| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
The House is in recess, but will be back later today. | |
| Members are working on a bill that would allow Congress to expedite the disapproval of multiple regulations issued during the final year of a president's term in office. | ||
| Off-the-floor House Republicans are aiming to mark up their budget resolution before the end of the week. | ||
| Follow live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Today, the newly created House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency is holding its first hearing with testimony from a former FBI agent and others. | ||
| The subcommittee is chaired by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| Watch the hearing live on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Stream it live on the free C-SPAN Now video app or watch online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
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| We'll take you live now to the Senate Budget Committee, where members are considering the fiscal year 2025 budget resolution. | ||
| The Republican proposal aims to increase funding for border security, the military, and U.S. energy production. | ||
| We join it here on C-SPAN in progress. | ||
| Point two. | ||
| I don't know how many foreign nationals came into our country illegally under President Biden. | ||
| 8 million, 10 million, 12 million. | ||
| I do know that it was a lot. | ||
| And using the most conservative efforts, we probably added about four Nebraskas to the United States. | ||
| We don't have the slightest idea who they are. | ||
| We know some of them are children. | ||
| We don't have the slightest idea where they are. | ||
| I believe it was intentional. | ||
| I don't know why President Biden and his team decided to do it, but only one of two circumstances are possible. | ||
| Either it was intentional or the people in charge you wouldn't hire to manage a Costco, a Costco food court. | ||
| And I don't think it was the latter. | ||
| I think an intentional decision was made. | ||
| I don't hate President Biden. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I don't hate anybody. | ||
| I hope he finds peace in retirement. | ||
| But the fact is, we have an extra 12 million people who are in our country illegally. | ||
| Most Americans don't support illegal immigration. | ||
| They think illegal immigration is illegal. | ||
| Duh. | ||
| It's not because they're racist. | ||
| They look at the southern border like they look at the front door at their home, of their home. | ||
| Most Americans lock their front door at night. | ||
| They don't do that because they hate everybody on the outside. | ||
| They lock their front door at night because they love the people on the inside. | ||
| And they want to know who's going in and out of their home. | ||
| We've got to fix the problem of illegal immigration, and we have to have money to do it. | ||
| Point three, defense. | ||
| I am convinced, based on the classified and unclassified information that I've seen, that President Xi in China is working with President Putin in Russia and is working with the Ayatollah in Iran against the United States of America and Western values, including but not limited to freedom. | ||
| I believe their ultimate goal is to have Russia dominate Central and Eastern Europe. | ||
| I believe their ultimate goal is to have Iran dominate the Middle East. | ||
| And President Xi's ultimate goal, he's the quarterback of this ball club, is to dominate the Indo-Pacific, be free to roam at will in sub-Saharan Africa and South America. | ||
| Now, I don't want America to be the world's policeman, but I don't want President Xi or President Putin or the Ayatollah in Iran to be the world's policeman either. | ||
| And the world I just described, if I am correct, the objectives of our enemies, if I am correct, is not a world that will be safe for America. | ||
| Weakness invites the wolves. | ||
| We have to spend more money on defense. | ||
| Final point. | ||
| Having said all of that, it's being proposed that we spend $300 billion for a good cause in my judgment, but $300 billion. | ||
| There's been a lot of rhetoric, I don't mean that in a pejorative way, about we're going to pay for this. | ||
| We need to pay for this. | ||
| That's just as important as the immigration money and the defense money. | ||
| We need to have real pay force. | ||
| We cannot sustain our spending. | ||
| I understand a lot of it is for a good cause, but if we're honest with ourselves, nobody around this place ever stands up and says, I've got a bad idea and I need money for it. | ||
| It's always a good cause. | ||
| But this kind of spending is going to destroy America. | ||
| It won't be a fiscal cliff. | ||
| It won't be. | ||
| One day we won't be fine and the next day falling off. | ||
| That's not how this works. | ||
| This kind of spending destroys you like termites. | ||
| If you get termites, your house doesn't fall on a Tuesday, your house doesn't fall apart on a Wednesday, but those termites eat away and they eat away and they eat away. | ||
| You know what I'm saying. | ||
| I hope we do this right. | ||
| I'd like to see us do it together. | ||
| I don't live in Long Island. | ||
| I know that's unlikely, but I'm going to try to be here as much as I can and listen to my colleagues' ideas. | ||
| And I think they're smart people and I would invite them to make their suggestions. | ||
| I, for one, will take them seriously. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Senator Van Holland. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman and colleagues. | ||
| It was just a few weeks ago, I think, that in the regular Senate Budget Committee room, we had a hearing for Russ's vote, his nomination to be the head of OMB. | ||
| At that time, Senator Murray and I both asked him a direct question, whether he would commit to complying with the law, including the Empowerment Control Act. | ||
| And he refused to say yes. | ||
| And now he's over at OMB, and we see a whole lot of illegal actions going on, which is why our courts are now filled with various actions and complaints, and judges are issuing TROs. | ||
| It would be helpful if our colleagues would help those lawyers defend Article 1 because they're shredding Article 1. | ||
| And I think it's also important to remember exactly who Russell Vogt is, because he is the architect of Project 2020, 2025. | ||
| What is Project 2025? | ||
| It's the plan, the blueprint, that candidate Trump, when asked about it, said, I don't know anything about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know who those people are. | |
| And yet he went about installing Russell Vogt in the command and control center for the budget of the United States. | ||
| And what they're doing now is implementing Project 2025. | ||
| And the reason Candidate Trump didn't want to talk about it is because he knew how unpopular it was. | ||
| That's why he ran away from it on the campaign trail. | ||
| And yet they now have Elon Musk doing a lot of their dirty work. | ||
| He's not trying to save money. | ||
| This isn't about government efficiency, right? | ||
| You don't, if you care about government efficiency, you don't start by firing all the inspector generals whose job it is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| In fact, by doing that, you clear the way for more potential corruption. | ||
