about literacy programs, small business loans and others, how do we know doge won't use its access to the treasury to enrich donald trump's billionaire friends? what if they go after the competition of doge's leadership. it is laughably naive that those who make enormous sums through government contracts and take them at their word that all they care about is efficiency. give me a break. the immense danger is that we have no clarity, explanation or

details about what doge is after. the treasury secretary must revoke doge's access to the treasury payment system at once. democrats, as i mentioned, democrats in the house and senate, congressman jefferies and myself will introduce legislation to take action. what must halt this unlawful and dangerous power grab? we must halt -- we must halt this -- this unlawful and dangerous power grab. doge has no business anywhere near the federal government's payment systems nor americans' private daift. finally -- data. finally on tariffs, this weekend president trump kick started a golden age of higher costs for american families with tariffs on mexico and canada. by issuing his tariffs, donald trump is yet again rigging the game for his billionaire friends while doing nothing to lower costs for farmers.

-- american families. now he has decided to back off the nonsensical trade war with mexico. but trump's -- but president trump's retreat is not enough. he must back off his tariffs on canada or every day americans will see prices going up. listen to this, economists predict that president trump's tariffs will raise prices on american families by as much as 1200 a year. it will raise prices on american families by as much as $1200. for president trump and his pl air in -- billionaire friends it is chump change. for most families $1,200 could be the difference between putting food on the table or not, making doctor appointments or skip them.

the trump tariffs will raise the car prices. if you use a car to get to work, the trump tariffs will make gas prices go up. we should not listen to trump when he talks about stopping fentanyl. that's nonsense, there's other way to stop fentanyl without making things worse for the. donald trump said that the american people need to suck it up and that there will be some pain after the tariffs go into effect. that is outrageous. that is what an out of touch billionaire says. both sides of the ideological spectrum know the damage of these tariffs, the u.s. chamber of commerce, hardly a liberal group said, president trump's tafrgs will only raise prices for american families and upend supply chains. even the wall street editorial board said that president trump's tariffs will result in, quote, the dumbest

trade war in history, unquote. that's what this would be as "the wall street journal" editorial page said, the dumbest trade war in history. this is not what the american people want. democrats will not stand quiet. we will stop the president from unilaterally plunging us into a trade war with our own allies. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the democratic whip. mr. durbin: mr. president, two

weeks, it's been two weeks with the new president. the inauguration seems so far in the distant past, it's hard to believe. what this administration has tried to do during the first two weeks is almost impossible to describe in a very short period of time. so many executive orders, so many chaengs, so -- changes, so many speeches by the president, so many threats, so many changes in the way this government is run, and many of them raising serious questions that even go to the heart of our constitution. mr. president, since president trump took office two weeks ago, he has sown chaos across the federal government. but despite his campaign promises, something has been con hispanicsly -- conspicuously absent, lowering the cost of living for americans.

the economically questionable tariffs he announced on friday, 25% on canada and mexico, 10% more on china show just that. i said to my staff when they handed me a copy of the speech which was written this morning, there had been some developments during the course of the day when it comes to mexico, at least a postponement of the imposition of tariffs on mexico until the end of the month. despite campaigning on a promise of lowering prices, these tariffs will not do that. they will do just the opposite. american families will find things more expensive. don't take my word for it. the u.s. chamber of commerce said that tariffs will, quote, only raise prices for american families and upend supply chains. that's the chamber of commerce. the national association of manufacturers said, ultimately

manufacturers will bear the brunt of these tariffs. undermining our ability to sell our products at a competitive price and putting american jobs at risk. the president himself even admitted that these economic measures will cause pain for many american families. trade between my home state of illinois and canada and mexico are essential to the strength of our economy. more than one out of ten workers in illinois works toward the export market. illinois is the third largest exporter state in the nation. what our -- what are the first and second largest export markets? canada and mexico. as a result of the tariffs the president is proposing, working families will feel the pain. these tariffs will drive up costs for manufacturers, they'll disrupt our supply chain and they've already inspired re tall tritariffs which american consumers will feel at the store. clearly our outrage at this

senseless policy may be working. today the president announced he'll delay the tariffs with mexico for a month. i'm glad to hear that. let's be clear about one thing, unless you are a tech billionaire or helping someone to get rich through the crypto market, the president does not care about making your life better. he only cares about enriching himself at the expense of every day americans. when you wonder why the stock market is dipping and why the price of potatoes and eggs go up at the grocery store, know it is because of the policy of the new president who's been in office two weeks. on another equally important matter this week. the senate will vote on the nomination of pam bondi so serve as the attorney general. given the trump administration's ongoing purge of justice department officials, i urge my colleagues to look carefully and closely at ms. bondi's

nomination. president trump has repeatedly made it clear that he values loyalty above all else when it comes to attorneys general. don't taek my word for it. -- don't take my word for it. look at what happened in his first term. he fired his first attorney general for not being loyal. president trump said that he expects the justice department to seek retribution on his behalf. with ms. bondi the trump administration has finally found someone who passed the loyalty test. she served as attorney general for the state of florida for two terms. she has experience as an attorney general at our third largest state and you're undoubtedly going to hear that over and over many but it appears she is ready to break with bipartisan tradition when it comes to a nonpartisan

department of justice, one that is free of political influence when it comes to the white house. i'm not sure she is dedicated to these ideals. she was the leader in an effort to overturn the 2020 election and to this day she still claims to the basic loyalty oath that was priority of those in a part-that effort. she refuses to acknowledge that joe biden won the presidential election in 2020. she can't get over it. and she's echoed the president-elect's calls for prosecuting his political opponents, including a pledge made publicly that prosecutors will be prosecuted and the investigators will be investigated. sadly, ms. bondi's threat is already coming to fruition. since president trump's inauguration, his administration has purged dozens of senior career civil servants at the department of justice and the fbi, including long-time nonpartisan leaders of the

government's counterterrorism and counterespionage efforts. these career civil servants are responsible for coordinating the justice department's fight against international terrorism and foreign spies. these remove yes, ma'ams -- removals diminish america's ability to respond to national security threats. the trump administration's purge of these officials is a naked political move. in firing a dozen career prosecutors, the acting attorney general issued a memo and said in that memo, quote, given your significant role in protecting the president, i do not believe the leadership of the department can trust you. how blunt can you be? line attorneys and agents have been bullied out because they're assigned tasks linked to the criminal investigation of the president or january 6 riots. one of the largest prosecutions in the united states, of the

insurrectionist mob, they rifled through my desk, they posed for pictures, made all sorts of signs and left notes behind and tore up the capitol building. at the end of the day 140 law enforcement officers were hurt. four lost their lives. that was the reality of what happened on january 6. do we expect the justice department to do nothing about the hundreds of people who stormed into this capitol? we saw it on videotape. nobody is making this up. they were prosecuted for crimes they committed and many of them were sentenced, many of them bled guilty when they saw the videotapes -- pled guilty when they saw the videotapes of what they did on that day. many of them ended up in jail, some of them with serious

sentences for their misconduct. now comes the new president, donald trump, and resolves them from criminal guilt. tells them they're free to go. that is a question that has to be asked by the american people. if someone came bursting into your home or church or your school, tore it up, beat up those trying to maintain order and did it all on videotape, should they be held responsible for it? i certainly think so. it's certainly true when it comes to this building, which represents the symbol of america and our democracy. if you want to desecrate this building, you should pay a price. the american people deserve an attorney general who will acknowledge that reality, who will protect the fundamental rights of this country, demonstrate independence and integrity, and remain faithful to the constitution, the country, and the rule of law. miss bondi during the course of

her testimony before the senate judiciary committee was also asked about kash patel, the president's nominee to head up the federal bureau of investigation. she made it clear she supports him. i don't. i don't because he doesn't have the experience to hold the job. he certainly has nothing in his background that suggests he can supervise 38,000 fbi agents and employees in 400 field offices around the world, trying to keep america safe every day. yet, she stood behind him. i fear miss bondi will only protect and remain faithful to one person throughout this whole experience, and that's the president who's given her this opportunity. i urge my colleagues to look carefully at her record and the record of kash patel. they are a team in this effort, and they should be held accountable for what they've said and written and positions they've taken in support of the president, even when his positions are not consistent, in my mind, with the equal and free

administration of justice. madam president, i yield the floor. mr. grassley: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: over the last three or four years, i've come to the floor to discuss with my colleagues information that i get from whistleblowers in the fbi, the department of justice, most of it dealing with the subject of the political weaponization of people at the highest levels of the fbi and their violating of protocol, getting involved in political situations that the fbi has no business being in. so, last week, when mr. patel

was before my judiciary committee, i released some new e-mails that i have gotten that show further involvement of certain people in the case against trump that jack smith headed up. so i'm here today because when i release those e-mails last week there was a "new york times" story that got it all wrong. so, today i want to bring to my colleagues' attention a january 30, 2025 "new york times" article from adam goldman and

allen fewerer about my and senator johnson's oversight of the fbi. in that article, they said, quote, fbi e-mails released thursday showed that agents and officials followed standard procedure, end of quote, when opening the trump elector case. well, they read it wrong, and i'm going to tell you why they read it wrong. the article written by these two can be summed up like this -- a very wet kiss to the politically biased leadership within the fbi. last week senator johnson and i made public fbi records that showed a snapshot into the origins of the jack smith

electoral case against trump. those records included a february 14, 2022 e-mail from assistant special agent in charge thibault to his subordinate agent michelle ball. the subject line of that e-mail was, quote-unquote, elector matter. end of quote. my office has been untold that tebow handpicked subordinate agents, including michelle ball and jamie carpalin, who are both referenced in the documents that i released. to conceal his role as an initiating agent.

the documents senator johnson and i released support that. now, in the february 2022 e-mail, special agent tebow says, in part, quote, here is the draft opening language we discussed, end of quote. attached to that e-mail is a word document titled, quote- quote-unquote, un -- one word, elector. that word document, when opened, contains information that became part of the predicating document that was later be approved to open a case code named arctic frost. that was all about prosecuting then-citizen trump. when opening the word document,

it says this, quote, author, timothy tebow, ends of quote. it also says this, quote, last modified by timothy tebow, end quote. today, senator johnson and i will be pluckily released a new e-mail that we've obtained that was sent from thibault to michelle ball and jamie carpalin, march 1 -- jamie garmin, march of 2022. in the e-mail, thibault says, quote, to add, will come by to discuss, end quote. the document was attached to the e-mail with language to be added to the arctic frost document opening the investigation against trump.

the document attached to the e-mail lists the author and modifier as, you guessed it, thibault. well, the document itself is titled arctic frost, and it adds president trump as a criminal subject to the investigation. notably, the document lists then-chairman durbin's 2021 investigative report on trump to help justify that trump yet fails to unanimous my 2021 report, which provided much-needed context. now, "the new york times" article said the fbi records senator johnson and i made public, quote, showed that

agents and officials followed standard procedure, end quote, but that totally ignores the facts -- totally ignores the facts in evidence, let alone not even considering the fbi rules for making these determinations for opening a prosecution case. so i go to these rules. section 7.7.1, i'm not sure i understand the periods in this section, but anyway, 7.7.1 in the fbi's domestic investigations operation guide, and that's essentially the fbi's manual, is titled, quote, open

opening. ation -- is titled, quote, opening documentation, end of quote. that shows the workflow approval and makes clear that supe supervisors, i want to emphasize supervisors, are to approve the work products provided to them. and the point here is thibault was not that sort of a supervisor. in other words, the intent of this rule, based on its plain text, is that subordinate agents provide work product to supervising agents for the latter's approval. now, should there be any doubt about this intent, look no further than section 3.5.2.3 titled, quote, no self-approval rule, end of quote. that rule says in part, quote,

an approval, official, and that rule uses the word supervisor to define that person, may not self-approve his or her own work or activity, and independent approval of these activities must be attained, including the opening and the closing of any assessment or predicated investigation, end of quote. then the rule says this, quote, in the event that an fbi employee errantly conducts a self-approval, the approval is considered substantial noncompliance and must be docu documented. so, that leaves you with thibault self-approving something that he wasn't supposed to self-approve.

and moreover, another fbi document defines, quote, general rules and procedures, end of quote, of supervisors as this, quote, supervisor assigns leads, approves documents, assigns squad current workload, end of quote. none of this says that a supervisor like thibault is allowed to draft and open a case and approve it for themselves. based on the facts and the evidence that senator gerrymandering and i've -- that senator johnson and i have obtained to date, and based upon the fbi's own rules, thibault essentially self-approved his own case in violation of fbi rules, which means this guy was out to get trump as fast as he could.

according to this case that, again, i say is named arctic frost, as they can code name the trump case, was defective from the very starred. not only from a political infection standpoint, but also because of substantial noncompliance with fbi rules. so, getting back to "the new york times" article, at this point the paper simply is an fbi stenographer and propagandist parody, fbi lies claiming e-mails released by me and senator johnson, quote, showed that agents and officials followed standard procedure, end of quote, when opening arctic frost. as with most of the information

in the leaks the fbi has laundered through goldman, the truth is quite the opposite of the fbi and "the new york times" narrative. does "the new york times" believe that it's normal for an assistant special agent in charge to prepare case p predication for opening an investigation, then feed it to street agents, and add to that doing it to a former president of the united states? is it normal for the fbi agents to ignore sources that counteracts the predication they so badly manufactured? is it normal for an assistant special agent in charge to post anti-trump social media posts

under his true name and title while he's overseeing the most politically sensitive investigation for the fbi? is it normal for an assistant special in charge, responsible for the most sensitive political investigations in the fbi, to be forced to resign for partisanship on the job, and then be found to have violated the hatch act for that same partisanship? it seems to this senator that "the new york times" has become the paid publicist of senior members of the fbi. an unethical quid pro quo of pushing their narratives in exchange for publishing false information. on the occasion of the latest

article, as a mouthpiece for nameless fbi sources, i invite "the new york times" editorial board to undertake its own investigation into goldman's receipt of one-sided law enforcement information leaked to him from fbi employees. absent that, continued "new york times" reporting in this area is inherently questionable. i started this by talking about occasionally from time to time i come to the united states senate floor to discuss information i get from whistleblowers and that deals with the political weaponization of the fbi. i released some of these e-mails last week at the patel hearing. now, what patel is all about, by

president trump appointing him to the fbi director, is simply to see that none of this stuff that i've discussed with you and in previous speeches on the floor of the united states senate ever happens again. and that the fbi is going to be a law enforcement agency and not a political weaponization organization, and i say that about the people that are on the seventh floor of the fbi -- hoover fbi building. i'm not condemning the people that are working fbi cases in iowa or any of the other 49 states because they're doing their job. but they should have the full support of the seventh floor of the building and not being concerned about prosecuting a former president of the united states, now a president reelect as ed as the 48th president of the united states. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: the clerk: ms. alsobrooks. on march 14, the government

shuts down. between now and then we have to have an agreement, bipartisan that goes through congress, that is passed by the house and by the senate and what is giving me great pause right now is what if we do all of that income to an agreement and, you know, we like some, we don't like some that we voted in and this administration says we do not have to go by that. the level of trust is that the lowest i've ever seen it here in congress. in our ability to work together and find a compromise and get it passed. it is up to our republican colleagues to stand up to this and assure us that in agreement and a law is real and they will follow up with us. yes, we are all worried about the government shutdown deadline of march 14. no democrat wants the government to shut down. we have all worked extremely hard to come to an agreement. we expect our republican colleagues to stand up and work with us to get this done in a system of trust that this democracy is founded on.

[inaudible] >> well, we have heard it several places. mr. carey can get you some of the details. the point really is, it is almost government by whim. we are used to rules and the opportunity for all sides to be heard on the finance committee. we have worked on this for years and years and we said we want to save five, 600 bucks for the working guy. it is now the filing season. based on what we have heard, essentially musk essentially says he will now be secretary of treasury as well as everything else because he is telling bess that he is going to go in there and bessette told us in the finance committee when i asked the question, he said it is on for this year and people started filing. [inaudible] >> he certainly did not consult

with us. the treasury secretary consult with the committee and we have heard nothing from him on this. >> last question. >> your former colleague said today, a completely unresponsive agency. it refuses to do so. i know that some of you all have good relationships. do you remember him talking about this? >> we have been, my office and a number of us in the senate have been in constant contact with secretary rubio about this. a little bit harder to catch. here is what i would say about that. if there's an opportunity to look at reform, i am all ears.

now the ranking member of the subcommittee lindsay graham and i had a conversation about the kinds of reforms. we cannot have a negotiation when the whole agency is illegally shut down if the agency has reopened and we can start acting like adults again and have a negotiation. right now illegally shut down all foreign aid. >> one other point of fact for you is we passed the foreign assistance appropriations bill in congress last year with completely everyone voting for it on a bipartisan basis. across-the-board every single member, no one raised any issues that you just stated. no one. beautiful committee hearing, markup and none of that was raised. [inaudible] everything is shut down.

