Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the watchword in the executive branch today is ``chaos.'' This chaos stems from one source and one source only--President Donald Trump and his extreme agenda--and America is paying the price.

Everyone agrees there are issues at the border, but if you are the President and if you are in charge of our national security, you don't tweet your way into a strategy; you don't keep changing policies; and you don't keep switching personnel if you want to make progress on the most challenging issue that is facing our country.

Every day, we hear this is the President's new policy, and 2 days later, we hear it is not happening. People are being fired because they tell the President, according to news reports, that he can't break the law when he wants to do something. You cannot keep changing personnel, changing strategy, and tweeting your way through a problem as serious as this. That is why there is chaos when it comes to border issues--all created by the President and his whimsical, erratic, and oftentimes nasty pursuit of policy.

Even the Republicans are worried sick about the chaos President Trump has created over the week. My friend John Cornyn says this is all a giant ``mess''--his words. Well, my friend from Texas is correct. Yet this dysfunction is not confined to a few Agencies; this chaos is throughout the executive branch because Donald Trump has the same kind of switching of personnel, changing of policies, and trying to tweet his way through a problem in other areas as he does with regard to the border.

Let me remind my colleagues that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Interior Secretary, and the EPA Administrator each resigned amid scandal. The Trump administration has not yet nominated anyone for probably the most important Cabinet position, the Secretary of Defense, since Secretary Mattis's departure, and when he departed, Secretary Mattis had a scathing rebuke of President Trump's policies.

Look at the chaos at the State Department, where the damage extends way beyond America's borders. Because of incompetence and inaction, there are no nominees to more than 30 vacant key positions at State, including Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights. There are no nominees to be our Ambassador to Pakistan or Egypt and none for Qatar or Thailand.

This is not the Senate blocking nominees as much as the President likes to blame somebody else for his problems; this is the President's own administration that has failed to nominate people for such important positions, and many of these positions have been long vacant. The areas we mentioned are ever important in our changing world, and this administration is simply failing to nominate anyone.

We should be projecting stability and continuity through our State Department. Instead, it has been battered and belittled by its own administration to the point at which both sides in Congress have spoken out. Just yesterday, we learned the administration is pushing out the head of the Secret Service amid a new scandal surrounding a security breach at Mar-a-Lago, the so-called winter White House. Now joining the others who are gone--fired by Twitter or whatever--is the head of the Secret Service. All of this chaos has one source and one source only-- the President of the United States and his erratic, vacillating attitudes toward policy and personnel.

Across a broad spectrum of issues, his policies are so extreme that even good-faith nominees eventually face a choice--leave the administration or be consumed by the quicksand of the Trump swamp.

I hope the President or some of the people around him will realize that his administration is far from a fine-tuned machine; it is a slow- motion disaster that the American people see in action every day. Women's Health

Madam President, on women's health, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today on a sham bill that would further restrict women's access to care.

Every woman and every family in America should shudder at the Republicans' campaign to take away the rights of women to make decisions about their own health just to satisfy a hard-right, radical agenda that the vast majority of Americans completely disagrees with.

This bill would unduly restrict women's rights to make their own health decisions. Dr. Jennifer Conti, who is a clinical assistant professor of OB/GYN at Stanford, described the 20-week mark set by the bill as ``just an arbitrary limit set in place by politicians that has no medical or scientific backing.'' Let me repeat--``an arbitrary limit set in place by politicians''--politicians making decisions about women's health. That is what is wrong here.

What is more, a 20-week ban is, arguably, unconstitutional. Just 2 weeks ago, a Federal judge in North Carolina ruled it was. We know the 20-week ban is just a start among those who want to take away women's rights. They will try to go for a 10-week ban, then a 6-week ban. It is all part of a radical, relentless effort to completely and unequivocally strip women of their right to make their own healthcare decisions.