| And that is what they're talking about in terms of this so-called Schedule F. | ||
| They want to get rid of 50 to 60,000 merit-based federal employees and replace them with political stooges. | ||
| That just invites more waste and corruption. | ||
| But I think we should take a good look at Project 2025, because I know that the subject of this resolution purports to be focused only on immigration and defense. | ||
| But if you read the fine print, it opens the door for many of the unpopular proposals in Project 2025, like going after Medicaid, which helps working families, which helps seniors, which helps kids with disabilities, like going after the children's health program, like going after food and nutrition programs for our kids. | ||
| That's all part of Project 2025 that Candidate Trump said he knew nothing about, but installed Russ Vogt to be the command center guy at OMB. | ||
| And if you look at this resolution, they actually begin to pave the way for those cuts, just as they pave the way for big tax cuts to disproportionately go to the very wealthy and the biggest corporations, because the resolution notes a $3.7 trillion cut to revenue over 10 years. | ||
| Now, I support continuing the tax breaks that go to people under 400,000. | ||
| I support it for the middle class, but the great bulk of those tax cuts are going to very wealthy people and big corporations. | ||
| So that's laid out here. | ||
| The resolution also has a spending decrease of $11.5 trillion over 10 years, including about a trillion cuts this year. | ||
| So it doesn't say where the $11.5 trillion are coming from. | ||
| I don't know if Elon Musk is trying to dismantle big parts of the federal government to make way for those big tax cuts for very wealthy people. | ||
| We've seen their actions already at a number of federal agencies. | ||
| But let me tell you this: if you fired every single civilian federal employee, including the 60% of them who work at DOD, the VA, and the Department of Homeland Security, you'd save $271 billion. | ||
| That's not a lot of money, but that would shut down Social Security, would shut down Medicare. | ||
| And you're talking about a trillion. | ||
| So this year. | ||
| So I am going to be really interested to see where our colleagues are going to come up with that. | ||
| And I suspect Project 2025 is going to be the blueprint. | ||
| Yes, that blueprint that Trump said he knew nothing about. | ||
| Cuts, as I said, to the Affordable Care Act, to Medicaid, to nutrition programs. | ||
| And I will also point out that those who say they want to reduce the deficit in debt, as I have, having another tax break for very wealthy people adds to the deficit in debt. | ||
| And this bill actually includes a little escape hatch. | ||
| I just heard Senator Kennedy talk about it wanting to be real cuts. | ||
| Well, if that's true, why is there a provision in here that says there's a Senate point there? | ||
| Because there's a Senate point of order right now that prevents us from increasing the deficit by more than $10 billion in any fiscal year in the budget window without being fully offset. | ||
| But this resolution includes language that turns off that point of order. | ||
| So if Senator Kennedy or I want to get up and say this actually, your plan is going to increase the deficit. | ||
| This resolution turns off that point of order on the Senate floor. | ||
| So I'm going to be very interested to see what happens here because what it is is a big open door for tax cuts for the very wealthy, for the people who are actually sitting behind Donald Trump when he gave that inaugural address, when he talked about the golden age with Elon Musk and the tech titans behind him. | ||
| Those aren't the forgotten people that he talked about on the campaign trail, but that's who he wants to deliver tax cuts for. | ||
| So I'm looking forward to the debate, Mr. Chairman, because we have a president who said he was going to help bring down prices. | ||
| Eggs are going through the roof. | ||
| Waffle House just added a 50-cent surcharge for eggs. | ||
| And yet he's talking about undermining these very important programs for the American people while giving a big tax break to the super wealthy. | ||
| I look forward to our discussion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Senator Ricketts. | |
| Thank you, Chairman Graham, and thank you, Ranking Member Berkeley, for holding today's markup. | ||
| Chairman Graham, thank you for your leadership in getting this budget resolution done quickly. | ||
| I'm glad that we're acting fast to reverse the bad policies of the last administration. | ||
| The last four years of the Biden administration failed the American people. | ||
| Under President Biden's watch, millions of legal aliens flooded across our border. | ||
| President Biden's open border policies created a national security, humanitarian, and drug catastrophe at our southern border. | ||
| Even worse, it made the Biden border crisis made Nebraska a border state. | ||
| Let's do some of the numbers the last four years. | ||
| We had 10.5 million border encounters since Biden took office. | ||
| In 2023, Border Patrol agents encountered 169 people on the FBI's terrorist watch list and another 103 in 2024. | ||
| Under the first Trump administration, in 2019, that number was zero and off in the single digits. | ||
| On a single day in December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 12,600 people trying to enter the country illegally. | ||
| It's had an all-time single-day record for the number of people trying to break into our country. | ||
| In 2019, the former administration Secretary of Obama administration Secretary of Homeland Security Jay Johnson said a thousand crossings a day would be a crisis. | ||
| 12,600 is a catastrophe. | ||
| But crossings weren't the only cost. | ||
| Record amounts of deadly drugs also came across Biden's open borders into the hands of our children and loved ones, loved ones. | ||
| We experienced this in Nebraska. | ||
| Taron Lee Griffith was a young mom of two who took a pill that she thought was Percocet, but it was laced with fentanyl. | ||
| And she died from it. | ||
| Sadly, that has occurred all across our country. | ||
| In 2019, when I was governor in Nebraska, law enforcement took 46 pills off of our streets, 46 pills, just 46, 2019. | ||
| Then Joe Biden came into office as president, and just six, the first six months of his administration in 2021, Nebraska law enforcement took 151,000 pills, 151,000, from 46 to 151,000 in just six months of Joe Biden's administration. | ||
| We see this annually across the country, where the leading cause of death of young Americans age 18 to 45 is fentanyl. | ||
| 100,000 people a year, 70,000 from fentanyl, are dying. | ||
| If any country had attacked us and killed 100,000 of our citizens, we'd be up in arms. | ||
| We'd be declaring war. | ||
| And while Americans continue to die, the cartels and Chinese drug manufacturers continue to smuggle the precursors of fentanyl across our borders. | ||
| While I was governor, after Biden became president, law enforcement started confiscating twice as much methamphetamine, three times as much fentanyl, and 10 times as much cocaine because of our open borders policies and the southern border being wide open. | ||
| The cartels took advantage of it. | ||
| You see, that point I'm trying to illustrate, Chairman Graham, the border is not a crisis. | ||
| It's a catastrophe. | ||
| President Trump ran on securing the border. | ||