>> i cannot speak to individual employees. money is not flowing. i can tell you that medicine is not being delivered. there is medicine on the dock that was abandoned and spoiled. i can tell you that people are evacuating countries. i can tell you there is an outbreak of ebola in uganda. in east africa and all of those programs are either completely shut down or hobbled to the point where people cannot deliberate. it is not just about providing lifesaving care. it is about maintaining stability overseas so that instability does not visit us in the united states. >> thank you all very much

we are waiting for senator to come to the floor to speak. lawmakers will be voting to confirm energy secretary christopher wright to limit debate on pam bondi to be attorney general and to advance the nomination of russ vote to be there. you can watch about the 5:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2.

the last week the senate process to members of president trumps energy team. we confirmed the zeldon to be in a bipartisan vote. doug virgo received 79 votes when he was confirmed to be secretary of the interior. today we will complete with a confirmation of chris right to be secretary of energy. i spoke last week about how our energy needs and about implementing all of the above energy strategy. i spoke with our abundance of resources that we need to leverage those resources for our country's energy security. one of the most important resources is the ability to innovate. the knowledge and capabilities that we have to expand the realm of possibility.

some of that work will be done in my state at the stanford underground research facility and south dakota. other great work is being done by the private sector universities often a partnership with the federal government. it is a big part of the work of the energy department. it is what chris wright has spent his life doing. mr. wright calls himself and i quote a science geek turned energy nerd earned lifelong energy entrepreneur. if he is confirmed, mr. wright will be notable among secretaries of energy for its depth and experience. he has experience nuclear energy solar, geothermal, wind power, oil and natural gas. he has worked on innovations in technology that i appreciate the energy industry. he has seen what energy can do to improve lives, bring people out of poverty and remake entire so societies.

chris wright is passionate about energy. he knows he is one of our most important assets. he is ready to get to work. our colleague for is knowing chris wright for many years. he described not only as a successful entrepreneur but as i quote a scientist who was open to discussion and someone who has that ability to assess what is possible and what is not". chris wright will be an asset to president trumps energy team. and i look forward to seeing what he can accomplish for our country's energy future. mr. president, the senate will also soon go to the nomination of doug collins to be secretary of veterans affairs. caring for the men and women who have served our countries and an important obligation one that president trump takes very seriously. veterans are a top priority for the trump administration. just as they were in his first term. to carry out this important

mission, president trump has cap someone with a servant's heart. the son of a georgia state trooper doug collins just could not shake the feeling that he had a duty to serve. after college he served in the united states navy. still feeling called to industry he went to seminary and began pastoring a church. after september 11 he knew his country needed him again. the joint air force reserve in 2002 and still proudly serving our country as a colonel and chappell. in 2005, mr. collins began law school. and within a few months of graduation head unit was called up to go to iraq. as a flightline chaplain at one of the largest u.s. bases in iraq, doug collins met and prayed with troops who were on the front lines of operation iraqi freedom. we spent time in a hospital visiting injured service members , praying with them and giving them companionship in their recovery.

turning to public service mr. collins brought that same service heart to atlanta and washington represented his native north georgia. so when president trump asked him to serve as va secretary, it is no surprise that he once again answered the call to serve mr. president, there was a moment in the confirmation hearing that struck me. c he said, and i quote, the va does not exist in and of itself. it exists from the veteran. doug collins has comforted wounded soldiers, he has taken calls from service members contemplating suicide. he understands what it means to serve the veteran. i look forward to confirming him in this role in working with him to uphold our nation's commitment to those who have served. mr. president, i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. >> mr. president, before our very eyes and unelected shadow government is conducting a

hostile takeover of the federal government. friday night the so-called department of government efficiency led by billionaire elon musk gained access to the treasury department's entire system of payments including social security and medicare benefits and americans tax refunds. i will say more on this in a moment. this weekend staffers also executed what can only be described as an illegal seizure of the u.s. agency for international development or usaid. we do not know who these staffers are. we do not know if they have security clearances. we do not know what legal authority they have to access the facilities, if any. we know disaster aid has been completely ripped apart. its officers have enclosed the contracts have been broken funding for its programs which

protect american interests around the world have been halted. secretary rubio said in an interview that he has been named the acting administrator and that they are "reviewing and potentially reorganizing usaid." but who is he kidding. there is virtually nothing left of usaid to reveal. even the lifesaving claims are exempt and are not moving. second, we know shutting down usaid puts american security and danger. they have been deserving the influence across the world. our humanitarian efforts are critical. it is spreading in uganda right now. at the time of the egg prices, fighting the global spread of bird flu is utterly asinine. if america retreats from the rest of the world, china will

fill the void. russia's influence will grow. hatred against the u.s. will keep rising. our diplomatic influence will disintegrate. third, we know that unilaterally closing usaid is illegal. they do not have the authority to erase an independent agency created by congress nor can the department of state absorb usaid especially because now there is basically nothing left to absorb we also know that this is just the beginning. if doge attacks today then you can ensure that they will move onto another target tomorrow. who knows, maybe it will be the postal service or the irs or even the social security administration. they could be next or maybe our national security agencies. we also know something else. by shutting down, doge is doing

the work of russia and china at the expense of the united states in two weeks doge has done more than russia and china have been able to accomplish in a long time. for russian president and putin ally even celebrated doge activities online. russia is even related by what they are doing. both russia and china hate the work of usaid because it limits their own influence on the world stage. now china and russia have in fact their own propaganda machine. within federal government. this is dangerous. this is against america's interests. president trump needs to show some leadership in rain and before it inflicts more harm on america's national security. finally, doge behavior as part of a troubling pattern of communist sympathizers on the influence on american foreign policy. a few days ago, donald trump

named darren beatty is acting under secretary of state. mr. beattie has long been pushed , has long pushed the chinese communist party line on the genocide. he has repeated russia's propaganda on the ukraine war. he has even advocated that the u.s. make a deal to allow china to take over taiwan. and, now, he has one of the most senior positions within the department of state and oversees a large swath of the american diplomatic work. make no mistake, doge cannot be allowed to stand. republicans in congress must join us to take action to restore the rule of law and stop any potential lawbreaking by doge. doge is spreading across the federal government like a virus in the american people, it's american people that will pay the price when their benefits and payments are taken away. on treasury. the legally taken away.

last friday, doge forcefully gained access to the treasury department's payment systems and to the most sensitive information of virtually every u.s. citizen. donald trump basically handed doge the social security data virtually every american citizen he gave doge access to america's personal tax refund data. he gave doge access to american peoples medicare medicaid benefits, disability data, veteran data, worst of all, we do not know what doge intends to do with this information. if you want to know how and unelected shadow government operates look no further than doge. doge staffers whomever they are have unprecedented access to the most sensitive payment data in the entire federal government. unprecedented access with no transparency, with no guard rails, and guess what, one independent watchdog who could

have provided oversight and was fired by donald trump over one week ago. the treasury secretary must revoke the access to the treasury payment system at once. if he does not, congress must act immediately. that is why leader jeffries and i will work together on legislation to stop unlawful meddling in the treasury department's payment systems. we must protect people social security payments, medicare payments and tax refunds from any possible tampering by doge or any other unauthorized entities. that is what leader jeffries and i will work to deal. let's be very clear. doge is not a real government agency. it has no authority to make spending decisions. it has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law. doge operating in essence of a shadow government without accountability or transparency or in regard to the rule of law. the american people did not vote to let doge get a hold of people

social security numbers. to give doge a chokehold on treasury payments is outlandishly dangerous. it is like letting a tiger into a petting zoo and hoping for the best. it is impossible to overstate that this is playing with fire. the bureau of the fiscal service which oversees treasury department payments executes over 1 billion transactions a year worth over $6 trillion. if these payments wherever intentionally or even accidentally halted or manipulated it could paralyze the economy if we are not careful. one mistake in people social security benefits could freeze. disability agents, loan to small business, they could all be in danger. the treasury department is already using extraordinary measures to ensure we do not default on the debt. if the careless meddling cause us to default, it could trigger a financial crisis around the world. this all begs the question what

do they really want with all of this data. what possible reason is there to give extremists, right wing extremist people social security payments medicare payments and personal information. will doge try to halt social security or medicare or medicaid god forbid. will doge cut funding programs approved by congress that donald trump decides he does not like? what about cancer research, food banks, school lunches, veterans aid, literacy programs, small business loans, how do we know doge will not use its access to the treasury to enrich donald trump's billionaire friends. what if they go after the business competition of doge leadership. it is laughably naïve to look at the wealthy billionaires who run doge who make enormous sums are government contracts. all they care about is efficiency. the immense danger is that we have no clarity, no explanation, no details for what doge is truly after.

the potential for corruption is too great. the treasury secretary must revoke the access to the treasury payment system at once. democrats, as i mentioned, democrats in the house and senate, congressman jeffries and myself will introduce legislation to take action. what must halt this unlawful and dangerous power grid. we must halt, we must halt this unlawful and dangerous power grid doge has no business anywhere near the federal government's payment systems nor america's private data. finally on terrorists. this weekend, president trump kick started the golden age of higher cost for american families with his 25% tariffs on canada and mexico. two of our four biggest trading partners. by issuing his tariffs, donald trump is yet again rigging the game for his billionaire friends while doing nothing to lower

costs for american families. thankfully, president trump got immense blowback and for now he has decided to back off his nonsensical trade war with x ago but presidents retreat, president trump's retreat is not enough. he must also back off his tariffs on canada where everyday americans will see prices going up. listen to this. economists predict that president trump's tariffs will raise prices on american families by as much as $1200 a year. let me say that again. president trump's tariffs will raise prices on families by as much as $1200 a year. to president trump and his billionaire buddies, $1200 may be chump change. but to most americans $1200 increase cost would be devastating. for most families, $1200 could be the difference between putting food on the table or not between affording medicine, medications or doctors appointments are having to skip them. americans need to worry about

car prices, the trump terrace will raise the prices. using a car to get to work, they will make gas prices go up. we should not listen at all to donald trump when he says it is about stopping fentanyl. there are other ways without making inflation worse, raising costs on the american family. but donald trump clearly does not care. he said that the american people need to suck it up to accept that there will be some pain as the tariffs go into effect. that is outrageous. that is what an out of touch billionaire says. meanwhile, both sides of the ideological spectrum no the damage of these tariffs, the u.s. chamber of commerce hardly a liberal group said, president trump's tariffs "will only raise prices for american families and supply chains". even the wall street journal editorial board. again, no friend of liberals said that president trump's tariffs will result in "the

dumbest trade war in history." that is what this would be. as the wall street journal editorial page said. the dumbest trade war in history this is not what the american people want. senate democrats will not stand quiet as donald trump makes inflation worse. we will post -- push legislation soon to protect people's bottom lines from unilaterally plunging us into a trade war with our own allies. i yield the floor. >> later today we will have the first set of votes among nomination of pam bondi to serve as attorney general of the united states. before we do, speak in support of her nomination. ms. bondi made history as the first woman elected as florida attorney general. she served for eight years and was easily reelected to a second term because she did such a great job.

she fought against bill mills, eliminated and stood for law and order. highly qualified, she is qualified to do the job well and she represents main stream views shared by at least 77 million americans who voted for change in the 2024 election. the same bipartisan support this body gave to attorney general garland including the senator. i am disappointed that none of my democratic colleagues on the judiciary committee voted for ms. bondi and i hope the full senate takes a different approach if my colleagues won't cross the aisle for this qualified nominee. showing that their intent on opposing president trump's six are purely partisan reasons.

ms. bondi is ready and able to serve our country and she will work with president trump to restore faith in the justice department. i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting ms. bondi. >> mr. president, two weeks. it has been two weeks with a new president. inauguration seems so far in the distant past. it is hard to believe. this administration has tried to do during the first two weeks is almost impossible to describe in a very short period of time. so many executive orders, so many changes, somebody speeches by the president, somebody threats, so many changes in the way this government is run and many of them raising serious questions that even go to the

heart of our constitution. mr. president, since president trump took office two weeks ago, chaos across the federal government. despite his campaign promises, something is been conspicuously absent from his agenda. lowering the cost of living for americans. the unprecedented unquestionable economically questionable tariffs he announced on friday on three of america's largest trading partners, 25% on canada and mexico, 10% more on china show just that. i said to my staff and they handed me a copy of this speech which was written this morning, there been some developments during the course of the day when it comes to mexico. at least a postponement of the imposition of tariffs on mexico for one month. canada is still a work in progress as far as we know. despite campaigning on a promise of lowering prices, these

tariffs will not do that. they will do just the opposite. american families finding things more expensive. do not take my word for it. the u.s. chamber of commerce said that the terrorists will only raise prices for american families and up into supply chains. that is the chambers of commerce the national association said manufacturers will bear the brunt of these tariffs. undermining our ability to sell our projects and put american jobs at risk. the president himself even admitted that these economic measures will cause pain for many american families. trade between my home state of illinois canada and mexico are essential to the strength of our economy more than one out of 10 workers in illinois work towards the export market. the fourth largest exporter state in the nation. first and second largest export

markets canada and mexico. as a result of these tariffs, the presidents proposing working families will feel the pain. these tariffs will drive up costs for manufacturers. they will disrupt our supply chain. i have already inspired retaliatory tariffs which american consumers will feel at the store. clearly our outrage of this senseless policy may be working. today the president announced he will delay the tariffs with mexico for a month. let's be clear about one thing. unless you are a tech billionaire or you are helping someone get through the crypto market, the president does not care about making your life better. he only cares about enriching himself at the expense of everyday americans. so when you wonder why the stock market is dipping, the price of eggs and potatoes goes up at the grocery store, and your oil

changes marked up, know that it was because of policy of the new president in office for two weeks. mr. president, another equally important matter this week, the senate will vote on the nomination of tam bondi to serve as attorney general. given the trump administration's ongoing courage of justice department officials i urge my colleagues to look very carefully and closely at ms. bondi's nomination. president trump has repeatedly made it clear that he values loyalty above all else when it comes to attorney general's. do not take my word for it. look what happened in this first term. he fired his first attorney general and forced out a second for insufficient loyalty. president trump has said time and time again that he expects the justice department to see retribution on his behalf. with ms. bondi, i am afraid they found someone who passes the loyalty to us. now, look, if you look at the

resume of pam bondi, you will find that she served as attorney general for the state of florida for two terms. she has experience as an attorney general at the third largest state. you will hear that over and over but it appears that she is ready to break with bipartisan tradition when it comes to a nonpartisan department of justice. one that upholds the rule of law and is free to political influence in the white house. i am not convinced that she is dedicated to these ideals. she was a leader in an effort to overturn the 2020 election and to this day she still clings to the basic loyalty that was required of those and part of that effort. she refuses to acknowledge that joe biden won the presidential election in 2020. she cannot get over it. and she has echoed the president-elect's calls for prosecuting the political opponents including a pledge

that she made publicly that prosecutors will be prosecuted and the investigators will be investigated. sadly, ms. bondi's threat was already coming to fruition. since president trump's inauguration his administration has purged dozens of senior career civil servants at the department of justice and the fbi. including nonpartisan counterterrorism encounter terrorists efforts. they are responsible for coordinating the justice department's fight against international terrorism and foreign spies. these removals substantially diminish america's ability to respond to national security threats. quite simply, they are a danger to the public. the trump administration's purge of these officials is a naked political move. firing a dozen career prosecutors, the acting attorney general issued a memo and said

given your significant role in prosecuting the president, i do not believe the leadership at the department and trust you. how blunt can you be. attorneys and agents similar to be bowling out because they are assigned to us link to the criminal investigation of the president or the january 6 riots one of the largest prosecutions in the history of the united states. of the insurrectionist mob coming to the floor this senate rifled through my desk and i saw this on the table. i assume the chair that is being held now by the president of the senate posed for pictures made all sorts of signs and left notes behind and for up the capital building. at the end of the day, 140 law-enforcement officers were hurt. for lost their lives. that was the reality of what happened on january 6. we expect the justice department to do nothing about the wanted

hundred people that stormed into this capital. nobody is making this out. prosecuting them for crimes that they committed. and many of them were sentence, many of them pled guilty when they saw the videotapes portraying exactly what they did on that day. so the justice department prosecuted them, many of them ended up in jail. some of them with serious sentences for their serious misconduct. now comes the new president donald trump in his first day in auction. -- his first day in office. telling them that they are free to go. that is the question that has to be asked by the american people. if someone came bursting into your home or your church or your school, tore it up, beat up those trying to maintain order and did it all on videotape, should they be held responsible for it? i certainly think so.

certainly true when it comes to this building which represents a symbol of america and our democracy. if you want to desecrate this building you should pay a price. the american people deserve an attorney general who will acknowledge that. who will protect the fundamental rights of this country, demonstrate independent and integrity and remain faithful to the constitution, the country and the rule of law. during the course of her testimony for the senate judiciary committee was also asked about cash patel, the president's nominee to head up the bureau of nomination investigation. i do not support him because he does not have the experience to hold the job. certainly nothing in his background that suggests he can supervise 38,000 fbi agents and employees and 400 field offices around the world trying to keep america safe every single day and yet she stood behind him.

only protecting and remaining faithful to one person throughout this whole experience that is the president he was given this opportunity. prior to my colleagues to look carefully at the record of cash patel. they are a team in this effort and they should be held accountable for what they have said and written and positions that they have taken and supported the president even when his positions are not consistent in my mind with the equal and free administration of justice. madam president, i yield the floor

the train derailment and he's palestinian. a few reasons i wanted to come back on the second anniversary of the disaster.