The rhetoric we will hear from the Republicans in this hearing will be much the same we have heard for years. Whether it is a vote we took in the Senate or a new law protecting one's rights in my home State of New York, the Republicans have repeatedly used scare tactics and falsehoods to mislead the public. Yes, these are nothing but scare tactics, but don't take my word for it. Time and time again, fact checkers have ruled the Republicans' rhetoric on these issues to be outright false.

Let's be clear. Across the country, the reproductive rights of women are under attack. In statehouses across the country, the Republicans are forcing through radical proposals that would dramatically limit women's rights to make their own choices--in Mississippi, in Georgia, in Kentucky. This is a threat to women in all 50 States, not just in those 3. It is dangerously out of step with the American people.

The Trump administration is even imposing a gag rule on healthcare providers to stop them from discussing the full range of options with women who consider having abortions. They are literally preventing doctors from doing their jobs. It is illogical, intrusive, and hypocritical that the Republicans in Washington would tell a doctor what he or she can or cannot say to a patient in a private medical conversation.

I have been around here long enough to remember when the Republicans were preaching that government should never come between a patient and his or her doctor. Why the change? Since taking office, President Trump and his Republican colleagues have repeatedly prioritized restricting women's reproductive freedoms and have strategically placed obstacles in the way of their accessing the healthcare they deserve. Donald Trump and our Republican friends believe they know better than American women. That is wrong, and American women totally disagree with them.

Yet, while the Republicans across the country push these proposals, they look the other way when President Trump proposes cutting programs that help newborns and young children.

The President wants to cut Medicaid by more than $1 trillion. That provides healthcare coverage for 37 million children. He wants to eliminate programs that support emergency medical health services for children and that address autism and developmental disorders.

I hope my Republican colleagues will join us instead of slipping down this radical, ideological, and deeply misguided path to strip away the rights of women.

H.R. 268

Now on disaster relief, as I said yesterday, the question of providing funding for our fellow Americans hurt by natural disasters is not an either-or proposition, but Republicans have treated it like one. They argue that we can either have funding for our neighbors in the Midwest, or we can pursue aid for Puerto Rico that the President opposes. For the President of the United States to pit American citizens against each other is simply un-American, and for Republicans in the Senate to go along with him is exhibit A of their refusal to stand up.

Some of my colleagues have said: Well, we are giving Puerto Rico just food stamp money. OK. Let's give all the other States just food stamp money. See if they think that is going to help them rebuild their homes and deal with the roads and all the other things that natural disasters have brought. Of course not.

That is the double standard, and it is not going to happen. We know the House, to their credit, is standing firm.

Let's come up with a compromise that funds both. As Americans have always done when American citizens in one part of the country are in trouble because of disaster, we come together and help them all--not just the ones the President likes or finds politically advantageous but all. We don't say: We will give just food stamps to some but complete disaster relief to the others. That is wrong, and that hurts American citizens in Puerto Rico and elsewhere.

Last week, Senator Leahy and I presented a solution that solves all the problems--$16.7 billion in relief for all Americans affected by natural disasters, including $2.5 billion in new funding that could help communities with the new disasters in the Midwest. It had support for Puerto Rico and the people in the other territories.

It is about time we stop this standoff, pass disaster relief, and help our fellow Americans before the next storms make their unwelcome arrival.

Nominations

Finally, on judges, today, the Republican leader will follow through on his plan to remake the judiciary in the image of President Trump. Irony of ironies, the first nominee we will consider is a gentleman who supported the Republican leader's decision to not consider even a committee hearing or a vote on Merrick Garland. That is galling.

Mr. Domenico and the other nominees we will consider today are outside the mainstream--way outside the mainstream--and should not be rushed through this body. Two hours of debate on a lifetime appointment? Shame on our Republican friends who went along with that.

By participating in this sham process, every Republican will fully own each and every radical decision each of these nominees makes. We see what is happening now. A very conservative justice in Texas is taking healthcare away from millions of Americans. He is taking away their protection for preexisting conditions.

My fellow Republicans, you are on warning: If you keep voting for these judges, you are going to carry the burden of their awful decisions that will hurt so many Americans. They are so far out of the mainstream.

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