| The American people voted for Trump to secure our borders. | ||
| President Trump promised basic security. | ||
| He knows better than anyone how to get border crossings down. | ||
| During his first administration, he brought those down to a 40-year low. | ||
| And that's why we're here today. | ||
| We're here to support our Border Patrol agents, fund the border wall, complete that wall, and improve CBP port facilities. | ||
| We'll also support our immigration and customs enforcement officers in the process, too. | ||
| They are dealing with unprecedented circumstances. | ||
| As you mentioned in your opening remarks, there are 300,000 missing children who have crossed the southern border under the Biden administration, that the Biden administration has no idea where they are. | ||
| Additionally, we have 1.4 million illegal immigrants who came to this country asking for an asylum and have been refused and now are set to be deported. | ||
| All the more concerning of the 10.5 million crossings under the Biden administration, those who have committed crimes and were convicted, pending charge, convicted, and are pending charges, 350,000 of those. | ||
| Over 35,000 were for homicides and sexual assault. | ||
| We must secure the border for Americans like Lake and Riley, who was murdered by an illegal immigrant, Jose Ibarra, who came here again, claiming asylum. | ||
| We also must do it for Nebraskans like or people like Sarah Root, who was killed in Nebraska by an illegal alien drunk driver who was never held accountable. | ||
| We can secure the border without adding to the national debt, which has already been rising rapidly due to the reckless federal spending under the Biden administration. | ||
| This reconciliation package will be fully paid for. | ||
| I look forward to passing this budget resolution package quickly. | ||
| This is a very important first step in moving forward on the reconciliation bill so we can deliver results for the American people and the President's agenda. | ||
| So thank you very much, Chairman Graham, for holding this markup. | ||
| With that, I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Warner. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| This budget resolution and reconciliation bill that will spring from it has been billed as legislation that will secure the border, promote energy independence, and bolster military readiness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These are the three principles. | |
| I got to tell you, I can't imagine any on this side of the aisle that wouldn't be proud to support. | ||
| I just hope we'll get a chance to participate in that process. | ||
| For example, I want to secure the border. | ||
| That's why I supported the bipartisan Sinema-Lankford agreement to invest $20 billion to strengthen the security of the U.S.-Mexico border. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's why I pushed the last administration to prioritize additional resources to stop the flow of illicit drugs like fentanyl from coming through ports of entry. | |
| And as vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee, I know there are a number of threat actors that are seeking to exploit weakness in our security measures. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe we should do more to protect the homeland and bolster our military residents' readiness. | |
| We should invest more ships and submarines, of course, built in Hampton Roads, of course. | ||
| And we should do more to support service members and their families, both during their term, time in service, and afterwards. | ||
| And of course, a strong national defense is not only about who has the most tanks and guns, but who is making strategic investments and harnessing emerging technologies like AI. | ||
| And if this is about energy independence, we should use every tool at our disposal to lower the cost for working families, while also working to make sure the new energy sources are affordable, sustainable, and efficient. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For example, last year I started the Senate Advanced Nuclear Caucus with Senator Risch. | |
| We are focused on finding practical solutions to scale up both the volume and use of safe, clean nuclear energy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think particularly in SMRs. | |
| Although smart investments made under the last administration, we're seeing more of my home state of Virginia taking a leading role in offshore wind production and producing clean energy vehicles built right in the heart of Southwest Virginia in Dublin. | ||
| So if my Republican colleagues want to work in a bipartisan way to shore up our border, our defense, our energy policy, sign me up. | ||
| But what I won't do and what I can't support is a one-sided partisan effort that slashes the programs that helps working families. | ||
| Frankly, oftentimes to pay for tax cuts for those of us at the top. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I object to the idea that we should kick seniors and children off Medicaid for this. | |
| Around 80 million Americans are covered by Medicaid and CHIP. | ||
| Nearly half of them are kids. | ||
| I can't support a budget that takes a sledgehammer to health care for sick kids. | ||
| And it's downright irresponsible to slash our nation's most important anti-hunger program at a time when households are seeing increased prices for groceries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Under the Trump administration, the cost of a dozen eggs is now over $7. | |
| I heard those same eggs talked about a lot of times last year under the Biden prices. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now that we're up to $7 for a dozen eggs under the Trump administration, I would point out those same eggs were about $4 in October. | |
| Beef is more expensive. | ||
| Orange juice is more expensive. | ||
| Coffee is more expensive. | ||
| And that's before we bring on the tariff costs. | ||
| As a matter of fact, in the face of rising costs, we're talking about cutting benefits of about $6.20 per person per day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a short-shotted move that will lead to increased food insecurity, poverty, lower health education outcomes for working people. | |
| I also cannot believe during these challenging times, my colleagues would consider cutting vital education programs as well as we all think about schooling up for AI purposes. | ||
| I'm hearing that the majority wants to slash student loan programs, raising costs for our young people. | ||
| To my Republican friends who like me hear often from our constituents about the tremendous need for more American workers, matter of fact, by going after student aid, you're cannibalizing the workforce of the future. | ||
| If you're wondering, if you're a young person today watching this hearing, I'm not sure what would drive you to be doing that, and you're struggling to pay back a student loan, get on the phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Call a Republican senator now. | |
| If you're a parent who has plotted out that last student loan program, let me flash Senator Graham's number on the screen right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Call now before noon and get an extra Gen ZI knives to go along with that decreased student loan. | |
| If you're a teacher, a firefighter, a cop who's hoping that the promise of the public service loan forgiveness will come to you all, well, we're here to support it. | ||