the signal to the people that we will not forget you. i spoke with the president about this visit a couple days ago. of course he visited himself personally. president trump just wanted to deliver a message of this community will not be forgotten. what does that mean. one thing that it means is the environmental cleanup has to get done. it is a tragedy in the shame it was not done under the last administration. i ensure we will clean up under the great leadership of lee zeldon. he stands behind me. i also think part of that means the long-term economic of this. we know a lot of local businesses and people lost a lot when that train disaster happened a couple of years ago. we are committed to not just finishing the environmental side but hopefully seeing aeschylus dean will back better stronger more prosperous than it was before this disaster happened in

the first place. that will not happen overnight. i just wanted people to know here that president trump me and the entire administration are committed to ensuring that the people of east palestinian, that their community, their government does right by them and will keep working on it in the months and years to come

quorum call:

mr. hoeven: madam president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. hoeven: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hoeven: thank you. madam president, i'm pleased to come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to confirm chris wright to be secretary of energy. mr. wright has demonstrated tremendous leadership in the energy industry over the past more than 30 years. he is a true pioneer in advancing new technologies that unlock the shale energy revolution in our country. when i start the as governor of north dakota in 2000, our state was producing about 100,000 barrels of oil a day. but that production was declining. we produced from the old

traditional vertical wells going down as much as two miles in most cases. so we had to do something dix we started a new energy plan called empower north dakota, to help make our state the energy powerhouse that it is today. we developed the right regulatory and tax climate to encourage energy development. we worked to bring talent to our state with the best entrepreneurial mindset. that included energy leaders like mr. wright. people that have the latest and greatest understanding of new technologies and the power to innovate. mr. wright has said he became fascinated with energy at a young age, working on fusion energy and later solar energy during his studies at mit and then graduate school at uc berkeley. he started pinnacle

technologies, a company that actually started the hydraulic fracturing mapping industry. he was a pioneer in that effort, helping to locate more commercially viable shale energy reserves. he then started another company, liberty energy, to unlock the potential of those reserves and to do it with the smallest footprint and the best environmental stewardship. mr. wright worked to advance new breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing, commercializing new technology to improve the productivity of oil wells in the balkan shale formation. as a result of innovators like mr. wright, north dakota went from producing less than 100,000 barrels of oil a day when i sterilitied as governor to a high of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. our nation's vast energy reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas are not a liability. they are one of our most important strategic assets.

each additional barrel of u.s. oil offsets production from russia, from iran, from venezuela, and other adversaries with little to no regard for environmental standards. mr. wright understands that affordable and reliable energy is foundation for owl economy, to our quality of life and in fact orb national security. as energy demand continues to grow both at home and abroad, mr. wright knows it takes innovation, not regulation, to rise to this challenge. for example, in north dakota, we're leading the way to crack the code on carbon-capture technologies. and mr. wright will bring the right vision in that -- in the department of energy supporting the deployment of all these new technologies, so that we can truly become not only energy-independent, energy-secure, but in fact energy-dominant. mr. wright received strong

bipartisan support from our energy and natural resources committee and i urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support his confirmation to be the next secretary for the department of energy. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. oh, madam president, i have do have one other item. i have a request for a committee to meet during taied's session of the senate -- during today's session of the senate. it has the approval of both the majority and the minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. hoeven: thank you, madam

the done, a tragedy and a shame it wasn't on during the last administration. the administrator and the long-term economic development

we know people lost a lot and happened a couple of years ago the only on the environmental side but hopefully build back better and stronger and more prosperous before this happened in the first place. it won't happen overnight but i want the people to know president trump the entire administration are committed to ensuring the people east palestinian community and government does right by them and will on working on the months and years to come so before i take a few questions, i want to invite our new epa administrator,. >> middle of last week and as soon as i was sworn in, i

instantly heard from the vice president saying your first order of business, we are going to. as someone watching this disaster strike years ago, somebody watching from out of state, i saw then senator vance go to the study and, to be in force for people you for leadership from all levels of government and it motivated all of us to want to do our part now knowing tragedy and what it meant but is i know this is for vice president bands high priority for him and make sure he a is the highest roadie doing everything in our power to make

sure they did as quickly as possible anything left will be done as fast as we possibly can. make it very clear this community will not be forgotten rebound will be greater than ever. [applause] >> an opportunity to talk with the atmosphere.

one thing i noticed is a good listener. it is tough and strong and a great community and a great place to raise the family and it needs little assistance,.

>> and i want to thank you for your leadership in a couple of years in the community will go back stronger and great firefighters and honored to have you. i know a lot of you took upon yourself to make sure the community thrives. need to be an economist to know something went wrong for the past four years, ask anyone who has had to fill up their cars with gas. when americas opened their energy bills, they didn't see climate plans, they saw costs piling up and questions they couldn't answer. why is this so expensive? why is washington making it so

much worse? with america's abundant resources of oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower, et cetera, biden's head of energy could have spearheaded energy dominance and abundance. instead the opposite happened, she used the money to funnel money to michigan while the rest of the country struggled under soaring energy prices and mounting inflation. under secretary grannell, the secretary of department was a piggy bank for political allies and her pet projects. rather than unleashing american energy, the doe lit green billions of dollars of last-minute loan guarantees with 50% flowing to gran hold's --

granholm's state of michigan. the doe can make our break our ability to lead on the world stage. under biden, the doe mismanaged loan guarantees, rubber stamped regulations that raised consumer prices and did little to support the development of critical infrastructure that we need. the former administration's so-called clean energy policies became a subsidy machine for well-connected corporations. companies that pocketed billions while every day americans paid for gas, electricity, appliances and groceries. now the biden administration drained the strategic petroleum serve -- reserve to the lowest in decades.

it was nearly impossible to transport energy across the country and they made us more reliant on foreign energy resources, putting american security in the hands of opec and other adversarial nations. that's all about to change. it's all about to change under soon to be secretary chris wright. chris wright understands that affordable abundant energy is necessary for energy security. it allows families to heat their homes in the winter without going broke. it enables businesses to grow higher and it keeps america secure, independent and free from the whims of foreign suppliers. in his confirmation hearing, mr. wright commented on a lot of this and made commitments to reining in waste, fraud, and abuse, especially at the loan programs office, which granholm

used at a pace faster than -- faster than what we saw in years past. it didn't lead to breakthroughs in efficiencies or cost savings to consumers. no, instead it drove up the national security debt and lined the pockets of the well-connected. chris w- wright -- chris wright won't treat the department of energy as a slush fund of sorts for political favors. his vision is simple, get the doe back on track with exports that strengthen our position on the global stage rather than weakening. mr. wright also promised to renew the doe's appliance standards program which has become another example of how the previous administration drove up costs all under the guise of energy savings. as nearly every american can attest, these regulations on

common household appliances like dishwashers, dryers and stoves, just to name a few haven't made appliances work better or last longer. they've mostly made things more expensive and work not nearly as well. it's important to remember the extent to which they really have made things more expense ifl. chris wright understands that innovation doesn't come from forcing inferior products on consumers, it is about creating a better environment where technologies can thrive. it's telling even my colleagues across the aisle recognized mr. wright's competence, giving him really strong bipartisan support out of committee. chris wright deserves that same bipartisan support on the floor today. he deserves it because we all understand that continuing down

this path, the current path, the path we've been on over the past four years, this path of reckless spending and ideological crusades is unsustainable. chris wright of course must do more than reverse the damage. he must rebuild trust with the american people and secure our place the dominant global energy leader. we have a new path ahead, madam president. and mr. wright offers us a path where the department of energy serves the american people, not special interest. a future where entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats, are the ones who drive innovation. a future where energy abundance lowers costs, grows our economy and protects our national security. we can continue down the path of inflated prices, of foreign dependence and mismanaged resources or we can choose a better path.

we can make a clean break. we can choose leadership prioritizing the american worker, the american family, the american consumer, and the american future. the failures of the past don't have to define our future. we find ourselves in the position where we can look at this and chart a course, a course directed at what can be unburdened by what has been. with chris wright leading the way at doe, we can unleash american energy and ensure prosperity for generations to come. it's time, madam president, for us to confirm chris wright as

community and we are going to do better than the last couple of years. that is my commitment to this.

>> more than anything -- [inaudible] >> the president endorsed the safety act when it paid out so i think we can say the president sure is my you and that is something we are going to work on the next couple of years and something we have a better shot for publicans in charge. the legislation was bipartisan we had it in place. chuck schumer just refused to bring up for a vote. we are going to make sure we get it right. >> he asked about tariffs. let me say this. for a couple -- not just a couple of years but for years

with one obvious exception, we've had administrations who have not recognized america's economic our is not just a source of prosperity but also be willing to put make the american people safer and unfortunately we have had especially at the southern border, a seven neighbor seriously about securing their own for an basic law enforcement, what's happened is invasive seen a massive explosion deadly poisonous not in this country. we've seen the toll and orphaned children and families who lost loved ones and 100,000 lives a year most of which -- 100,000 lives a year, most of which come in the fentanyl problem.

they've got. liz: a better job. we are done being taken advantage of. i talked to the president weekly, he spoke with the president of mexico this morning and the president of mexico committed to putting thousand additional troops on the border, are seven border, mexico's northern border to go after them more aggressively. for three days occurred far left in this country say tariffs would make americans lives worse off and what happened the mexican government was so afraid. taking the enforcement and anti- cartel activity more seriously. as a pathway americans federal and the president has been clear rebalance our relationship in this country.

americans realize they charge massive tariffs on or products including agriculture the people here depend on. it medians used to power to penalize americans, it's reasonable for the american president to say we are done being taken advantage of. we want a great relationship but goes both directions and that's what it's about. we are done being taken advantage of country. we got to rebalance between ourselves and allies, ourselves and adversaries and president trump committed to the. >> the biggest thing during your

visit today, particularly. >> most of what i heard today is about economic development. i've heard a lot about concerns related to rail safety and if you common sense things can be done. some of us actually believe will have to happen things like the railway safety act. number one, inspect the cars before they go off. better use technology for this. this is one thing we are going to keep on working on. as much as i believe in the community and its people, but they are the building wouldn't happen. it's not their fault and if we can take any learning from this, hopefully not for some of the community to go through it

again. >> and it was done there. how much money was spent but one thing to be done there, more funding, more than the 70000. >> a couple of quick things on that. if you go back to the original promises mother was a big settlement the people personally

entered a not talking about the environmental problem with those directly entered like the firefighters who sacrificed and need considered for it, a lot of those promises have not been met even though they been unacceptable. another promise we talked about building facility that would train firefighters from west virginia and ohio but also the government privately in dealing with the disasters the entire country, let's turn it into knowledge we can spread better firefighters or well-trained firefighters. they promised they would provide the money to build that facility every person has told me that has come so a lot of it comes

down to making sure the promises term promises into reality something we will work on. >> residents to walmart visually recovered studies it's highly unlikely administration is making to like the national institute of health so what will you do about this? >> ridiculous bureaucracy facilitating important services on the ground. we all know we have a government that waste too much money and there is rob bilton and one thing it does is waste taxpayer dollars but also ensures money we have the federal government don't end up going to the people who deserve it to his desire to bring efficiency back will not

be back sure it actually goes to people on the ground rather than aircraft we are not talking a lot of money. he did 5 million will start what we wanted to start. i think it should come from norfolk southern and not the taxpayers but we are committed to ensuring long-term health needs are met and that the long-term questions are answered. i do believe in a critical rebuild on his palestinian providence they can raise the family. the only way is true they take the safety concerns seriously we

will the remainder trump administration. [applause]

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. thune: thank you, madam president. madam president, i move to proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 13. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. alsobrooks. ms. baldwin. mr. banks. mr. barrasso.

mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. ms. blunt rochester. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mrs. britt. mr. budd. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito.

mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. curtis. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mr. gallego.

mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mr. husted. mrs. hyde-smith.

mr. johnson. mr. justice. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. kim. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan.

ms. lummis. mr. markey. mr. marshall. mr. mcconnell. mr. mccormick. mr. merkley. mrs. moody. mr. moran. mr. moreno. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla.

mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schiff. mr. schmitt.

mr. schumer. plan is to help the wealthy get wealthier tax giveaways families paying the bill. how massive giveaways going to be paid for? slashing services to families and families try to get on their feet so they can thrive and get to the middle-class. great betrayal. today we will consider russell the office of management and the budget really the place for this campaign is coordinated.

we will hear very different ideas have to take our country forward. from my friends across the aisle will hear we need to continue to give massive tax giveaways to the wealthiest americans and we will hear how nonpartisan expertise that makes our country run smoothly should be replaced by those with political loyalty and how programs that assist the environment or unions organizing working people should be replaced by programs that serve big corporations and make billionaires. our senate has a provision, that we set up and the wealthy pay their fair share in the government should serve

everyone, not just the privilege and powerful. from my side, you hear about the ability to negotiate the price of 15 expensive drugs they were laid out for president biden according to the law and i will submit this for the record and they weight loss drugs that serve in the first that were negotiated cut the price third to two thirds from a 79% on one drug and americans are simply outraged that we spend more to develop these charts and any other nation and we get the highest price among developing countries.

this vision has laid out the great betrayal of america's working families and will continue to debate that over the course of the hearing you have the expertise and experience and you were director before, you know the ins and outs. the question of whether we accomplish something that provides the foundation for american families to thrive or increase the wealth disparity that make powerful set of biden for the people. the washington post reported officials of the report of your last tenure underscore deep

ideological operative nonpartisan challenges. this turned out he saw in your responsible for 2021 budget by the trump administration and close to $1 trillion cuts to health care for struggling americans, nutrition assistance and earn income child tax credit, $170 billion cuts by increasing the cost of college loans. iaf think college should be affordable to everyone, not making it more expensive so families can only afford not to college. zero programs block grant for housing all around this country

you proposed a trillionil dollas giveaways with two thirds going to the top 10%. that is veryei troubling and you are at the center of strategy funds and we had this in congress and passed a budget in congress that we say should be spent on this program, is enough for the president you told me you are comfortable assuming the lot as a matter and you will just treat the money is a ceiling rather than a required amount. the courts have found otherwise the fact you are willing to say what you plan to do again should follow every member of the senate and when you're at the

center resulting in the impeachment of president trump and his former service, you blamed the subordinate and that troubles me, to. when he goes awry you say it wasn't me i give that to somebody else who works for me, that is not leadership and your views are certainly deep held to advocate for them in your think tank you in america so we saw that and other things troubles many of us. the fact that your for the abolition of abortion rights, not exceptions for rape or incest, no exceptions for the life of the mother ended struggling to continue to participate in the big lie of

the 2020 election was raped. this may be essential, a willingness to manipulate steve americans and it bothers me. we need a director that respects the rule of law, guided by facts and not as an ideology so i am disturbed you are eager to leave the betrayal of america's working families. >> we will put you in the end decided : [laughter] i disagree with what he said. the american people apparently disagree because we want and i don't know your views on abortion, i do know that it much matters trump said it was raped and he won.

not particularly agree with that but bottom line is, i think you're qualified for the job and i know why he picked you and i think all of us will vote for you but you do need to explain to the best you can, how you see the job and why you do the things you do getting the country in a more sustainable track. when you win, you get to pick people democrat he picked you stand up and let me swear you in. the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help he got. i do. >> the floor is yours. >> thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

love and support and enthusiasm for me serving again is a major reason why going back is the right endeavor at the right moment beyond my duty as an being at trump side, a profound honor to be nominated a second time by president trump to serve as director of the office of management and budget. the president promised the american people the federal government that works for all americans, not the interest of american bureaucrats and the establishment. both deputy director and director among the most rewarding experiences of my career. often driven by taxpayers and their families bring up as a son of an electrician, i saw firsthand the sacrifice my parents made to balance the budget and save for the future.

the reminder of the spending burden on everyday americans. evaluate policies spending in nearly 80% of americans today not feel confident their children will eat better lives than they had. the double the americans that said two decades ago when i look at international that, i know i fear for my daughter's future. half of our citizens expect their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents. a critical part of understanding, i'm eager to get back to fulfilling the promise from those who work hard like my parents and it goes beyond acting the budget in the management of the federal government performing regulation coordinate policy across agencies to ensure effective

implementation of america's people will express by the last election and a strong process delivers the best results for all americans and i believe collaboration is key to achieving those outcomes in the most resourceful innovative members on board with. it is my with rich weed alongside the belabored together to make government work. we have to use taxpayer the average american household has lost $2000 in purchasing power and the forgotten men and women of this country who work hard every day as america deserves a government that hours them to

achieve their dreams while office of management and budget may not be a household term, agencies work profoundly and impacts their lives. if confirmed, i will continue to serve their best interest at heart driving to ensure every decision process future for all americans. i look forward to answering questions and the opportunity to discuss continue to deliver on that mission. >> thank you very much and your family, welcome. to start, what happened in the economy in the 2017 there were passed expire and go away? >> americans would have major tax increase in the hands lead to less productive activity and a worsening economy

catastrophic, do you agree? >> this. >> .to have trillion, whole happen if this would go away? >> wanted to go away so on the galatian, do you have something on regulation? >> information regulatory affairs charged to set up the regulatory agenda and a major aspect of the job. >> will you pledge to make it easier for america to safely extract natural resources.

>> it is vital for america's pocketbook to achieve american energy. >> is a part of the goal to make sure the a.i. space we dominate? how to create a regulatory environment that allows us? >> we have the policy process and regard to artificial intelligence. >> is it your goal to reduce money? >> you believe there is room in the budget to eliminate programs americans wouldn't feel? >> there are plenty of areas in the federal government tackles spending and debt. >> you promise you will do the best you can to reduce federal

spending and responsible way? >> yes. >> good. when it comes to executive order spending on assistance, you know how it works? doesn't stop money going to israel? >> no, senator. a 90 day review of programs in place to ensure all programs are consistent with the president's view andd, aid continues to b one. >> what is the most important? >> enjoy their liberties and protect the rights. >> are you familiar with the amount of money we spent on defense? >> 3%. >> and going down to mid to. link four times in american

history that small amount of money, are you open-minded to make sure you defend this nation creating a bigger navy? >> absolutely. it was priority first time to make sure we establish his country and it will be if confirmed. >> what is the size -- do you know how much money subcommittee spends? >> of the top of my head, i don't know. >> 69 billion for the entire state department. what percent of the federal budget is that? >> i believe a small percentage. >> 20%. having said that, trying to save money, i believe if you don't

get involved in the world and you don't have programs, africa or china trying to buy the whole confident, we are making a mistake. a critical component and look forward to work with you and that is coming from a pretty polished guy. >> thank you very much. on day one president trump issued executive order the requires agencies to cause the disbursement of funds authorized on the infrastructure jobs act. there is a mechanism for

changing conversation and an illegal way called impoundment or you send a message to congress or use illegal impoundment strategy. >> thanks for the question. those were causes to ensure funding in place along the line of what the president ran on. >> decisions? a simple question. >> office of legislative affairs will work with management budget. ...et's turn that.

one state tried it, arkansas. it produced no increase in the hours worked, no increase in employment, it failed pretty why did it fail? because the way people are able to work is when they are healthy. when they cannot access healthcare because you want to cut it off, they are really

trapped in poverty trapping people in poverty is really not helpful. now that your idea of failed so miserably are going to advocate again? senator one of the major legislations that our site has been very proud of since the 1990s was the impact of welfare reform in the 1990s. it led to case load reductions people getting off of welfare going back into the workforce. we think of that type of thinking should be applied to other federal programs. not only medicaid but other programs to encourage people to get back into the workforce with workforce participation. >> and cutting off healthcare in order to get better help in order to work customer does not make sense for. >> you have answered the question. you are still in advocate of

that felt approach that traps people in poverty and is quite disturbing. now, according to the treasury department analysis produce this month, the trump tax giveaways were given average tax cut up for three to 14000 to the richest americans the top .1%. six dollars annually to the average member of the bottom 10%. for those trying get on their feet in the course of a year and $32000 in additional income for the richest americans. isn't this backwards? quick senator, the president's tax cuts provided tax cap for all americans that had a sizable increase in the child tax credit had expansion of the standard deduction. it was something that benefited all americans. as a result led to a strong economy that we hope to replicate again by having extension of those important tax cuts. >> but you get 30,000 to richest

americans according to the treasury department analysis? >> of people the higher and in charge of small businesses that are taking great risk to innovate and hire additional people that are not in their tax bracket. that's part of the way you structure economic growth. >> my final question because i'm running out of time. at ewert's think tank and 2823 you proposed $3.6 trillion in tax giveaways primarily going to the richest americans. and to make the numbers work you assume your giveaway would produce the star. don't worry, be happy. give away the treasure to the richest american more revenue commission. it's felt every single time, but for noticing your analysis has confirmed it. from cbo the budget office not

the joint committee on taxation. and yet with magic star? senator i'm a believer in dynamic for sure when you cut taxes it has a dynamic impact on the economy. we see that with revenues continuing to go up after all the tax cuts we've seen in 1920s , 60s , 80s. both of the bush tax cuts including the trump tax cut. we have seen a dynamic impact on the economy. >> will continue the discussion i am sure. >> during covid and average american hispanic household incomes at their highest question. >> yes editor. cookson aggressively? >> of figure $610 billion of improper payments just in healthcare. i bet a lot of this information comes or whistleblowers.

so my question to you is about whistleblowing. do you have any role in protecting whistleblowers and encouraging whistleblowers, maybe changing the culture and agencies with whistleblowers like skunks at a picnic. would you tell me if there's anything you can do to help this project on whistleblowing that helps explain not just the waste of money but improper government action. >> senator, thank you for the question. whistleblowers play an enormous role in helping us weed out waste, fraud, abuse as a senate staffer benefit greatly from reit reading inspector general reports in which they were part of. from my standpoint omb and advocate for whistleblowers in

every possible way. to make sure we value at a result the agency valued the work that they do. we'll always be looked up to these along those lines. >> like your view of how you play role in the recent supreme court decision on the chevron doctrine. how that can help you stop our government for being overregulated, bureaucrats over reaching, using a statute that can be liberally interpreted. and all of that. >> thank you, senator. toward the aspects of the regulatory process in terms of deep regulation. making sure agencies are sticking to the law we want to make sure if confirmed is properly set up. that would be part of the review

process not like cost-benefit analysis making sure agencies are not coming up with new interpretations of what the statute should say pretty much stick to the statute. >> you would be watching that regulatory process to make sure it's followed? >> yes editor. >> another thing that irritates me they are republican and democrat probably got to deal with. another one would be not answering our letters. i do not know if i've gotten a lot of letters to your department or not but have not been answered i can give the justice department when pam bondi was in my office i gave her a stack of what her 58 letters the justice department in the last four years have been answered.

to sum what the same obama in previous cents. we got a constitutional responsibility faithfully executes our laws. we want to make sure these letters are answered. onseptember 15, 2023 president biden's omb director a letter asking a simple question. where is the implementation guidance for the open government data act is just one example. at that .5 years late the guidance was intended to make government information more open and available in the final days of the biden administration they release the guidance but never directly responded to my request if confirmed will you commit to ensuring omv provides timely and

complete responses to congressional oversight? >> yes editor it's very important. it's one of things i asked my team to let me know immediately the day of when the senators and congressmen i want to be immediately aware quite frankly upset all to all of you in our individual meetings i want to know before it gets time to have to send a letter. that's an important part of the process. should you be confirmed of reining in the voted federal government besides crafting a responsible budget what actions can you take us omb director rightsizing the federal government? >> were going to go right into the process of fiscal year 25. helping the president come to a

view on how that should proceed. we'll be in the process of various discussions with reconciliation which are very important. then there's the normal management of different agencies for waste, fraud, abuse beyond setting up a budget we want to get started and get caught up based on normal process of an incoming administration. >> if i were you out answered senator grassley's letter if you ever sent one. and i will be pro whistleblower. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to meet with you last week i do continue to have very serious concerns regarding your nomination starting with your position and record on impoundment. i do not believe what happened in the case of withholding security assistance to ukraine in 2019 you're acting omb director was an accident or

misunderstanding. i fear it is a harbinger of what is to come these next four years. in fact on this first day in office we saw the president order, among other things what appears to be an illegal deferral of inflation act, bipartisan infrastructure law foreign assistance funds as senator merkley referred too. your written response when pressed on this you will follow the advice of omb general counsel someone who is called the impoundment control act stupid law. to impound baby impound is a bit rich. does this edge at the meeting of members of congress on both side must note a deal is a deal a deal is a deal when we reach a bipartisan agreement on major legislation. agreement cannot happen and congress cannot function. will

nomination. the clerk: nomination, executive office of the president, russell vought, of virginia, to be director of the office of management and budget. mr. thune: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: cloture the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby bring to a close debate on the nomination of russell vought, of virginia, to be director of the office of management and budget, signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. thune: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. thune: i ask that the senate execute the order of january 30, in relation to the wright nomination. the clerk: the clerk will report the wright nomination. the clerk: department of energy, chris wright to be secretary. the presiding officer: the question occurs on the wright

nomination. mr. thune: i ask that this vote be ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. the clerk: ms. alsobrooks. ms. baldwin. mr. banks. vote:

good afternoon everybody i'm proud to be born by sent joined by senator murray and white. now before our very eyes i'm sorry before our very eyes and unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government. last friday forcefully gain access to the treasury department the most sensitive information donald trump basically handed doge social security data of every american

citizen. donald trump, eight donald trump gave doge access to america's personal tax refund data. he gave doge access to medicare and medicaid benefits, disability payment data, veteran benefit data worse of all we do not know what doge intends to do with this information. if you want to know how and unelected shadow government operates, look no further than doge. staffers, whoever they are now up on precedent access to the most sensitive payment data and the entire federal government. with no transparency, with the guardrails, and guess what the one independent watchdog was fired by donald trump over week

ago. the treasury secretary bus revoked doge's access to the payment system at once. if not, congress must act immediately. leader jeffries and i are working together on legislation which we will introduce an treasury department payment system. we must protect people social security payments, their medicare payments, tax refunds from any possible tampering by doge or any other unauthorized entity. let's be very clear, doge is not a real government agency. it has no authority to make spending decisions. it has no authority to shut programs down or ignore federal law. to give doge a chokehold on treasury payment is outlandishly

dangerous. hoping for the best. it is impossible to overstate this is playing with fire. the bureau of the fiscal service which oversees these freshly department payments executes over 1 billion transactions a year worth $6 trillion. these payments were ever intentionally or accidentally halted or manipulated, it could paralyze our economy if we are not careful. one mistake and peoples social security benefits would freeze. disability payment, if the veterans, once a small business could all be in danger for the treasury department is already using extraordinary measures to ensure we do not default on the debt. if doge careless meddling causes two defaults, it could trigger a worldwide financial crisis.

this all begs an obvious question, what does doge want with this data? what possible reason is there true give right wing extreme people social security payment scott medicare payments and personal information? will doge try to halt social security or medicare or medicaid payments? god forbid, god forbid. went doge cut funding to programs approved by congress that donald trump decides he doesn't like? what about cancer research, food banks, school lunches, veterans aid? literacy programs, small business loans? how do we know doge will not use access to the treasury to enrich donald trump's billionaire friends. of the leadership. it's laughably naïve to look at the wealthy billionaires a run doge and take them at their word that all they care about is efficiency. give me a break.

most revoked doge access about what you must to halt this unlawful and dangerous power grab. doge hasn't been no business anywhere, anywhere near the federal government payment systemsll nor america's private david data. senator murray. >> we are two weeks then at it is already painfully clear this is the most corrupt administration in our history. it is putting our economy, our government most at risk communities in serious jeopardy. in particular we learn that elon musk now has access to the treasury department most sensitive payment system handling $6 trillion every year managing nearly all federal disbursements. it is a system that contains extremely sensitive personal and commercial information.

and i have been hearing from people across my state who are truly alarmed about what musk and his associates having access to the system could mean for their data and what they count on. on billionaire thought expensive conflicts of interest, deep ties to china and discrete ax to grind is hijacking our nations most sensitive financial data system and its checkbook. based on the slightest whim while this conspiracy congress passed on a bipartisan basis. some republicans are trying to suggest that musk only has a viewing access to treasury

highly sensitive payment system at the vast acceptable either. why on earth but he is saying the exact opposite loudly and repeatedly for everyone to see. what funds will elon target next? life-saving research, housing assistance? food banks? we know is false the attacking faith-based organizations that help people. promising to cut off funds based on conspiracy theories. the world richest man is by the cut off funding to help the least among us. and next how many dollars he himself makes from government contracts. handed the keys of the treasury to him. it does not get more blatantly corrupt than that.

and let me underscore just how dangerous this is. now that trump has handed over treasuries checkbook, what elon decides he doesn't like how ford is getting federal funds to build the battery plant? what is next? all elon has to do is there woke and he can convince trump to illegally cut off those funds. maybe elon will decide he does not like blue origin and not spacex get the contract. he wasn't gum up the works on their payment. private corporations and competitors take note. anyone who thanks that surely will not happen, has not been paying attention. now make no mistake, trump and musk have absolute zero, zero legal authority to hold up any federal payment that our law. that is not stop them so far. this country is reeling from the chaos of last week's blanket spending freeze and not yet

revoked. trump and musk have yet to find a law they think applies to them. that is not how things work in this country. we have a democracy. we have checks and we have balances. the president is accountable to congress we pass the laws that he implements them. some of my colleagues across the aisle seemed to be forgetting our democracy does not work by magic. we have to do our part to hold the president accountable. our job is not to say yes to everybody and every president does no matter how lawless or harmful. democrats are pushing back with the tools that we have. we will speak out, we will press this administration will open investigations and demand accountability. the one tool we do not have is the majority in this congress.

that means our republican colleagues have to say enough. need to set up to the corruption and lawlessness and set it for the people we represent. >> thank you, senator murray. no filibusters for me. our finance investigators got confirmation from whistleblowers will turn the keys over to the musk hachette squad. here's where we are now. it is clear unqualified unaccountable people to seize control of the flow of taxpayer funds and a trove of extremely sensitive data. there is seizing the tools we need for a coup. the first target out of the gate

was charity for poor people donald trump cared about improper payments he would not have fired the inspectors general. nobody should fall for that bit. trump claimed that musk only looked at attainment does not have the authority to shut any down. musk sees it differently. there is nothing to stop them penalizing cities and states that defy trump's legal order. lot of us cared deeply at the constituents do about privacy, must give access to personal information of hundreds of millions of americans bank accounts, tax data, social

security number, home addresses. you heard from senator murray how people in the northwest feel about this, elon musk and his hachette squad have your bank account, your home address, social security number, just meet folks in the pacific northwest think this is a way out of balance of her government. that musk hachette brigade has infiltrated a gold mine of data that every performance by and every corrupt actor would love to see. it is a prescription for nightmares. lots of them but musk reportedly could i get security clearance because of the financial ties and other foreign connections. thus the guy who now has his hand on the personal data of daf hundreds of millions of americans some unknown number of businesses and groups for the

last point is a trump administration would cause chaos and medicaid services important american. last week the shirt of the primary payment portal estate and service agencies these are incompetent people they don't care about the damage they were doing. and now they may be in charge of the type rope walk the treasury has to do to defaulting out of debt. we are one mistake away from economic catastrophe. quick senator warren. >> thank you. i just want to be clear about what's going on here for this is make sure your granddad get the social security check, this is make sure your mom's doctor gets a medicare payment to cover her medical appointment, the system that takes over you get the tax refund you are owed has been

taken over by musk. every organization from your state government that uses federal money on that bridge project, to the local head start that takes care of little kids with their mommies and i did go to work is now at the mercy of elon musk. maybe you'll get paid or maybe it won't. now it appears always work for elon musk. elon just grabbed the controls of our whole payment system, demanding the power to turn on for his friends or turn off for anyone he doesn't like. one guy deciding who gets paid and who doesn't. there is a second problem here. it's not just payments for the federal government that are now and elon's control. elon in his handful of friends now have full access to your

personal financial information is in the system. your payment history. your social security number. your bank account numbers. elon now has the power to suck out all that information for his own use. whether it is to boost his finances or expand his political power. it is all up to elon. there is a third problem. in order for this handful of programmers to gain access to our 6 trillion-dollar payment program we do not know what safeguards were pulled down. are the gates wide open out for hackers from china, from north korea from iran, from russia? who knows what black hat hackers around the world are finding out about each one of us and copying that information for their own

criminal uses. donald trump and his billionaire buddies are determined to take over this government to make it work better for themselves and worse for everyone else. as we gear up for the tax bite will become even clearer trump will open the doors for his billionaires and giant corporations to find more ways to loop the government at your expense. meanwhile i would no space more rovers, more for housing, more for prescription drugs and more for healthcare with unelected bleeders are ransacking government offices, this is not business as usual. nothing is normal. we are living a nightmare could buy donald trump and elon musk. and we need to wake up. we need to use every tool that

we have to fight back. when in the senate we can start by saying no danger. that's it for me, go ahead. >> i just want all of you to imagine living in a foreign correspondent. how would you cover this if this were in south america, or central america or sub-saharan africa? how would the coverage change? if we don't like an agency, if you don't do spending provision, proposed a bill, pass a law. that is so foundational to the american system of government. i don't erase pass this idea you could wave away a federal law because you don't like it.

it's both an outrage and an illegal act but it gives us some confidence. the public should have some confidence the lock here is obsolete on the side of the american people being in control through the congress. through the congress. some sorts of swagger and inevitability tofi storm into buildings minee is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration -- averment the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. mr. barrasso: i ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call with respect to the bondi nomination be waived. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture.

for

the clerk: mr. banks. mr. barrasso. mr. bennet.

the clerk: mrs. blackburn, aye. mr. blumenthal. ms. blunt rochester.

the clerk: mr. booker. mr. boozman. mrs. britt. mr. budd. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cassidy. ms. collins.

the clerk: mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. curtis. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman.

mrs. fischer. mr. gallego. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mr. husted. mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. justice. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. kim. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. markey. as he steps into his role as ranking member i will work closely with senator durbin to

serve the american people. i would also like to welcome three brand-new members to the committee. a person who is repeating his service here after a scant off. per day welcome to the committee senator britt, senator schmitz, senator crapo and senator schiff. welcome. [applause] before we get started i would like to set out a couple ground rules. i want to handle this hearing using a similar structure to house senator durbin handled the nomination hearing of attorney general garland. i want everyone here to be able to watch the hearing without obstruction. if people set up and block the view of those behind them, or speak out of turn it is not fair or considerate to others.