| Some of our colleagues on the other side are not. | ||
| You know, there are responsible ways for paying for a package like this. | ||
| Those of us who were involved in the Simpson-Bowles Dodd-Sa-Frank effort, or the Simpson-Bowles effort around debt and deficit, we laid out very bold cuts that spread the pain. | ||
| I hope that we can go back and look at some of those ideas as well. | ||
| And at the meantime, make sure that we do not end up going into long-term investments that were created by the bipartisan infrastructure bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to have a lot more conversation about supporting our defense industrial base, securing the border. | |
| But frankly, Mr. Chairman, I think we can do better than what's been presented. | ||
| Thank you, and I yield back. | ||
| Well, the chair knows that Senator Warner has been involved in bipartisan efforts to make hard decisions for a long time. | ||
| It's much appreciated. | ||
| Unsuccessfully. | ||
| Well, let's just keep plugging. | ||
| We have a vote on. | ||
| Let's just keep going with opening statements. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So then we'll break for lunch and do amendments. | |
| Senator Scott. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, last November, the American people made their voices heard. | ||
| President Trump was elected with a very clear mandate to secure a border and keep Americans safe. | ||
| Under four years of the Biden administration, our border completely collapsed because of his radical policies and open border agenda. | ||
| America is a more dangerous place because President Biden allowed criminals, drugs, terrorists, and other dangerous people into our communities. | ||
| There are real consequences to Biden's failure to secure the border, and each victim has a name. | ||
| Real Americans have been killed, real Americans have been torn apart by vicious crimes and deadly drugs because of Biden's open border. | ||
| Over 10 million people illegally crossed into our country, while millions were allowed to stay and had the red carpet rolled out for them, courtesy of the American taxpayer, thanks to Joe Biden. | ||
| There have been sexual assaults and murders committed by illegal aliens all over the country. | ||
| Even in my home state of Florida, where a young man was killed, the man charged for his death is an illegal alien. | ||
| In 2023 alone, former Secretary of Mayorkas approved the transit of 320,000 inadmissible illegal aliens to 43 U.S. airports pre-approved by DHS through the CBP1 app. | ||
| Many of them go through Florida on commercial flights. | ||
| My colleagues, my Democrat colleagues, voted against deporting illegal aliens who hurt police, like the violent attack on uniformed police officers in New York, city by a group of illegal migrants. | ||
| Some with known gang affiliations who unlawfully entered the country under Biden's watch. | ||
| And Democrats voted against the Lake and Riley Act, which simply requires ICE to take illegal aliens who commit crimes into custody before tragedies strike. | ||
| I want to thank President Trump for signing the bill into law just days after taking office. | ||
| Democrats have also voted for open borders and against keeping our country and law enforcement officers safe. | ||
| Unfortunately, that's their record. | ||
| Millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter move into and remain in our country unlawfully. | ||
| There have also been 70,000 fentanyl deaths in the U.S. each year. | ||
| Violent crime was up 5% under the failed Biden administration because it had no regard for public safety or border security. | ||
| Here are Americans that were killed by illegal criminal aliens. | ||
| Justin Nongari, age 12, was killed by two illegal aliens from Venezuela who were charged with capital murder. | ||
| Her body was found in a creek in Houston. | ||
| Gloria Casio, age 53, died in a car accident when an illegal alien hit a minivan and pickup truck about 30 miles south of Portland, Maine. | ||
| Ruby Garcia, age 25, was killed during a carjacking attempt in Michigan by an illegal alien who was deported to Mexico in 2020, but entered the U.S. again without permission. | ||
| She was found dead on a road with a gunshot wound to the head. | ||
| Washington State Trooper Christopher Gadden was killed when an illegal alien crashed into his cruiser at more than 100 miles per hour. | ||
| He was the husband and father of a beautiful daughter. | ||
| Travis Wolfe was just 12 years old when an illegal alien from Venezuela crashed into the car carrying Travis and his parents. | ||
| Alex Wise, age 10, was walking home from school when he was hit and killed by an illegal alien who had been deported five times. | ||
| Elizabeth Medina, age 16, was reported stalked by an illegal alien who eventually killed her. | ||
| She said found by her mother in their apartment's bathtub. | ||
| Jeremy Pukasaris was just two years old when he and his mother were caught in the crossfire in an illegal alien in Maryland. | ||
| We all know Lake and Riley, the nursing student who was killed on the campus of the University of Georgia by an illegal alien from Venezuela while jogging. | ||
| Melissa Powell, age 47, the Ordinan Powell, age 16, were killed by an illegal alien from El Salvador, reportedly driving under the influence going about 100 miles an hour, who had been deported four times. | ||
| Aiden Clark, age 11, was killed when an illegal alien from Haiti struck a school bus full of children in Ohio. | ||
| Rachel Maureen, age 37, a mother of five, was attacked, raped, and killed by an illegal alien while she was exercising on a trail in Maryland. | ||
| All of these innocent Americans should be alive, but their lives were cut short because of Joe Biden's failures and refusal to enforce our laws. | ||
| Last July, data released by ICE showed that nearly 650,000 criminal illegal aliens were currently on ICE's known non-detained docket and roaming free in our country within the interior of the United States. | ||
| This figure includes roughly 15,000 illegal aliens convicted or charged with murder. | ||
| More than 20,000 illegal aliens convicted or charged with sexual assault, and more than 105,000 illegal aliens convicted or charged with assault. | ||
| Last year, NBC reported nearly 1.5 million immigrants in the United States and the United States have final orders of deportation, according to ICE. | ||
| By contrast, ICE deportations of criminal, illegal aliens plummeted. | ||
| Since February of 2021, ICE under the Biden administration has deported less than 115,000 illegal aliens. | ||
| Not to mention, since 2021, there are estimated to be 2 million known gotaways, evading Border Patrol agents. | ||
| President Trump's agenda is to fix the problem Biden created and Biden clearly created. | ||
| To save lives, the ones save the lives like the ones I mentioned that were lost, we have to deliver on that agenda. | ||
| Senator Padilla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chair. | |
| Before I begin, I just want to join with my colleagues on this side of the aisle in this committee that are troubled at how the second Trump administration has begun, clearly laying the groundwork to cut crucial programs that American families are relying on in order to fund yet another round of tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm glad we're here in the budget committee where we say the budget is a reflection of our values and our priorities. | |