so officers will immediately remove those individuals. and now, before i turn to my tuy opening statement, let me explain how we are going to proceed today. i am going to give my opening remarks and then i will invite ranking member durbin to give his opening remarks. then i will call and senator scott and schmidt toen introduce this. nominee. public those introductions and ms. monty's statement, we will begin the first round of questioning. a seven minute round for question after the first round will do a second four-minute round of questioning. members should do the very best to adhere to these time limits so that we can proceed

efficiently with the hearing. we are here today to consider pam bondi's nomination to serve as attorney general of the united states. ms. bondi, for a second time i thank you for your nomination, your willingness to serve. but more in partly serve the role of senate advice and consent process. you are nominated to on the most important offices in our country. it took, it took a lot of work on your part just to get here todayo,. note pages of records, hundreds of thousands of media files in more than 3400 responsive

entries disclosed to this committee to testament to your long career in public i do. and your cooperation with this committee. and also to thank your family for being here today. i don't many of them have traveled some distance to celebrate with you i would like to explain and expect that ms. bondi be treated fairly. during attorney general garland's confirmation hearing, republicans treated him with respect. we asked tough but fair questions. we ultimately voted him out of committee on a bipartisan basis. although attorney general garland was not who we, on this

side of the aisle would have chosen to lead the department of justice. we recognize president biden won that election and that he was entitled to choose his attorney general. we were ultimately disappointed with some of the things that general garland and his department did but we give him the benefit of the doubt. as the recent terrorist attacks in new orleans and around the world have shown, our national security must be a high priority. the american people deserve a secure homeland and borders. safe streets, orderly markets, civil rights, and a protected environment.

so, delivering on these requirements require the swift confirmation of an attorney general. she give ms. bondi the same benefit of the doubt of attorney general garland. president trump has elected a nominee whose qualifications speak for themselves. ms. bondi made history in 2010 as the first woman to be elected florida attorney general. she held that rule for eight years. and as reelected by the people of florida to a second term. eight years of service as attorney general is the third largest state in the nation, is excellent preparation for the role of u.s. attorney general. as a florida attorney general,

ms. bondi was a member of the ford cabinet, chief legal officer of the state and let a large agency that tangibly impacted people's lives. and by all accounts ms. bondi handled her responsibilities well. as the florida attorney general, ms. bondi achieved numerous successes. she engaged in key initiatives and human trafficking. counter the opioid epidemic protect consumers and the citizens of florida from violence. she did not shy away from hard work. she engaged in aggressive campaign pill mills, took a leading role in securing three and a quarter billion dollar settlement following the

deepwater horizon oil spill. illuminated the backlog of rape test kits that had accumulated and that states laboratories. ms. bondi experience is not limited to her service as attorney general. and hillsborough county for 18 years and prosecuted terrible crimes. she sought tough penalties and justice for victims of violent criminals. domestic abusers and sexual predators. she prosecuted drug traffickers and thus protected her community. she acted outside of her professional rural serving and the junior league of tampa on the board of special olympics

florida is well known for her animal rescue efforts. her experience and performance as attorney general prosecutor and community leader speaks volumes her dedication to the rule of law. she has received multiple letters in support of her nomination including the fraternal order of police, the republican state attorneys general, more than 100 former senior d.o.j. officials, and bipartisan group former state attorneys general. in short, ms. bondi is highly qualified. and of course as we all know a change is desperately needed. when confirmed, ms. bondi will

take the helm very turbulent time for this country and for that department. the justice department infected-is infected with political decision-making while its leaders refused to acknowledge that reality. crossfire hurricane was a textbook example of government weaponization. the fbi investigation was built on the fake steele dossier which was funded by the democratic national committee and clinton campaign who worked with foreign competence. my investigative work exposed the fbi actually knew the dossier was false information was likely a part of a russian disinformation campaign. even with the knowledge of such

dossier defects and political infections, the justice department sought buys a warrant renewals and took other actions. after directing my oversight staff to investigate justice department mishandling's of the matter, the justice department retaliated and issuing a subpoena for my own staff's records. that is right challenging my constitutional right of doing my oversight duties. what is next? democratic colleagues pressured the fbi foreign influence task force to supposedly brief me and senator johnson related to our biden family investigation. on august 20, senator johnson and i had the infamous briefing from the fbi.

later, this fbi briefing contents were leaked to that the media even though the fbi promise confidentiality. that leak falsely labeled our oversight work as you guessed it, disinformation. to this day, over four years later the fbi refused to be the intelligence basis for that briefing. the title of this wall street journal article sums it up quote the fbi dubious briefing did the bureau set to u.s. gop senators up at the behest of democrats? ". so, as i know it's other people in this committee in and out of

congress no government weaponization is, and then we get this special counsel jack smith in his law fair operation. it involves unprecedented fbi raid on trump's house. including agents that even search the former first lady's clothing drawers. hilary clinton and joe biden certainly did not receive the same treatment by government regarding their records. indeed, as might oversight expose the fbi amazingly agreed destroy laptop records associated with clinton staff. this orwellian conduct should have known. on top of it all special agent

the and site trump agent that violates the hatch act for political activities on the job, started one of jack smith's cases. but jack smith was not the only department who tried to influence these past elections. the washington post reported just last august about previously undisclosed mueller investigation into trump that was closed for lack of evidence. and it being quote unquote fishing expedition. that news reporting was based on sealed court records, government records and potentially classified information roughly 90 days before the last presidential election.

the justice department leak that information to the press to impact the election against president trump and they did it while stiff arming congressional requests for information that would prove embarrassing to the biden/harris administration. so, let us not forget other flagrant abuses of power that we have seen from that d.o.j. and the fbi over the last four years. i do not have the time to spend on these that i spent on two or three others would just list them, the department of justice use the might of the federal government to prosecute individuals peacefully praying from traditional catholics terrorism threats claiming these

adhere to anti- somatic, anti- immigration and gpt and white supremacy ideology." the fbi opened dozens of investigations cocoa19 mandates the fbi applied undue pressure to social media platforms to censor so-called misinformation down grading a removing flag social media posts and removing users. these are our only a few particularly egregious examples of raw and fessing the department of justice. it's catastrophic.

by every metric in the biden/harris justice department conduct has failed to live up to our country's ideals. so, ms. bondi, should you begin from the actions you would take to change the course must be for accountability. the conduct i just described never happens again. the only way to accomplish this is through transparency for the congress and the american people. and now to my friend ranking member durbin. >> think he senator grassley but i appreciate your commitment to the vice for betting presidential nominees. that was in doubt several weeks ago. i spoke to senator grassley and he assured me he is still personally committed as i am to maintaining these practices which we have established over the years. our rigorous it shows how

seriously members on both sides of the aisle take our constitutional responsibility, advice and consent. thank you for coming to my office last week to discuss her nomination. the importance of the attorney general tour justice system cannot be overstated as our nation's chief law enforcement officer the attorney general oversees the department of justice which is responsible for protecting the civil rights of americans economic freedom and opportunity, public safety and of course national security. and it sure at the attorney general has real impact on america's everyday life. it is critical any nominee for this position be committed first and foremost to the constitution and the american people. any president or political agenda. president trump have absolute right to do he wants with the justice department. that is how he conducted his first sir.

he inferred the criminal cases and successfully pressured d.o.j. he tried to use the justice department to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. president-elect made it clear he buys one thing above all else and he said it loyalty. speaking about attorney general sessions donald trump said the only reason i gave him the job is because i felt loyalty. he was an original supporter. but when then attorney general sessions of the right thing recused himself from the mueller investigation, trump said he should never have nominated him and he fired him. trump then nominate bill barth to secede sessions. he's a successful addition for the job unsolicited memo to d.o.j. sharply criticized the mueller investigation. barth mr. menon blocked the release of the report intervene in multiple criminal cases of trump's political allies spread

falsehoods about election fraud. in december of 2020 when bill barth finally announced there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that change the outcome of the election trump dismissed him, fired his second attorney general. this time around president elect trump has vowed not to just use the justice department to advance his political interest, but also to see quote retribution gives quote the enemy within. he has repeatedly threatened to arrest, prosecute, jail. the clerk will reportthe nomina. the clerk: department of justice, pamela bondi, of florida, to be attorney general. i recognize the senator from delaware. mr. coons: mr. president, as if in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule 22, i ask

unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of senate resolution 51, which was submitted earlier today. further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objections? i recognize the senator from idaho. mr. risch: mr. president, reserving the right to object. i want to rise today to talk about what senator coons is attempting to do here, and i have to say that a lot of us have said for years that the greatest national security threat americans face is our skyrocketing national debt. president trump agrees with us, and is committed to do something about this. we must confront this, and to do so hard choices are going to have to be made, and all, all parts of government will have to be looked at very closely. the idea of merging usaid and

the state department is not new and has been floated by nearly every administration since the latter part the of the last century. i'm supportive of the trump administration's efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves united states' national security interests. i'm fortunate enough to talk with secretary rubio virtually daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and i was aware this was coming, and as i said, i have encouraged that this be looked at. today, along with a number of my colleagues on relevant committees on both sides of the aisle, and the hill, received notification the secretary rubio is beginning the process of merging usaid into state. i had received this informal notice earlier than this. there's a lot of work to do in this effort, and there is a process set up for doing this, and secretary rubio is following

that process and looks forward to working with all of us as he goes through that process. it's my hope that all of my colleagues in both parties will help to do this important work. i have to say that this is just one agency. there are many, many, many agencies out there, and this is going to be coming down the pike on every amount of government spending. elections have consequences, and this is one of the consequences that we're going to do our best to reduce spending, do it by efficiencies, by combining where it's necessary. i'll continue to be in close coordination with secretary rubio on this as it moves forward. as a result of that, i object to the proposed r.s. 51. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. the senator from delaware. mr. coons: mr. president, if i might further expound on the resolution and respond to the

comments by my colleague, the chairman of the foreign relations committee on which i serve. the resolution i sought to advance today is a simple statement of fact. it reviews the history of usaid, its creation as an independent agency, and its recognition in a law i helped write just last year, that to reorganize it explicitly requires congressional consultation and notification in advance. the statement of the resolution, the core point is that a.i.d. is essential to the national security of the ins, because it mitigates -- of the united states. it mitigates threats abroad, promotes global stabilities and addresses the root causes of migration and extremism and secures the leadership and influence of the united states in an era of strategic competition with the people's republic of china. let me speak to a few points, if

i might. the power of the purse, process matters, 1%, and who wins. rolling back the decades of work and relationships that the nonprofits and a.i.d. do around the world is creating a vacuum, a vacuum that will be filled by bad actors. so in a country where we've long funded the pepfar program, started by president bush, long supported on a bipartisan basis that provides anti-retrovirals and testing and nurses and support and crinnics, to a -- clinics, to abandon that, defund that, shut that down, simply creates an opening for a bad actor to come in and say the americans abandoned you. sorry for your life. here we are. we want to help. the chinese have invested hundreds and hundred-dollar of billions in advancing their interests through investing in infrastructure, building partnerships in critical

min minerals, becoming the leads on port operations and delivering humanitarian aid. we should not shut down our assistance to the world in a way that creates this vacuum. who wins is the first question. my concern is our adversaries. second, process matters. as those of us who are lawyers know, it's backwards to start with an executive order that shuts down the funding for an organization and entity, to invade and occupy its headquarters, to have an unelected department get into its systems, to lay off and furlough its senior leadership, then notify congress of the intent to begin a conversation about reorganization. i welcome a chance to have a conversation about the future of our development assistance around the world, and my hope is that it will continue, because i have case after case to review here bsh the good work it -- to

review here, about the good work it does. but to shut down the funding and to cause lots of our partners to lay off their key staff, then begin a conversation about reorganization, is to get it backwards in terms of process and the law. i'm an appropriator. why should we bother coming to an agreement on appropriations here in the senate, pass a law, send it to the president, he signs it, and then in the next congress and the next president they can shut it down and claw it back? it gets to the very question of the power of the purse, which in article 1 of the constitution is the power of this body. going forward, of course, as my colleague said, elections have consequences. it is true. president trump and the new majority here will put their imprimatur on the policy priorities across a wide range of agencies and programs, absolutely, and i expect that discussion and that fight. but this is reaching back and

shutting down. 1% -- 1%, actually, less than 1% of the total federal budget goes to these vital humanitarian programs around the world. i'll give you a few examples of what has been stopped in its tracks. a u.s. organization funded through a.i. templet has -- through a.i.d. stopped its counterterrorism work in the philippines that was reducing recruitment and radicalization. we walked away. in mexico, an organization that reduces the number of children recruited by gangs to help move drugs and migrants across our border has had its funding cut off. i remember trips i took, bipartisan delegations, i was a part of, that went and visited a.i.d.-funded work, where folks were delivering critical care. st. mary's clinic in nairobi and kenya, one of the worst informal

settlements, slums, i've ever been in, and these dedicated, caring, capable folks delivering vital life assistance. in liberia during ebola, i will never forget meeting with the nurses, doctors, volunteers, lie beerans helping -- liberians helping save lives. why does this matter? today there is an ebola outbreak in uganda, and it's the disease monitoring and testing, it's the clinics and the nurses that keep these disease hes controlled and managed on the other side of the world before they come here. failing to sustain this work in an efficient and effective way is to fail to show the values of the united states, to show we're not a reliable partner, is to show that the decades of bipartisan support for critical

initiatives like pepfar have been abandoned because they're no longer considered a smarter strategic investment by one party, while the other party will fight for it. my fondest hope is that we will yet find there is bipartisan support for continuing and sustaining these investments, but it's unclear, because the unelected leader of doge, elon musk, is even now tweeting shut it down, close it off. my hope is that secretary rubio's comments today on television about sustaining many of the critical functions of a.i.d. will win out, but i'm not confident because it's unclear to me who's really driving this initiative. let me close. we know that diplomacy and development stand alongside defense in being critical to our national security. president trump's first defense secretary, general james mattis, said to us in a hearing that if

foreign aid were to get cut, he would need to buy more bullets, because foreign aid around the world helps us build relationships of support, combat terrorism and extremism, advance our values and priorities, and make us safer and more secure. i cannot think of a more troubling development than this long-trusted, capable, bipartisan effort at helping bring our values to the world and helping secure our nation would be cut off, abruptly, roughly, in a way that violates the law and the spirit of our long bipartisan compromise. who wins if we do in fact shut this all down? it's our adversaries. it's terrorists, it's drug cartels, it's russia, it's china, it's those we've held at bay through the great work of this organization, and its

dedicated servants for decades. my hope is that even though this resolution was opposed and thus defeated tonight, that the determination to support this great work will survive and thrive and prevail. thank you, mr. president. with that, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: i recognize the senator from idaho. mr. risch: mr. president, first of all, to my good friend from delaware, i know that he is aware that a number of the programs here have already received a waiver, because a case was made for those programs, and that's appropriate. but look, as i started to say at the beginning, this is about the debt of the united states. the fact that we're borrowing a trillion dollars every hundred days, it can't go on. this institution, as long as i've been here, has been trying to do something about it. we've tried over and over and over again to make something happen. what do we do? we create a study group.