| And I want to talk about priorities, not the president's priorities. | ||
| I want to talk about the American people's priorities. | ||
| I've heard over and over again that the outcome of last fall's election was a mandate and that the important takeaway from the election was Americans' frustrations with a high cost of living. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Up until, but this morning, I guess, that was the main message. | |
| That was the main takeaway. | ||
| Too many families, Republicans and Democrats, struggling to pay for groceries, to afford gas, struggling to pay the rent or the mortgage every month. | ||
| But for a nation that came out of last November trying to vote for lower prices, boy, are they in for a rude awakening. | ||
| President Trump has already moved to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, taxing everything, in effect, from utensils, the utensils used to cook your meals, to the aluminum foil you wrap your leftovers in, to the very car you use to go pick up your food and groceries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, even cars built in the United States have import parts. | |
| And it's not just a 25% tax on imported goods. | ||
| He's threatening our workforce too. | ||
| On the campaign trail, President Trump promised to only go after violent criminals as part of the largest deportation program in American history. | ||
| Yet sure enough, the first Sunday of the administration, less a week into office, NBC reported that nearly half of the 1,200 arrests made as part of immigration enforcement actions were people with no criminal record. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now look, we all agree that we should target all violent criminals. | |
| I hope I speak for all of us when you say we should target all violent criminals, whether they're immigrants or non-immigrants, violent criminals or violent criminals. | ||
| And Senator Scott, others of my Republican colleagues who have showcased some of the victims of crime in your respective states, my heart goes out to you, to the victims, to their families. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But here's an inconvenient truth for many. | ||
| And that's the fact that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are also critical to the success of our economy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because the percentage of immigrants documented and undocumented who are violent criminals is a very, very small percentage. | |
| A big percentage are, for example, undocumented workers who make up nearly 14% of construction workers or about 42% of our agricultural workforce. | ||
| And so often over the last several years, I've heard from Republican colleagues and Democratic colleagues alike expressing frustration about the workforce shortage that we hear from employers in our states. | ||
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unidentified
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That is a real issue. | |
| But if President Trump gets his way with the mass deportations that are not focused just on violent criminals, here's what American families can expect. | ||
| Get ready also for more expensive fruit, more expensive vegetables, and that's if grocery stores can successfully keep up with stocking the shelves. | ||
| If you've been saving up for years to buy a home, get ready to pay more and wait longer. | ||
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unidentified
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Why? | |
| Because construction will slow down and prices will go up. | ||
| And on energy prices, we're hearing a lot about the need for American energy independence or even dominance is part of the lingo. | ||
| But the president's executive orders and the budget resolution in front of us today would actually undo historic investments that we've made to diversify the energy sector. | ||
| Because unlike fossil fuels, whose prices are dependent on global markets, renewable energy sources represent the ultimate in energy independence. | ||
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unidentified
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So undermining renewables isn't just undermining energy independence. | |
| It's a threat to our national security and it's a threat to the good paying jobs we've created across the country in red states and blue states alike. | ||
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unidentified
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So folks, make no mistake, under these plans, life will be more expensive for working families. | |
| And all for what? | ||
| That's really the big question I have. | ||
| All for what? | ||
| It's crystal clear. | ||
| To help pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations. | ||
| And to achieve this, President Trump and his allies here in Congress seem determined to slash the programs that American families depend on the most. | ||
| Medicaid, nutrition assistance programs, Pell Grants, affordable health care coverage, cancer research, investments in our energy sector, including for hydrogen, biofuels, and carbon capture. | ||
|
unidentified
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And that's what the budget resolution before us suggests. | |
| Meanwhile, colleagues, as I'm sure you've heard, the House Republicans have finally shared their draft plan. | ||
| In a race with Senate Republicans, apparently, they unleashed a plan that, by the way, doesn't even include instructions for the Senate. | ||
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unidentified
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Not the best work product here. | |
| It does include, by the way, a debt limit increase because I guess even they recognize that to pay for all the increases in spending that y'all are suggesting, you're going to have to raise the debt limit. | ||
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unidentified
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For the folks watching at home, rest assured, we'll get through this. | |
| Just another minute, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| We'll get through this. | ||
| And Democrats are prepared to negotiate in good faith with our Republican colleagues. | ||
| But one of the first key steps we need in this process is for Republicans to finish negotiating with Republicans. | ||
| And as they get their act together, it's nothing but a painful start for the American people because this is just the beginning. | ||
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unidentified
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Elon Musk is already digging into Social Security and Medicare as part of their effort to target working class Americans. | |
| Seems like funding for roads and bridges may be next. | ||
| And in closing, I know that over the next several weeks, several months, there's no doubt we'll hear a lot of talking points and misinformation by Republicans trying to distract the American people from what's really happening. | ||
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unidentified
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So to folks watching at home, I have this to say. | |
| Follow the money because it's going to start with cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits that you've paid into. | ||
| And it's going to end with billionaires getting yet another tax break. | ||
| So yes, Mr. Chairman, I'm ready for this conversation and will also lay out that for every cut that is proposed, the American people demand an answer for why a billionaire deserves more of a tax break over the interest of working families. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Senator Lee. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'll note at the outset that on no planet, literally no planet, is Doge, Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, or anyone else working as part of their effort, looking into messing with people's Social Security or Medicare benefits. | ||
| It's not a thing. | ||
| That is an invented fiction. | ||
| It's fantasy, and it does not exist. | ||
| We are here today to talk about budgetary matters and budgetary matters that are brought about as a result of a unique crisis that we've faced over the last four years, a crisis that relates to our border security. | ||
| Border security is something that I've given a fair amount of thought to. | ||
| I spent two years of my life living along the U.S. border in the lower Rio Grande Valley of the state of Texas. | ||
| Beautiful state, beautiful people, loved living and working among them. | ||
| One of the things that I discovered when I lived there for two years was that people prosper when the border is protected. | ||
| And those who are most adversely affected by lapses in border security, especially by uncontrolled waves of illegal immigration, very often are themselves recent immigrants. | ||
| And as I observe them in that context, recent immigrants living right on or near the U.S. border is their neighborhoods, their children's schools, their jobs, their livelihoods, their safety and security, and that of their loved ones is most directly put at risk when there are uncontrolled waves of illegal immigration. | ||
| The Biden-created border crisis is as real as it was preventable. | ||
| Its consequences are as widespread as they are tragic. | ||
| Americans across every corner of our country, every square inch, are worse off because a combination of criminals, contraband, drugs have flowed across the border freely into the United States. | ||
| Cities and towns across our country are being overwhelmed by droves of non-citizens being relocated with their own hard-earned federal taxpayer dollars. | ||
| Fatal fentanyl-caused poisoning deaths are on the rise. | ||
| And during one month alone of last year, U.S. authorities seized enough fentanyl to kill more than 510 million people. | ||
| To put that in perspective, that's roughly every person, man, woman, and child in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. | ||
| That's the number of people who can be killed by the amount of fentanyl seized by U.S. authorities during one month of last year. | ||
| And this was made much, much worse by virtue of the porous border. | ||
| And violent criminal non-citizens led into our country unvetted by the previous administration continue to murder innocent Americans. | ||
| We're here today to take the next step in the process that will give President Trump and Republicans in Congress the resources necessary to help end the Biden border crisis. | ||
| Now, make no mistake, this is a monumental task, and it'll require nothing less than a Herculean effort. | ||
| But that's why we're here. | ||
| That's why we're doing this. | ||
| The funding will be used to deport violent felons, secure our borders, stop illegal immigration, and curb the flow of fentanyl into our country. | ||
| Importantly, this budget is built on a fiscal irrigation, one with new spending fully offset within the first four years it's to be spent. | ||
| This is important, Mr. Chairman, because of course, what sometimes happens in the past is when funds are appropriated through the reconciliation process, sometimes there's a temptation to take the candy up front and agree to eat the vegetables later, to get the spending now with an agreement to offset it over a 10-year period of time. | ||
| So if you spend in the first four years and plan to pay for it throughout the duration of the 10 years, very often the savings don't materialize. | ||
| That's not what we're doing here. | ||
| We're doing it right this time. | ||
| There's no priority that's more urgent than putting an end to the Biden border crisis. | ||
| I strongly support this budget as a means to instruct the relevant committees that fund agencies and programs that will enforce our immigration laws, secure our border, stop this deadly, poisonous, toxic flow of fentanyl into the United States and help make America great again. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
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unidentified
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Senator Grassley. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I appreciate your calling today's markup. | ||
| It's a process to jumpstart the process for moving forward with the Trump agenda. | ||
| President Biden used a pandemic as an excuse to ram through his budget-busting far-left agenda. | ||
| While wasting billions on leftist causes, he neglected core government responsibilities. | ||
| As we all know, the number one responsibility of the federal government, national security. | ||
| But Biden allowed our military to deteriorate, and in fact, as a result of not enforcing the immigration laws, we had opened our borders. | ||
| This budget resolution represents a very first step towards correcting the Biden-Harris administration spending excesses and its disregard of security threats at our border and around the world. | ||
| The previous administration's open border policies resulted in an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration. | ||
| Approximately three times the population of Iowa entered into the U.S. in just those four years, and everybody saw it nightly on our television. | ||
| This left our nation vulnerable to gang members, criminals, terrorists, national security threats, and drug smugglers crossing our border with impunity. | ||
| President Trump was elected with a mandate to remove these folks and secure our borders once again. | ||
| This resolution green lights the resources necessary to make that important step be taken. | ||
| The resolution also provides for funding to bolster our national military. | ||
| Over the past several years, the world has become an increasingly frightening place. | ||
| Russia has revealed expansionist ambitions in Europe, which would result in the recreation of the Soviet Union. | ||
| China has shown increased aggression of the South China Sea and its threats to Taiwan. | ||
| And Iran's network of terrorist proxies threaten Israel and even Arab neighbors. | ||
| Yet, our military is ill-equipped for today's challenges, as President Reagan proved by staring down the Soviet Union. | ||
| Peace is best maintained through strength. | ||
| The resolution also lays groundwork for unleashing America's energy production. | ||
| A coherent energy policy is vital to both national security and the economy. | ||
| Where I favor an all-of-the-above approach to energy policy, the Biden administration's policy favored all of the above, but none from below the ground. | ||
| It's time that we had a true all-of-the-above approach to achieve American energy independence. | ||
| That's fossil fuels, alternative energy, conservation, and nuclear. | ||