study group sits down, they talk for two years, they create a great big report, and nothing ever comes of it. this president is making things happen, and one of the agencies that a lot of us have had concerns about over the years is usaid and how the money was being spent. we're going to have a look at it, and i have no doubt that when we're done with that everyone is going to have a say, and at the end of the day we will, as we do in a democracy, vote, and that will be the end of it. thank you. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. coons: if i might, one of my own pressing concerns i've raised with colleagues here on the floor tonight is that even in cases where secretary rubio has given a waiver to try and keep programs like pepfar going, money is not flowing, and several republican senators have posted and spoken to this issue today. if secretary rubio is in charge of this initiative, those

waivers should lead to funding being restored. if he's not, if this is really elon musk's vision of shut it all down, then what is happening on the ground today, in country after country, will show us where we are really headed, which is the complete abandonment of our global leadership in humanitarian relief and development. i pray that we can work together to ensure that the critical work of dozens of household name nonprofits is not abandoned and that what is left of a.i.d. is not allowed to bleed out while we here in the senate debate. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. schatz: mr. president. the presiding officer: i recognize the senator from hawaii. mr. schatz: thank you, mr. president. i want to thank senator coons for his leadership on trying to restore international order, and

that's what we're talking about. you know, the chairman of the foreign relations committee is talking about reforms to the way we deliver aid, and look, ten days ago i had a conversation with senator graham, who is the chairman of the committee that has jurisdiction over spending in the state department, and i'm now the ranking member of that committee, and we talked about the opportunities for reform. we talked about the need to align american foreign policy with usaid. and to the extent that we're all aarmed at the belt and road initiative, to the extent that we watch what china does new mexicoly and -- what china did internationally and we think, how smart of them, we should do something like that the response should be to better align usaid with the state department's

objectives, with our geopolitical strategy, but not to eliminate our power internationally. and i think the point that has to be -- has to be understood right now, because some republicans that i'm talking to kind of agree that we don't want to get rid of foreign aid, we don't want to get rid of u.s. aid, but they want to institute some reforms, they want to have a negotiation. fine. understand two things -- one, this freeze is just flatly illegal. let me explain what i mean. every year we pass an appropriations bill. and unlike in state governments where if you appropriate money to something, a governor can actually restrict those funds, but our constitution provides and our statutes provide that when we appropriate money, as the article 1 branch, the executive branch has the obligation to see to it that

it's done in a way that is meritous, but they don't get to -- meritorious, but they don't get to decide not to spend the money. if they don't like a particular provision in a bill, they could have threaten add veto or been part of a negotiation. but once enacted, it is literally the law of the land. the other thing is usaid is a creature of law. there was an executive order -- look, if you establish something by an executive order and nothing follows, then the next president gets to revoke that executive order, the thing vanishes. that is like -- that is a total authority that a president has. but what happened was usaid was established by executive order and then congress made a law. so it doesn't matter whether it was originally made by executive order or memo or speech or

someone sang a jingle to establish usaid. it is now a federal law and you don't get to waive it because you don't like it. i just don't understand. look, there will be a democratic president. and i want people to do the thought experiment of how unbelievably angry you will be when president whoever comes in and says, i'm cancelling the f-35. i'm cancelling a road in your community. because i don't like it, because it doesn't fit with my ideology, because i won. that is not how this works. and it is sometimes very frustrating, especially when you're the majority party, to understand that all you did was decide -- you just won to be at the helm of the executive branch and to be at the helm of the legislative branch but what

doesn't mean you won a monarchy. that doesn't mean that you get to start issuing memos and that's the law. and i think one of the problems right now is there really are a budge of billionaires who really do think, ah, it ought to run like a business. if what you mean by that is things ought to be efficient p count me in. but if what you mean is there is one ceo and that one ceo tells everybody what to do and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks or what the rules or the laws are, that's not our system of government. that is not the way this works. so that's number one. this thing is illegal. you can hate usaid and still hate what's happening to it because it'll happen if this is allowed to happen, it will happen to a department you like. it will happen to an initiative you like. it'll happen to something you want to protect in your community or that you consider important for the country. and so this isn't about the

particulars of usaid. let's have a debate about usaid, but let's have it in the context of the constraints of the constitution and laws of the united states. that's not a provocative, partisan statement. it is a statement of act that we all swear an oath to the constitution and laws of the united states and the context in which we have fights about things are within the four corners of statutory law. if you hate a statute, we all know what to do. there's still literally -- put a bill a many history. it is the year 2025. we still have a hopper. you can still drop a physical bill in the hopper. you've got a proposal, great. but not, i've got a proposal. let's draft an executive memorandum and start acting like there's a chief executive officer of the whole country. that is not how this works.

the second point is this -- people are dying now. people are dying now. so as we think about, oh, what kind of reforms do we want to make? why don't we align this more with foreign policy? i want to align this with -- all of that is the kind of thing that you can do while you keep the agency open. my god, i talked to lindsey the other day and i said, you know what would be really interesting because we know administrative tasks are going to get easier and more efficiently done with the advent of a.i. i thought, it would be pretty cool to figure out if we could drive the overhead rate in the usaid budget downer to a period of time so that more aid goes to the people and the plateses that we -- places that we intend it to go to. now, if there was a for-profit

or a nonprofit andern in the process of trying -- and you were in the process of trying to become more efficient and you were looking at the bunch of people that did a bunch of things and you think, you know, we need an electronics system pour this or a better way to do this. we need a better mousetrap. you don't shut the whole operation downed and then figure it out. i'm looking at the presiding officer. i'm looking at the senator from delaware. both of you have run big operations, private sector, public sector. you know this is no way to run a railroad. you don't shut something down in order to reform it. you take seriously the proposition that there should be reform. you get agresssive. there should be no sacred cows, all of that. but what they did is they stormed into the offices of a federal building, sent everybody home, broke into the secure conference facilities, broke into the scifs, locked people

out of their e-mails. does that sound like the united states of america? it really, honestly, does not sound like the united states of america to me. these people were not elected, there is a law in place and it doesn't matter what you think about this particular agency. i got agencies i don't like. i got agencies that i think are spending too much money or too little money. you know what i do about that? i introduce a bill to change it because i believe in the american system of government. and part of what we have to establish here is do we believe in the american system of government or has the internet broken our brains to the point where this is just another partisan fight? they stormed into a federal office and purged employees. think about how you would view that if it were some faraway place. think about how the press would cover that.

if it were in africa or central asia or south america or central america. they would characterize it appropriately as autocratic behavior. so this isn't some small, little partisan dispute among a bunch of progressives who are bleeding hearts and worried about people and suffering and all that. this is about literally do we uphold the rule of law in the united states? and i -- so many people who are in the united states senate who care about this country fled that kind of authoritarianism. my grandparents, my wife's grandparents, i won't presume anyone else's personal history but, frankly, most people come to the united states to flee those kinds of behaviors. and so we are -- we are here to uphold the constitution and laws

of the united states. mr. president, they really are implementing project 2025. and i have to say, like back in the campaign, i was wary about making that accusation that they're going to implement this book, right? and i just asked -- i was trying to figure out if i could read the whole project 2025 into the record, and at least one of t the -- well, i'm just say this -- chatgpt told me it would take 119 hours. so i'm not going to do that this evening. but i will tell you that if you read it, you will understand that they're actually really implementing project 2025. and trump was smart enough during the campaign to realize that democrats had broken through and made it clear that

they have a very specific plan and part of the problem for democrats was, you know, it was always about trump and his personality and that wore people down, like it was -- tell me what you're going to do for me. tell me what they're going to do for me for not for me. so this was an area where democrats thought, hey, this is policy. this is actually what's going to happen. and trump was clever enough to say, a nah, i don't know anything about that. oh, that guy? i just met him -- kind of thing. but i want you to understand that more than two-thirds of trump's executive orders appeared actions during this first -- and actions during his first week were inspired by that manifesto put together by the heritage foundation. and the reason for that is simple -- many of the authors of project 2025 now hold or are nominated to hold senior roles in the trump administration. and that includes omb director nominee russ vought, fcc

commissioner, carr, border czar tom homan. and so it is worth examining in some detail this 900-page document that is the basis for the avalanche of chaos and pain and confusion from the trump administration. i want to read the opener in project 2025. history teaches -- i just want you to be clear, this is not me. history teachers that a president's power to compliment an agenda is at its apex during the administration's opening days, days, to execute requires a unified plan manned a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement t in recent elections cycles, presidential candidates normally began transition planning in the late spring of election year or even after the nomination was secured. that is too late. the federal government's complexity and growth advance a

seemingly logarithmic rate every four years. for conservatives to have a fighting chance to take on the administrative state, the work must start now. the entirety of this effort is to support the next conservative president. in had the winter of 1980, the fledgling heritage foundation handed to president-elect ronald reagan the ininaugural mandate for leadership. this collective work by conservative thought leaders and former government hands, most of whom were not part of hair tan, set out policy prescriptions, agency by agency, for the incoming president. the book literally put the conservative movement and reagan on the same page and the revolution that followed might never have been, save for this band of committed and volunteer activists. with this volume, we have gone back to the future. and then some. it is not 1980. in 2023, the game has changed. the long march of cultural marx ditch dink he'll not sure what that is, those myself words --

there is a our institutions has come to pavements the federal government is a behemoth weaponized against american citizens and conserve executive values, with freedom and liberty you understand siege as never before. the task at hand -- to reverse this tide and restore our republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. it requires the collective action of our movement. with the quickening approach of 2025, we have two years and one chance to get it right. project 2025 is more than 50 and growing. of the nation's leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. as the axiom goes, personnel is policy and we need a new generation of americans to answer the call and come to serve. this book is functionally an invitation for you, the reader, mr. smith, mrs. smith, to come to washington to support those who can. our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, and trained

and prepared conservatives to go to work on day one to deconstruct the administrative state. under state department civil servants, since the u.s. found, the department of state has been the american government's designated tool of engagement, with foreign governments and people throughout the world. country names, borders, leader being, technology and people have changed in the more than two centuries since the founding. but the basics of diplomacy remain the same. although the department has evolved throughout the years. there is one significant problem the next president must address to be successful. there are scores of fine diplomats that serve the president's agenda often helping to shape that agenda. at the same time, however, in all of the administrations there's a tug of war between presidents and bureaucratic be -- bureaucracies and that is starker under conservative presidents, due to large swath

are left wing and disagree with the president's policy vision. i just want to stop here. and i want everyone to understand what they're saying, which is they're targeting a department of the federal government because they have assessed, i don't know if it's true or not because i don't actually think like that, that it's got like a liberal lean. and i've got to tell you, i don't -- i'm sure the fbi membership has a conservative lean. my guess is ice has a conservative lean. i don't know about the department of interior and what their political lean is. and i am just actually confused as to why anybody thinks it's legitimate to try to dismantle a department of the federal department of the federal a

point of view about the politics of the individual employees. now back to this -- back to the 2025. it should not and cannot be this way. the american people need and deserve diplomatic machine fully focused on the national interest as defined through the election of a president who sets the domestic and international agenda for the nation. well, listen -- the law, as it relates to the state department is it made by congress. and many smart people have described the constitution in the area of foreign policy as an invitation to struggle. it was intentionally vague. we were supposed to have a tug and pull. and it's true that the president of the united states is the commander and chief and has broad -- it is not true that any

president can ignore a duly enacted federal law. and that is what is being asked for us to tolerate. and i -- look, i was prepared on election night to say i hate this result. we lost the trifecta as a party we've got to do some soul searching and figure out why we didn't just lost the electoral college weeks lost the popular vote. i was prepared to do some thinking prepared to say we're in for some conservative outcomes, we're in for some policy outcomes that i am absolutely going to hate. but what's happening right now is unlawful. i know we're outnumbered 53-47 in the senate and like a two or three vote marge anyone the house -- margin in the house and we lost the presidency.

so there will be conservative policy for two or four years. i don't like it, but that's the way the ball bounces sometimes politically. what's happening right now is not the ball bouncing a particular way politically, but someone deciding that they're in charge of the american government and they don't care what the law says and i just don't think anyone should be willing to tolerate that. i want to quote project 2025 on medicare. because i want everybody to understand they came from the -- for the state department first because everybody understands that until there's an ebola outbreak that reaches our shores, until there's international disorders that reaches our borders, until your

reputation is damaged, until you see it on your screen, large or small, most people are not actively training the foreign aid question. but i want you to understand that project 2025, i mean, you -- you heard me read the preamble. give them credit. it is an ambitious vision. it is an ambitious document, and so they're also coming after medicare. and i quote, medicare and medicaid operate as runaway entitlements that stifle medical innovation, encourage fraud and impede cost containment in addition to which their fiscal future is imperil. both should be managed so they are empowered to make decisions for themselves and have quality op options providers who participate should retain or have restored the freedom to

practice medicine and take care of their patients according to their patients' unique needs. the affordable care act has made insurance more expensive. now, that's just flatly not true. can you hate it and you can say it's an expansion of government and you can say it's an inefficient way to do it. it's flatly not true people are paying more in premiums. you might hate the fact that it's a big subsidy for people. i yield the floor to the majority leader. mr. thune: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the appointment at the desk appear separately in the record as if made by the chair.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: and i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it stand adjourn until 11:00 a.m. on tuesday, february 4, that following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed and the senate proceed to executive session and resume executive calendar number 12 and that all time during morning business, recess and adjournment and leader remarks count postcloture and further, that at 12:15 p.m. the senate execute order of the january 30 in relation to the collins nomination and the senate recess following the disposition of the collins nomination until 2:15 p.m., to allow for weekly conference meetings. 5gly, that if any nomination lgs are confirmed during tuesday's session motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon

the table and the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. following the remarks of senator schatz. borrow without objection. mr. schatz: the aca subsidy schemes masks the impacts. which is really to say we have inefficient health care system. i think sh can -- i think everybody can agree with that. what they mean by masking the impacts, right, is that we have a terrible system under normal circumstances people's monthly payment would be 5, 6, 7, $900. and under the subsidy scheme people would have to pay less. there's a lot of euphemisms for coming after your health care. cms should develop a plan to

separate the nonsubsidized insurance market from the subsidized market giving the nonsubsidized market -- let's explain what this means for a second. they want to separate the healthy from the not healthy. and the problem is if an insurer wants to only provide insurance for like 35-year-old and under that they're going to be able to provide really, really cheap rates. but the problem before the affordable care act was that that was exactly how it worked. if you're 23 your insurance was reasonably affordable. if you're 48 and have heart disease or have mental health challenges or you have asthma or diabetes, then you have a preexisting condition. and then the insurance companies were able to just literally not write you a policy.

you couldn't get insurance. and so the number one cause -- of bankruptcy preaca was medical debt. people were going bankrupt because they got sick. imagine -- it has to be a big enough to be expensive, you get sick and it's very serious. your life might be in danger, you might have to manage a new disability, but it's stressful and hard to try to get well or whatever it is. but on top of that pre-aca, you've got -- you got absolutely screwed financially. imagine getting a terminal diagnosis and you don't have insurance and then you're sitting there thinking, i've got three years, but in the meantime, my family's going to

go broke. mask the impacts. what they mean is subsidize people so that they can afford their insurance and put everybody in the same risk pool so that it's not the case that sick people can't get insured and well people can because why would you -- the reason insurance companies love to discount their rates and take young people on their plans is it's very unlikely they're going to get sick so they make money all the time. and the reason they wanted to reject sick people is because that ends up being expensive. right? and so it's not a surprise that the republican party wants to eliminate the affordable care act. but we also need to understand they're coming after medicare and medicaid too. and i want you to hear this part from our omb director nominee.

in its opening words article 2 of the u.s. constitution makes it clear that the executive power shall be invested in the president of the united states of america. so far so good, that's true. that is not invested in the staff or administrative bodies in nongovernmental or equities or interest close to the government. that's where he is way off track. he is way off track. we make laws. there is an executive branch that is a creature of federal law, and this guy's theory is, nafrn h -- nah, we elect a king. we elect a person who doesn't have to deal with any existing statutes, how does the department of transportation distribute federal funds? is it by formula or do they do grants? how does the center for medicare and medicaid determine who gets

grant funding for a hospital, right? all of that over the years has been decided as a matter of law and what russ vought is saying is the president must set and enforce a plan for the executive branch. sadly, however, the president today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that is all too often carrying out its own policy plans and preferences or of that a radical of a woke section of the country. what's interesting about this document, as i started to read it is it's got all this high-minded stuff and then they just want to go after the left. that's what this is, right? they're pissed, they're mad because they think some agencies are too left wing, they think there's a bunch of people in the government who are too busy caring about health care or

women's equality or children's mental health. i don't know what's considered woke or not because i feel like with the tragic plane crash last week those words died. those words are devoid of meaning. what in the hell does it mean to say dei caused the plane crash? now it's an ep that the that you -- epithet that you throat when you don't know what to say or how to be a serious person. the challenge, he says, is created and exacerbated by congress's decades-long tendy to have the pervasive notion of expert independence of so-called expert authorities from sc scrutiny, not holding sieve servants accountable, and not only agencies are too big and powerful and weaponized against the public and the president who is elected by the people to

empower and govern. so what they mean here, right, is that if you want to pass a law, it has to have all of the implementation in the law. and it's funny to me because a lot of republicans will complain about the length of the law. we are supposed to make broad public policy. the telecommunications act, was passed, then reauthorized over the last couple decades. that enabled a telecommunications revolution. because it set basic parameters for competition, and then it said you, the federal communications commission, expert agency, you can open up dockets, you can listen to testimony, you can evaluate individual cases. you have to work within the four corners of the statute. we're telling you what the principles are here. but we don't know how much -- how many gigahertz of spectrum

should be given to the department of defense versus open ram this and that. we don't know that kind of thing. i'll give a good example from my first days in the hawaii legislature a hundred years ago. when i got to the legislature, we had a committee that was called ocean and marine resources. and we actually, we, the legi legislature, set the individual catch size for individual fish. there was a pretty corrupt legislator who set the minimum cash size for a snapper based on you had he wanted the snapper to be on his dinner plate. 4578d to be two inches smaller than spawning size. why do you care? you want people to throw back a fish before it makes a bunch of eggs. once it's had its spawn, eat it. that's how you keep a healthy

fishery alive. we realized shouldn't a bunch of biologists figure out the minimum size? shouldn't a bunch of experts determine how to manage our ocean and marine resources? shunned the legislature make broad policy? but you don't want us idiots talking about the minimum catch size of a fish. we don't know. we have preferences. people might whitt per in -- whisper in our ear about that. if you can imagine the sprawling federal laws about speed limits and civil penalties for contract violations and criminal law and everything else, and we're going to elucidate exactly how all of this works? it's totally preposterous, but it goes back to this idea of president as elected king, and that is where they want to go. and i quote, in federalist 47, james madison warned that the accumulation of all powers,

legislative and executive, judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. regrettably that describes to a significant degree the modern executive branch, which whether controlled by bureaucracy or the president writes federal policy, enforces that, and often adjudicates, none of this is true, whether the policy was properly drafted and enforced. the overall situation is consti constitutionally dire, in urgent need of repair. nothing less than the survival of self-governens is at stake in america. they get really grandiose really quick. that's a little bone-chilling. is that they're not just going for conservative outcomes. they're going for a kind of revolution. and i think that, look, everybody's prone to

exaggeration in campaigns. everybody hurls accusations, one side at the other. so, you'll forgive me for when i heard about project 2025, i was like okay, some groups want us to focus on it, fine, whatever, let me check it out. then i started to realize this is really their plan. then i heard trump say, well, no, it's not my plan, i don't know any of these people, and i frankly didn't talk about project 2025 during the campaign because i couldn't quite nail down where are they going to do it. now two-thirds of these nominees are authors or otherwise affiliated with this document, which is a 900-page game plan that they're in the middle of executing. just to take a step back on a tactical side, they really do understand that a lot of what they're doing is not within the four corners of the law. they really do understand that.