| Importantly, this budget represents a return to fiscal sanity. | ||
| Any spending increases will be accompanied by corresponding spending decreases. | ||
| While the pandemic is years behind us, spending as a share of the economy remains at levels previously reserved for national emergencies and for war, in other words, defending America. | ||
| During the height of the pandemic, we all agreed it was common sense for the government to step in to help individuals and families and small businesses weather the storm that was created by a government shutdown of the economy. | ||
| But once the crisis subsides, so should the programs and the spending enacted in response to the pandemic. | ||
| That's very much a common sense approach to spending. | ||
| Our national debt is on a path to eclipse World War II era records relative to the size of our economy, and that's in just a few years. | ||
| We must begin to write our fiscal ship. | ||
| So in this process of bringing about this budget resolution, don't forget the voter mandate. | ||
| As part of the November mandate, President Trump is looking for ways to reduce wasteful government spending. | ||
| Congress should not simply cede initiative to the president. | ||
| Chris holds the powers of the purse. | ||
| So in this action today and tomorrow, we must show leadership to spare the American people from inflation and the crippling debt burden that comes from overspending. | ||
| I yield the floor. | ||
|
unidentified
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Senator Sanders. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Federal budget is about our national priorities. | ||
| It's about who we are as a nation, what we believe in. | ||
| And what the committee is discussing today is very, very serious business. | ||
| In my view, no family, no business, no local or state government can responsibly write a budget without first understanding the problems and challenges that it faces, whether it's a business, a country, a city, or whatever. | ||
| As I examine the budget brought forth in the Senate and the House by Republicans, this is how I see how they analyze where we are as a country. | ||
| At a time of massive and unprecedented income and wealth inequality, the Republicans look around them and they say, wow, we've got three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society. | ||
| Very richest people becoming phenomenally richer. | ||
| Working people are struggling. | ||
| What's the solution? | ||
| Well, obviously the solution is to give massive tax breaks to the rich and make a very bad situation even worse. | ||
| It is apparently not good enough that the top 1% today own more wealth than the bottom 90%. | ||
| That is rather phenomenal. | ||
| But in my Republican colleagues' eyes, the wealthy and the powerful need even more help. | ||
| 1% owning more wealth and the bottom 90%, just not good enough. | ||
| We could do better than that. | ||
| So not only should the very wealthy be asked to pay their fair share of taxes, the Republicans believe that we should give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. | ||
| It is apparently, from my Republican colleagues, not good enough that corporate America is now in many cases enjoying record-breaking profits and the CEOs of large corporations now earn 300 times more than what their average employees make, 300 times more. | ||
| It is apparently not good enough that since 1975 there has been a 50 trillion, that's with a T, trillion dollar transfer in wealth from the bottom 90% of our population to the top 1%. | ||
| That's apparently not good enough. | ||
| So what we are looking at right now is a situation where Republicans want to give massive tax breaks to the rich and come up with programs to hurt our kids, our elderly, and working families. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, as I'm sure you are aware, the United States of America is the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people. | ||
| And I think most Americans would agree with me that whether you're rich, you're poor, you're young, you're old, health care is a human right. | ||
| All of us get sick. | ||
| All of us are going to need health care. | ||
| We're the only major country not to provide health care to all. | ||
| And the result of that is not just that 85 million people in our country are uninsured or underinsured, despite spending twice as much per capita on health care as the people of other countries. | ||
| Here's the reality we don't talk about, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Over 60,000 people in this country die every single year because they can't afford to get to a doctor on time. | ||
| People die because they can't afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs. | ||
| So I think what we are talking about is priorities. | ||
| Are we comfortable, as apparently some are, that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the goal is to give more tax breaks to the rich? | ||
| Are we comfortable at a time when so many of our people are uninsured or underinsured, when we're the only country on earth, major country not to guarantee health care at all? | ||
| Solution is to throw millions more of children and elderly people. | ||
| When we cut Medicaid, let us not forget that it's not just low-income kids or low-income people. | ||
| It is a lot of folks who are in nursing homes. | ||
| I don't quite think that that is an appropriate way to treat our elderly people in this country. | ||
| So one other point, Mr. President, I have been hearing from the President and Mr. Musk about military spending. | ||
| And what they have pointed out is that over the last, I think it's seven years, every independent audit that the Pentagon has not been able to make an independent succeed in doing an independent audit of the Pentagon. | ||
| And I think, according to Mr. Musk, according to President Trump, there are waste and fraud within the Defense Department of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| So it's kind of hard for me to understand that, given that reality, why anybody here would want to give the Pentagon and defense contractors another $150 billion. | ||
| So I will be offering an amendment to deal with that and many other amendments to try to create a budget that works for working families and not just for the very wealthy. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Senator Whitehouse. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Republicans clearly do not want to talk about a looming crisis headed for our economy and our budget. | ||
| But it's not hard to see how the dominoes fall. | ||
| Fossil fuel emissions, methane one of the worst, are making the weather worse and harder to predict. | ||
| This makes risk worse and harder to predict for insurance companies. | ||
| This means insurance companies have to raise their rates or if they can't figure it out, back away entirely. | ||
| As insurance gets more expensive and harder to find, property values begin to fall. | ||
| Each member of this committee is likely experiencing this in your states. | ||
| In fact, I bet you're even hearing about it from your constituents. | ||
| Let me start with Florida, which is the preview of coming attractions for other coastal states. | ||
| It's the first and it's the worst. | ||
| In Florida, Glades and Monroe counties have seen homeowners' insurance non-renewals increase by more than 3,000%. | ||