that's why they're moving so fast, is they are trying to create as much chaos as they possibly can. they are trying to terrorize the federal workforce, and i mean that advisedly. i have a friend, i won't mention where he works to protect him, but he texted me, he said, what do i do, man? i've known him since i was a kid. what do i do? just an unbelievably good human being. i don't know how he votes. i don't know if he votes. but he's terrified. so when you get this e-mail that says fork in the road, and you're an air traffic controller and there's a 30% vacancy rate, of air traffic controllers, last week and you are encouraged to not show up for work and take a severance. that's what this is.

this isn't some minor policy dispute. this is arson. they believe that the federal government is an impedestrianment to freedom -- impedestrianiment to freedom. we should have that argument. let's have a fight. i don't mean physically, i mean let's have a debate on the senate floor. is the federal government an impediment? is it the faa you'd like to cut? is it medicare? would you like to cut the affordable care act subsidies? the highway administration? the department of defense? would you like to cut the small business administration? would you like to cut disease prevention around the world? i think where the rubber hits the road, it's very easy, look, i'm sure plenty of republicans could talk like me if they wanted to, and i can talk like

republicans, we sort of understand each other's points of view, but i just do think that underlying it all, you know, we're a big, powerful country, the biggest, the most powerful country that has ever existed, and in order to maintain our primacy in the world, in order to be the best in research, in order to be the best in defense, in order to be the best in innovation, we actually do need a federal government. and whether it's the patent office or preventing ebola from reaching our shores, or making sure we have a strong military, all of that is in jeopardy if these particular ideologues have their way. these people are actually more ideological than some members of congress, and i think it's pretty scary stuff because they're just going forward with it as if they have a mandate.

and most of the people got elected and looked their voters square in the eye and said i don't know anything about this. that's not my plan. let me tell you what my plan is. but now that all of these people are going personnel is policy, remember, into the government to implement these plants, it's i, i, i, i, i, i, and then maybe secret whispering to a democratic colleague, you know, i've got some concerns, so keep it up. i've got a lot of i've got some concerns, keep it up. at some point, people are going to have to stand up and say this is not what we meant. maybe they were pissed offer at the afghanistan withdrawal. maybe they were pissed off at the price of eggs or the price of gasoline. maybe they were angry that they felt that the president, previous president, wasn't up to

it. maybe they thought democrats were focused on the wrong things. but i don't think actually people really signed up for this. they might have tolerated it as part of a coalition, but this is not what your average swing voter thought they were signing up for, the elimination of the affordable care act subsidies, the storming of federal buil buildings, and relieving all of the senior staffers of their du duties, the defying of temporary restraining orders issued by federal judges. i don't think that's what people had in mind. i think they were pissed, i think they were tired from covid, i think they were irritated at the democratic party for a number of reasons, but i don't think people understood that these people had a plan that was separate and apart from the campaign. and because donald trump, again,

very cleverly, said i got nothing to do with that, people did not think this is what the campaign was about. but now that they are in the government, that is exactly what this was about. they're in the government, around they are acting as if the people ratified this plan. people need to understand what was in this plan. and i quote again, the great challenge confronting a conservative president is the existential need for the aggressive use of vast powers of the executive branch to return power, including power currently held by the executive branch, to the american people. success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial. boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to presidential will. remember that e-mail, fork in the road. and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from washington and back to american families, faith

communities, local governments, and states. fortunately, a president will to lead will find the executive office of the president the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. the effectiveness of those eop levels depends on the fundamental premise that it is the president's agenda that should matter to the departments and saithe sis that op -- agencies that operate under him, and it is the chosen advisers who have the best sense ever the president's aims and intentions both with respect to the policies he intends to enact and the interests that must be secured to governor successfully on -- to gov earn successfully on the american people. what he is saying is the president gets elected, he gets to do whatever he wants. that is what this is. fema, i quote, the federal emergency management agency should be moved to the

department of interior or if combined with cisa to the department of transportation. that one i don't have a smart comment on, other than why? it's not going to be more efficient if you move it under d.o.t. what the held does the federal emergency management agency have to do with transportation? it just, they're smart people, don't get me wrong, they're very sophisticated, smart people with a plan, but some of this sounds like dorm room rando brainstorming, yeah, we should move this over here. what does that mean? do you know how fema responds in a disaster? have you ever met anybody whose -- look, people get pissed about the federal government all the time, but when a disaster hits i've never heard anybody say, oh, damn it, fema's here. people are pleased that fema is there. i've had my disagreements with fema as it relates to the maui recovery, but damn it, when lahaina burned they were there.

and they were making sure people didn't -- making sure people had food, medicine, they were making sure people had a roof over their head. i mean, there are some agencies that work pretty well and do exactly what they're supposed to do. so, you see this isn't about the relative efficacy of any individual department, because they are literally after them all. it doesn't matter if they work well, don't work well, in the right place, not in the right place. they construct a critique of literally every single federal agency to sort of reduce its legitimacy. why? because they believe in their heart of hearts, this is similar to what rand paul thinks, true, that anytime there's any federal authority, that means less freedom for an individual.

but that's not a mainstream position. this is not a mainstream document. the reason i'm spending so much time on this is that i don't think the media has actually read this damn thing. i think that they kind of like view this as yesterday's news, last year's fight, and there's a little bit of a sense of, democrats, they try to make something stick, they can never make something stick, so they're talking about 2025 again, i'm going to roll my eyes and blah, blah, blah. they're implementing this thing. they're in the process of implementing this thing. it's all right here. fema manages all grants for dhs, i quote, these have become pork for states. localities and special interest groups. since 2002, dhs and fema provided more than $56 billion in preparedness grants. okay, preparedness grants are

awesome, actually. talk to any governor, democrat or republican, talk to any county administrator, mayor, democrat or republican, preparedness grants are awesome. we should spend $56 billion on preparedness grants. you know why? we passed $150 billion supplemental emergency appropriations bill because disasters are getting more severe and frequent every year. last year was the biggest disaster year on record. now, i think it's because the climate is changing because we're burning too much fossil energy. it is certainly a fact that we have more frequent disasters it every where, and we have weird ones. there's never been a wildfire in the state of hawaii anything like what happened in lahaina. a whole town burnt to the

ground, 2,200 structures. and not even a whole -- and in not even a whole night. like three hours. western north carolina, towns that were literally considered -- like they call them climate havens. so all the people that try to predict weather partners's patterns, this is one of the few places that is probably safe from a climate-driven disaster. i feel really bad. thom tillis has been working really hard to get some resources for people in western north carolina because frankly a lot of people have been to lahaina and it was one discreet beautiful town that holds a lot of -- a lot of people have a special place in her that is right for the town of lahaina, and they should. but most people have not been to western north carolina and all ever these towns are small. 500 here, 700 there, 75 -- it's

small. add it it up, and it's lots and lots of people. preparedness grants are what they sound like. they help a town or a community to when disaster hits to not get wrecked. right? this is not in the prepared necessary grant, but, like, the state of hawaii, if you put something called a hurricane clip on your roof, the roof is way less likely to literally fly off. it is obviously bad for your house but also bad for other houses. and that's money that the state government provides to individuals to just say, be prepared. why? because it's supercheap compared to the alternative. it's supercheap compared to tens of thousands of roofs being ripped off when a category 4 storm or hurricane hits.

and so preparedness grants like, i don't know, that's not pork. unless you have to sense of what people actually need. and that's what this is. it's a bunch of people on "k" street primarily, downtown washington, d.c., in their cubicles typing up ideas about how wasteful all this stuff is. this stuff very much matters to county counties. dhs provided preparedness grants. president biden requests $3.5 billion for assistance grants. i don't see the problem. more than any objective needs, political interests appear to direct the flow of nondisaster funds -- that's just ridiculous. in fact, like if that had been the case, i would have gotten more from the biden administration. the principle of federalism ought to be upheld. states do better understand their needs in terms of preparing for a natural disaster. but that's not the question. because the way disaster

preparedness, response, and recovery works is that actually the states and the counties are in charge of their preparedness, response, and recovery. it's just that when a tiny little county gets flattened and the damage is so bad, that the people -- that the fiscal resources of that little government can't handle it, that's when the federal government steps in. not to dictate their recovery but to be a backstop. i mean, this is what a federal government is for. and i'm lingering on this one because i think it shows how disconnected these folks r and like i said, this thing is 900 pages. and i really did intend to, like, read the whole thing except i found out it was going to be 120 hours. but you can go department by department and sort of know, a, that they real lay are trying to

do all these things, and, b, that they're totally, totally disconnected from the needs of the people, like you could pick on a few federal agencies, and i might like shrug my shoulders and go, you know they're right. but fema and the idea that like a little county should be in charge of its own disaster response? that's preposterous. what you're saying is you're on your own, and that's freedom to be on your own, to not have the inefficiencies of the health care system masked by a subsidy. you're on your own. to not have fema come in and backstop a little town in maui county or in california or in west virginia. you're on your own. congratulations with your freedom e d. freedom. the freedom to get kicked off your health insurance, the freedom to not have that damn

federal government intervene when your town was burned to the ground or flooded out. the freedom to make sure that if there is an ebola outbreak in uganda, not our problem. sure, it's an international world. sure, the marburg virus is also now spreading in eastern africa, in tanzania. and sure it's got a 90% mortality rate, but you will be so satisfied with all your freedom. and i quote, the modern conservative president's task is to limit, control, and direct executive branch on behalf of the american people. this challenge is created an ever and exacerbated by congress's decades-long tendency to delegate its power to agency bureaucracies -- that's not

true. we're not delegating our lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies. what we are doing is establishing policy and understanding that, say, in telecom, that the last thing you want is 100 people arguing about, i don't know, a spectrum auction. right? or the worthiness of a particular bridge, right? like, you want experts to determine some of this and not, you know, not that we don't have a bunch of smart people, but we're supposed to make general policy. in federalist 47, james madison warned that the the accumulation of all powers, legislative and executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether hereditary or self-elected may pronounce the very definition of tyranny. that wise and cautionary note describes to a significant degree the modern executive branch which whether controlled

by the bureaucracy or the president writes federal policy. a director must give his george bush -- sorry, this is about the omb director. omb cannot perform its role on behalf of the president effectively if it is not intimately involved in all aspects is of the white house policy process and lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing. internally to the eop, to make sure that policies include o movement b is one of any omb director's major responsibility. a common meme of those who intend to evade omb review is to argue that where resources are not being discussed, omb's participation is optional. this ignores both omb's role in all downstream execution -- you can tell, this person is, no, omb is everything. everything goes through omb,

right? this is a very fancy way of saying, no, no, no, no, everything goes through omb. and, like, this would be pretty boring stuff if it weren't for the fact that we're about to vote on an omb nominee who helped to write this document, who last week was overseeing a federal funding freeze, an illegal one that was already overturned by the courts, and the white house press secretary was asked about -- i forgot what programs were necessary or popular or sympathetic. and the the white house press secretary said, go talk to russ vought. and here's the problem -- two things. at the time russ vought was not even in the government. he is not a government employee. so you have to appeal to the friend of the king for mercy. now, i know you passed a law. but go back to russ vought.

i know that the federal law establishes that usaid exists and that it gets roughly $29 billion to distribute across the world for military financing, economic assistance, development assistance, humanitarian aid. i know there is a law that says that but go talk to russ vought. and so this document, like, tells us what they were up to. and so i don't really i understand -- i understand that we lost the argument last year. we did. we lost the argument. you didn't vote for us. fair enough. free and fair election. i want to be very clear. i am very confident in that vote count. i don't like it, but i'm very confident in that vote count, and i was -- i don't want to say happy, a but i was determined to ratify the electoral count. we lost the argument about project 2025. it kind of broke through by

people didn't think it was the main thing. but it is the main thing now. because as the old saying goes, you campaign in poetry, and you govern in prose. another way to say it is, project 2025? i don't know anything about that. oh, it turns out two-thirds of all of our nominees are, like, very close -- not like adjacent to project 2025 but, like, authors of it. right? wrote whole sections of it. right? the white house press secretary, like, did training videos for project 2025. and i don't, like -- i don't dislike these people personally. i've never met any of these people. but i want everybody to understand what this project is. this isn't, like, some ran dough pdf that got uploaded to the internet and everybody ignored it. this is literally the playbook that they are following and so i

just would encourage staff, the public, members, the media to, like, open it back up and see how much it tracks, because if you want to know what the trump administration is doing, and if you want to know what they're about to do next, just open up project 2025. they are in the process of implementing this. the director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the president's mind. the freaking -- ex-queues me language. it is the king's hand, right? the best, most comprehensive approximation of the president's mind. like, that seems like a cool job. as it pertains to the policy agenda while always being ready with actual options to effect that agenda with an existing

legal authority and resources. well maybe. this role cannot be performed adequately if the director acts instead as the ambassador of institutional interests of omb and the wider bureaucracy. once its reputation as the keeper of the commanders' intent is established, then and only then does o movement b have the ability to shape the most efficient way to pursue its object at this moment externally, the director must ensure that omb has sufficient visibility into the deep calf earns of agency decision-making. rem he'll sure. that's great. one indispensable statutory tool that end is to ensure that efficientlies, program associate directors. in the 1870 congress passed the an act to prevent the common agency paragraph spend down all appropriated funding including artificial funding shortfalls that congress would have to fill. the law mandated that all

funding be allotted or apportioned in installments. this process whereby agencies come to omb for allotments of funding is essential for effective financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars. omb can then direct on behalf of a president the amount, duration, and purpose of any apportioned funding to ensure against waste, fraud, and abuse to ensure consistency with the president's agenda and applicable laws. the vast majority of these apportionments were signed by career officials -- heaven forbid -- career officials, oh, my god! the deputy associate directors until the trump administration placed this responsibility within the hand of the pads and vistas that's scaped the attention of officials. the biden administration reversed this decision. no director should be chosen who is unwilling to restore the apportionment, decision-making to the pads. personal review, who is not aggressive and wielding a tool

on behalf of the president's agenda or is unabling to endefend the power against attacks from congress. it should be noted that each of omb's primary functions belong with other executive and statutory roles as carried out with the help of many essential omb supporting offices. the two most important offices for moving omb at the will of the director of the budget review division and the office of the general council. the director should have a direct and effective relationship with the head of brd and transmit most instructions through the office because the rest of the agency is it be -- it will translate it from policy officials to career staff and it is vital that the director ensure that transition is an accurate one. enacting the president's jaejd hinges on -- agenda hinges on director authorities, there must be a general counsel who is

respective yet creative and to challenge legal precedents to challenge status quo. this is policy options for the president's review but also with respect to the agencies that attempt to protect their own institutional interests and foreclose certain avenues based on the mere assertion and not proof that the law disallows it or this or that, disregards the clear statutory commands of congress. in general, the director should empower a strong deputy director with authority over the deputy for management, the pads and the office of information and regulatory affairs or ira to work diligently to break down barriers with omb and not allow turf disputes to undermine the budget. omb should work on behalf of the president and represent that view during various policymaking processes. now it's a budget.

the united states faces an untenable fiscal situation and owes $31 trillion on a debt that is increasing. the omb director should present a fiscal goal to the president earl really in the budgeted development process to address the federal government's fiscal irresponsibility. this goal would help to align the months-long process of actually proposals for inclusion in the budget. some mistakingly regard it as a paper-pushing exercise, it is a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing policies at the federal agencies. this includes six resource budget management offices and so on. let me start here on the question of debt and deficits. so there's a big fight that's about to happen and it's sort of playing out in the united states house of representatives among republicans only. the republicans want to pass a

big tax cut and they want to do it like dhe the last tax cut -- like they did the last tax cut, which is to shovel a bunch of money to the wealthiest corporations on the planet. i -- i still remember the chamber of commerce wanted, i might get the numbers wrong, they were pushing for a 24% top tax rate and this congress gave it lower than the chamber of commerce wanted. they are going to shovel money to the wealthiest corporations that walk the planet. when we got power, we had corporations pay at least 15%. it generated a bunch of money and we were able to use that for beneficial things. and so the problem now is that you've got some legitimate deficit hawks, some legitimate fiscal conservatives who like tax cuts but understand that

reducing the amount of money coming into the government and this magical thinking that tax cuts weirdly generate more money for the government. but you've got a bunch of people who want to deliver a tax cut and paper over the fact that they're blowing over the deficit. but the last -- i forgot what it's called, tcmj, the trump tax cuts, multitrillion-dollar increases in the deficit. what they're about to do is one of two things. they might do like just goofy accounting and say that continuing this tax cuts are basically free. now, there are a bunch of republicans in the house who are saying no way, no how, we're not doing that. the problem is if you're not doing that, and you're not raising revenue, then you've got a to cut and you've got to cut and you've got to cut. and let me tell you something, the usaid budget is not going to

do it. because it's ain't $29 billion they need to find, it's $1.5 trillion they need to find. and if you read the document that jodi arrington in the house was distributing it was medicare, medicaid, the affordable care act, clean energy tax credits and the like. by the way, you need to do most of those things in order to find $1.5 trillion in savings. and so you'll forgive me if i'm somewhat skeptical of these people's commitment to fiscal discipline because every time they're in charge, they blow up the deficits and they blow them up -- look, we some spending, i'm notingif to deny that. the budget act was neutral. my own view is that what anyone

thinks of debt and deficits when it is a global pandemic and you're trying to prevent people from not being able to pay their mortgage or rent or groceryies. we had the ability to keep people afloat so we did it. and the truth is that although we experienced inflation, subsequent to coming out of covid, we did better than almost any other big economy frankly because we didn't underdo it. you could say we overshot it. i don't think that. some people think we were smart, we overshot it. but we thought we're not going toer on the side -- err on the side of austerity and i think that has born fraught. we had a -- fruit. we had a stable economy for a while, but it is it also true

that groceries remained high. but when these guys got in charge, they are concerned about.6% of the entire federal budget, usaid. and they are going to pass massive tax cuts that are going to either blow up the budget or they're going to find a, quote-unquote, pay-for. what does a pay-for mean? it is just basicly -- basically i'm taking away money on this side and putting it away on the other side. you cut spending on one side and the other is you raise revenue. they're not going to raise taxes so they're only looking at cuts. the problem is there's not enough on the domestic discretionary side to find $1.5 trillion of savings. they couldn't pass it themselves. this is why they could never pass an appropriations bill, they can talk about it, but when

it comes to cutting transportation, they don't want to do it, right? but what is the cataclysm that is it coming is either a massive budget-busting tax cut for people who never needed it in the first place or they're really going to cut medicare and medicaid, social security, the affordable care act. like that's the plan. and i quote, some mistakingly regard it as a paper pushing exercise, the president's budget is powerful mechanism. because rmo's are institutionally ingrained in all policymaking they play a critical role in helping the director to help implement the president's policy agenda. because each rmo is formulating a wide -- it is often left to the career froeshls, like i want you to understand many decisions

are left to the career professionals. and this is like -- it's not the whole thing, but this is a big part of what we're arguing about, right? are you okay with career professionals making decisions? i am. that sounds good to me. give you a choice, forget political party. do you want political appointees or career professionals making decisions? like, i want the career professionals. it's not to say that a new president doesn't get to drive policy, but like region nine of the federal highway administration and they're trying to figure out like i don't know the stability of the honalae bridge, i don't want political appointees determining

that stuff, i want experts, i want career professionals. and that is it like a really foundational difference between the parties right now. is that they believe expertise is being weaponized against them. they believe that by virtue of being elected you should have mow new york kal -- monarcacal power, they believe that peopling in the federal government are, i don't know, woke or something, but i met thousands and thousands and thousands of federal employees at the shipyard, at the air force base in japan, in manila at the embassy, in jordan at a refugee camp, in honolulu at the harbor, these are some of the

best people i've ever met. i'm not kidding like that is not like some political statement. they're just awesome. they care. most of them could go make money someplace else. most of them don't need this crap. most of them have dedicated their lives to their country, and they just got an e-mail saying, fork in the road. and so i have one simple message to federal workers, don't give up. the law is on your side. they are trying to harass you into leaving your position. this is it a hostile takeover of the federal government. and i say those words advicely. i promise you i didn't want to land here in the second week of the trump administration, i

talked to my staff about this, i said, this guy's a lame duck, he survived a shooting, he won the popular vote in the electoral college. sometimes people age out of their worst behavior. i'm not being sarcastic here. i had a little sliver in my head that i want to at least see that every hash tag resistance thing was not going to come to fruition and here we are in the second week and it is unlawful as hell. and i quote, it is vital that the dictator and its political staff, not the careerests, drive these offices in pursuit of the president's actually priorities

not set the agenda on the wishes of sprawling good government management community in and outside government -- good government people, damn them, many directors do not propertierly manage the portfolio, such neglect creates the purposeless bureaucracy agenda, an m train to nowhere. this office leads the investment of new policies concerning federal contracting and procurement. through the federal acquisition of -- regulatory council, ofpb sets a ■widerange ofpolicies for all of those who contract with the executive branch. in the past those government-wide contracting rules played a key role in implementing the president's policy agenda. this office should be engaged early and often in omb's effort to drive policy including transparency about entities that are awarded government kftsz to

push back against woke policies in corporate america. you can see how it like sort of sounds line and then suddenly they're like, whoa, push back against policies in corporate america. i don't know how the office of management and budget is supposed to -- what do you care if coca-cola is pro-queer or something, or pepsi or whatever. like, who cares. nbc universal wants climate action. is that important for the federal government to have one opinion or the other about? and is it proper for the office of management and budget in the executive office of the president to use the fiscal authority of the united states of america and -- remember this guy has this theory that he's the king's hand. he represents what the president thinks in all manners.

right? and i remember i've been a lieutenant governor, and i remember my governor, a very good friend of mine still, used to say, not for everything, by the way, but only on specific things, we'd be in a meeting he says, he has all my authority on this. it was very generous of him. he delegated that to the lieutenant governor and i could represent hem. what this guy is saying, this omb director represents the president of the united states in all matters. and will use it to the push back on woke powers. that is not a proper use of presidential power or a proper view of presidential power. the omb director does not represent the president in all things. that's preposterous. the guy writing this was going i'm going to be omb director, i might as well represent to the world i'm all powerful.

but also what the hell has that got to do with anything? you see these guys have a very specific view of the world, and it's not just like i think the government should work this way or that way. they view this was a real war, and that's what to me is so kind of jarring, because as i talk to republican colleagues, some of them probably see me as the enemy, but most of them don't. most think i've got bad ideas, like i think they've got bad ideas. but these people have a very different view of the american system of government and what's happening societally. it's dressed up with a lot of overeducated white-shoe law enforcement language -- white-shoe law firm language. but they really view the left as like an enemy. not as fellow americans with bad

id ideas, but the enemy. and they're going to utilize the power of the federal government to go after whatever they think is woke, right? we saw it it last week. we saw it last week, and it was so damn sad. the hardest thing to do and the easiest thing to do, in a certain sense, is when you're a public leader and something tragic happens. hardest thing to do is to summon the strength to be kind and inspirational and convey your sense of sorrow without looking so broken up that you don't lift people up, right? that's kind of hard. it's also the easiest thing to do, because all you have to do is be gracious. all you have to do is care about people. and the president of the united states is asked are you going to visit the crash site? he goes, what, you want me to go

swimming? oh, do you want me to go swimming? to blame a really horrific plane crash, i was right here on the senate floor, giving remarks, when i started to learn what happened, and the republican cloakroom, the nonpartisan staff, everybody was just totally wrecked. and the president of the united states blamed wokeness or dei diversity. i want everybody to understand what's going on here. they dress it up a bit, but they think that's the problem. they think that's the problem. they think there are a bunch of people walking around like me, going woke, woke, woke, woke. i just want things to work well. i just want people to have opportunities. i want when a disaster hits for a community to be as prepared as

possible. i want when a disaster hits for fema to be on the scene. i want our roads and highways to work properly. i want a strong defense. i want, to the extent china is engaging in the belt and road initiative and everybody in the united states senate talks about, wow, china is so smart, they have this belt and road initiative, they're doing all this economic partnerships and they're winning friends all over the world, we should do something like that. we are doing something like that! it's called the united states agency for development. it's usaid and we have it. maybe you think it's not working well. fine, let's work on it. but we're marvelling at this thing that we already invented, that we already have, that we already do. so i just want us all to take a breath and understand that this is either in the mainstream or it's not.

this is either what we're doing or it's not. and we have a vote coming up on wednesday and probably thursday on mr. russ vought, and i've never met him, i don't think i've ever met him. i knew his deputy. i actually got along with his deputy. he's clearly smart. he clearly has a point of view. but i mean, he's the project 2025 guy. and that's no longer in dispute. my main point tonight is for everybody to get it through their heads -- we are no longer arguing about whether they're doing project 2025. they're doing it. they're doing it. they're implementing it. they have the playbook. everything you've seen in the last two weeks is what they told us they were going to do.

and this is not just to establish an i told you so. ity very unsatisfying -- it's very unsatisfying in politics to do i told you so. nobody likes it. nobody likes it. it is to ask the public, is this what you thought you were getting? maybe you thought you were getting a disru79er. maybe i -- a disrupter. maybe you just wanted to poke the democratic party in the eye because you were pissed off about, i don't know what, the price of something, gaza or whatever -- look, people vote for you or against you for their own reasons, not yours. i respect the voters for laekting this man. i -- for electing this man. i don't think the voters, even the ones who elected this man, had any idea this would be implemented and so aggressively and unlawfully. you've got places all around the country that codified a woman's right to choose and voted for donald trump. you got places in this country

that legalized medical cannabis or cannabis generally, then voted for donald trump. you've got places that voted to increase the minimum wage and voted for donald trump. so people voted for donald trump not because of these policies. they voted for donald trump because they didn't think he was going to do it. honestly. i know people -- look, in the first trump round i didn't have very many buddies that voted for trump. this last round i had a few. i didn't even ask because it would have been a little bit of a strain on our fantasy football relationships and text strings and all the rest of it. but i can tell. it's because they didn't think he was going to do any of these things. i just want everybody to understand, he's doing them all. and he's doing them rapidly. and he's doing at least some of them illegally. so we're going to have more to say about this over the next

couple of days, but i just want everybody to understand this is is marker. this is what they're doing. they're implementing project 2025, and mr. russ vought is the head of this thing. and according to the document itself, according to the document itself, he views this job, which, let's be honest, nobody knows who the omb director is, right? nobody even knows what omb is. but that's why this thing is so important, is that this guy has decided this is the document that is governing how the trump administration is going forward, and this guy has a very specific view of this job, which is everything goes through omb. it is the consolidating place for presidential power. he represents the power in all things. and so we are getting very, very

close to this person being able to realize every single aspect of project 2025. some of it, by the way, what they're doing with usaid, is even worse than the document. they actually call for reform of usaid in thisdom. what they're doing is actually eliminating the department, and i'll yield to the -- mr. schumer: i'm just going to ask the gentleman to yield for a question. well, we've seen just this shadow government sort of trying to change america inside out, run the show, and as you said put power in one man, not with the usual checks and balances that we've known for america and has existed through democratic and republican administrations. and my first question is has the gentleman from rhode island seen anything like what they did with a.i.d. in terms of totally

eliminating it, being cruel to the people who work there, not understanding the security implications to the country, and just coming in and shutting down the whole place? has he ever seen anything like that in all the years that we've had american history even? mr. schatz: no. and i think. democratic leader for his leadership on this. i think the idea of getting rid of usaid is a radical one and a wrong one, but that's actually not what we're arguing about. they stormed into the offices and purged the staff and took offense the servers, and we do think entered the scifs. this is the kind of thing that if you read about it in the newspaper would sound like it was in a country that was falling apart. mr. schumer: would the gentleman yield? mr. schatz: yes. mr. schumer: it's similar. we see it repeated in place after place after place. when doge came in, into the

treasury department, and said they're going to control all of the funding and who is getting paid what, social security payments and medicare payments and so much else that goes out, again, isn't this unparalleled in what we've seen? mr. schatz: it truly is. i thank the leader. it is absolutely unparalleled, and the idea that someone from doge, we don't really know who it is, basically barged in, had a very contentious negotiation with the treasury secretary, and now they have access to the federal payments database. they have no expertise. there are only five people in the federal government that have this kind of access, and somebody was just granted it -- mr. schumer: they've gotten chosen without any checks or balances, without ever coming before the senate, without anything else, and they have huge power, and people's privacy is at risk. but also we don't even know if they've made protections so that china, russia, or some other country could look at all this

information and use it, and then the next step could well be even worse. they could just decide i'll cut this, i'll cut that, i'll cut this, we're finding something wrong with it and come right in. this is just outrageous. to boot, we used to have some check called the i.g., inspector general, who would be in a department, say, you're doing something wrong, you shouldn't do it. isn't it true they've eliminated this i.g., so this is virtually unchecked power by a small group of people, no one knows who they are, what they believe in or are doing, they could hurt average working people. this isn't something up in government of two parties fighting. this could hurt average american families who get social security, who get medicaid, who are veterans, in issue after issue after issue where the federal government is involved. you could find just decimation. mr. schatz: it's true. the firing of the i.g.'s was not

just a random i don't like those guys kind of firing. it is a precursor to corruption. they literally got rid of the watchdogs, then they stormed the building. i want everybody to understand that. the leader is exactly right. it's omb and it's i.g., so a lot of people in the public are like i can't sort out of this. they got rid of the watchdogs, then stormed the building and took control of the servers and the data. mr. schumer: a group that gets veterans health care, all of a sudden, they said the money's not being spent right, we're cutting it off. you almost have no recourse, unless we get rid of this. as i may have mentioned to my friend from hawaii, the leader in the house, hakeem jeffries, and i will be introducing legislation to undo this. we're going to fight like the devil to get this done, because this is just a crisis, from one end of america to the other. it's this shadow government of people, we don't know who they

are, what they believe in, they've stormed in. it is outrageous and dangerous. would the gentleman agree with those two assessments? mr. schatz: absolutely. i think that's one of the things that everyone has to wrap their mind around, is you might have voted for donald trump for whatever set of reasons, but i don't think you signed up -- it's not just billionaires are influencing the government. that would be one thing, but it wouldn't be that unusual. billionaires are in charge of the mechanics of the government. that's different. that's very scary stuff. mr. schumer: we don't know if these billionaires have any understanding of how a feeding program works, how medicaid works, how a veterans program works or fund the police or firefighters. with an idea, we want to slash, which was in doge, i think in project 2025, $2 trillion, we don't care how, where or when, who it hurts, we just want to do it, because very wealthy people don't want to pay taxes, they

just want to cut spending. but the spending is not just wasteful spending. it's things that help american families day in, day out. one of the other proposals, i love this one, get rid of -- privatize fannie and freddie. they're the people that give lower mortgage, because there's a government dpguarantee, there a lower mortgage rate. so many young families that want to buy a home, they can't, because it's expensive. this will make it even more expensive. issue after issue in project 2025, then look at the power these five unknown people will have over the entire budget, many of them trying to implement 2025. many of them trying to implement 2025, and this is the way they do t it is frightening. shatt-al-arab before the d.l. mr. schatz: before the federal freeze was deemed unlawful and suspended, people couldn't get

their v.a. home loans. we've all had that moment, okay, it's closing day and the v. home loan office was not available for you to execute on your loan to get your house. mr. schumer: the medicaid portal was shut down. people who desperately needed medicaid were told go home. now they've put it back up but no knows when they'll shut it down again. mr. schatz: our job over the next couple of days -- and the leader has been very strong on this -- has been to point out that, look, i've never seen a floor fight over the omb director. and there is a reason for that. that's usually some nonpartisan job and they might have -- they're important. we want them to be good at it. but this guy views omb as a consolidated locust of power on behalf of the president to fight woke or whatever. mr. schumer: use it as a bludgeon, as a consolidated

bludgeon where he can just cut, cut, cut, hurt people in any -- in so many different ways. you can't even count them. and i am so glad that we had it -- we had -- the democrats, every democrat who was here tonight voted against vought. but every republican voted for him. and people have to realize that their voting for the guy who said what he would do in project 2025, hurt all of your constituents if you're in a red state, blue state, purple state, and they're going along with it, going along with it. it is amazing. so i really thank my colleague for all the good work and the kind of talk he's given here. i wanted to come out and learned some support, say right on and we're going to keep fighting. mr. schatz: we're not done, but i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until

lawmakers first what is advanced t nominee of rust vote to be white house budt director confirm christopher right to be energy sretary. senators voted to advance the nomination of pam bondi to be attorney general. tomorrow the senate will continue to beat on her nomination. live senate coverage here on cspan2. ♪ c-span's "washington journal" life form involving you to discuss alleged issues and in government, politics and public policy. from washington d.c. to across the country. coming up tuesday morning center for immigration study executive director will talk about the trump administrations deportation action and broader immigration policy. greg corti bloomberg news will talk about elon musk role in recent actions with the department of government efficiency. texas democratic congresswoman democratic freshman class at present will talk about her

legislative priorities and democrats to the trump administration and the republican congress. "washington journal" during the conversation light at 7:00 a.m. eastern tuesday morning on c-span, c-span or online at cspan2.org. >> c-span, and democracy unfiltered. we are funded by these television companies and more including wow. >> the world has changed today the vast rival internet connection something no one can live without. wow is there for our customers and value and choice. now more than ever it starts with great internet. wow. >> while support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. next a discussion about the state of p