| In Glades County, one in six homeowners was dropped from their insurance in 2023. | ||
| In Miami-Dade County, average premiums have spiraled up to $17,000 per year. | ||
| Premiums are expected to triple in coastal Florida counties in the years to come, with home values consequently declining between 40 and 60 percent in many coastal counties. | ||
| In some states, major national insurers are already pulling out. | ||
| In California, all state and state farm will not issue new policies. | ||
| In Texas, Progressive is leaving. | ||
| In Florida, most national companies have left the state. | ||
| Florida homeowners' insurance rates are almost quadruple the national average. | ||
| Many Floridians can't get or can't afford homeowners' insurance, and many more have rickety insurance that may well not pay claims. | ||
| What happens if your homeowners insurance goes up? | ||
| Quadruples, for instance. | ||
| It's a carrying cost on owning your home, so your home's value declines. | ||
| Or if you can't even get insurance, then your home can't get a mortgage. | ||
| So when you try to sell, no one can get a mortgage to buy your home. | ||
| And again, your home's value crashes. | ||
| That's what Freddie Mac's chief economist warned this committee about two years ago. | ||
| Coastal flood risk makes homes uninsurable, which makes them unmortgageable, which causes, his words, a coastal property values crash, which then cascades through the economy like the 2008 mortgage meltdown. | ||
| Except now, the coastal homeowners insurance crisis he discussed has a new evil sibling, wildfire risk for homeowners nowhere near the coast. | ||
| Same problem, insurance to mortgage to property values to broad economic collapse. | ||
| Here are counties where climate-related risks are expected to quadruple or more present insurance rates by 2055. | ||
| Already high insurance rates expected to as much as quadruple further by 2055, with obviously predictable effects on property values. | ||
| Here are counties where property values are predicted to decline by as much as 100%. | ||
| A decline of 100% is a total wipeout, again by 2055. | ||
| Or you may say, well, that's not till 2055, so that won't affect me. | ||
| That doesn't matter. | ||
| Except, who looks forward 30 years? | ||
| Mortgage companies do, who want to make sure their collateral is sound and the homeowner is able to pay the mortgage, which is why in high-risk areas, they're dumping more and more mortgages into federal Fannie and Freddie, grabbing the fees, and passing the risk to taxpayers. | ||
| And I commend on that the report Mortgage Securitization Dynamics in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters. | ||
| Insurance companies have to be rated for that mortgage to get into Freddie and Fannie. | ||
| There's a rating agency called Demotech, which has leapt from being a negligible presence in Florida's homeowners insurance market when they started in the 1990s to now over 50% by 2018. | ||
| For that, I commend the report When Insurers Exit, Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets. | ||
| Demotech's ratings are so slippery that almost 20% of Florida insurance companies it rated have already gone bust. | ||
| Remember 2008 and rating agencies? | ||
| All this is happening because the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to maintain a free-to-pollute business model, contrary to basic principles of market economics, not to mention basic morality and decency. | ||
| When it's free to pollute, When those negative externalities are not baked into the price of the product, it's called a subsidy. | ||
| And this is a big one. | ||
| $700 billion every year in the U.S. alone. | ||
| When Trump was soliciting a billion dollars in political money from the fossil fuel industry, and by the way, he got $100 million that we know of, this was a pretty sweet deal. | ||
| A billion dollars once to Trump and $700 billion to lock in that subsidy every single year. | ||
| And who pays? | ||
| We do. | ||
| One of the ways we pay is in this looming homeowners insurance crisis, and it's cascaded to a property values crash and national economic recession like 2008. | ||
| And it's not just national. | ||
| Here's The Economist magazine warning of a $25 trillion hit to the global real estate market and the global economy. | ||
| Joined by the Financial Stability Board, which warns of systemic risks to banks as property values fall from insurance unavailability. | ||
| Joined by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which under the first Trump administration warned that climate change, I'm quoting here, poses a major risk to the ability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy. | ||
| That's the backdrop for the amendments I'll be offering to strike the EPW instruction. | ||
| That instruction is a giveaway to big polluters who won't even maintain their valves and pipes and wells, and it will only make the climate crisis and the economic effects of it worse. | ||
| I'll have more to say as I discuss each amendment, and I thank the chair for allowing me the extra minute. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you very much. | |
| Does anyone else need to make an opening statement? | ||
| Not an opening statement, Mr. Chairman, but a quick comment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I just want to note that the $9 trillion in cuts have not been explained during any of the presentations by my Republican colleagues, but we know whether they don't want to explain it because those $9 trillion are going to attack the programs for working families across the board. | ||
| The Great Betrayal. | ||
| Second of all, the Trump tax cuts, which we refer to as helping working families, well, let's get the actual story. | ||
| The bottom 10% of Americans who are struggling to stand on their streets, they get $6, not $6 a day or a week or a month, $6 a year. | ||
| Well, don't, you know, that's one cup of coffee. | ||
| Don't drink it all at once because you've got to spread it over an entire year. | ||
| Meanwhile, the richest 0.1% get a tax cut of about $314,000. | ||
| They represent one 1,000th of the population, but they get one-seventh of the benefits. | ||
| This is just increasing the wealth disparity that is haunting us and corrupting our we the people democracy. | ||
| Finally, I wanted to know while we were talking here, the House put out their budget resolution, and it contains the following, $4.5 trillion in tax giveaways for the richest Americans, or for Americans overall, but mostly the richest Americans. | ||
| $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, leaving a whole of $3 trillion to be borrowed from the Treasury on top of what was already going to be borrowed. | ||
| And so to cover this additional massive increase in the national deficit, this fiscal irresponsibility, they also propose putting in an elimination of the debt ceiling. | ||
| So we see the same issues being raised in the House that Democrats here have been talking about: that this vision is a vision of cutting programs for families, increasing the wealth of the wealthiest Americans, and funding that through a massive borrowing from the Treasury, running up the debt. | ||
| I do have a final, final, in the source of for the record. | ||
| My colleague, Senator Luhan, who is ill today, has is it on? | ||
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unidentified
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Okay, good. |