-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the American public won yesterday. After 36 hours of public panic and confusion and outrage, the Trump White House rescinded the illegal and unconstitutional order to freeze Federal funding for every State in the country.

It was an obvious attempt to usurp power, designed to hurt people by cutting off access to the things that they need most. When you say ``Federal grants,'' you might think it is just some subcategory-- nonprofits or something--and that they are just doing a review, but let me list the things that were cut off over that 36-hour period: meals, schools, healthcare, childcare, roads and bridges, public safety. So it was no surprise that people all across the country were so outraged. They called our offices; they spoke up online; and they let their frustrations be known.

It was a little different than a normal political argument, because it was very real. It was, Do I have to send my people home today? It was, Hey, with the Federal funding portal--basically, a website--we take a drawdown, and then those dollars allow us to make our payroll for this domestic violence shelter or this construction project. If it is shut down, I am not going to make payroll, and if I am not going to be able to make payroll, you guys have to go home. I can't pay you.

So this wasn't something just to argue about online. This was across the country--people trying to figure out whether society as we knew it was going to continue.

This was not just a review of Federal funding or an effort to allow a new administration and a new Congress to put its stamp on the appropriations process. This was an attempt to take an enacted law and say: You know, I would like to take the parts of this law that I like and implement them, and I would like to take the parts of this law that I don't like and not implement them.

Look, I would like to be 6 feet tall. I would like to dunk a basketball. I would like to be able to surf a pipeline. I would like to be able to take all of the waste in the Department of Defense and pour it into the native Hawaiians' needs around housing and healthcare, but I am not a monarch, so I have to do this the old-fashioned way, which is to argue with my colleagues, to cajole my colleagues, to work with my colleagues, to do a little horse trading with my colleagues and get a law enacted. And there are going to be parts of that law that we enact--because it is big; it is Federal spending; it is a lot of spending--that I am not going to like, and there are going to be parts that I will love, but once it becomes the law, it is not within anyone's discretion-- not a President, not head of the Office of Management and Budget, not the majority leader, not the minority leader, not an individual Member of Congress, not a Federal judge--to say: Pick what you like in this law; implement it; pick what you don't like in this law, and don't implement it.

So the judge said in Federal court yesterday: ``The administration is acting with a distinction without a difference. While the piece of paper may not exist''--that is the rescinded budget memo--``there's sufficient evidence that the defendants''--the government-- ``collectively are acting consistent with that directive.''

So we won the first battle, but, look, we understand this is probably going to last a thousand days or so. We are ready, and we will win this battle.

Look, I am not naive about what happens when you lose the House, you lose the Senate, and you lose the Presidency to the other party. You are in for some policy outcomes that you don't like. But, you know what, do it the old-fashioned way. Enact a law. Work within the law. Because the door does swing both ways in this town.

I just want every Republican who may be watching this speech, every person who cares about democracy itself who may be watching this speech, every staffer who may be watching this speech--I want you to imagine a President that you didn't vote for with this kind of authority. I want you to assume that sometimes there will be a Democratic President and sometimes there will be a Republican President, and that is the way it goes, that is the way our system is set up, and it is OK to suffer through and try to slow down or even thwart bad policy outcomes, but it should not be within the authority of a President to say: I won, and so I am just going to hand-wave away the parts of Federal law that I find objectionable.

I think that is such a high principle for anyone who spent all of this time and, frankly, money to get to the U.S. Senate, right? It is a sacrifice. It is a great job. There are Senators who spend so much time, and then they get here, and they kind of hate it, and they are kind of whining about it. I don't do that. I love this job. But it is a sacrifice, and there are a lot of very talented people who could be elsewhere working less hard and making more money. We get here because we want to get something done.

We all swear an oath to uphold the laws and the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution is not unclear. There are places where the Constitution, as Madeleine Albright said, is an invitation to struggle. In particular, on foreign policy, the Constitution is an invitation to struggle. It was intentionally made kind of opaque or even confusing between the article I and the article II branch. It was actually supposed to be not clear who was to drive foreign policy. So we have the Foreign Relations Committee, we have the Appropriations Committee, and we have the Senate State and Foreign Ops Subcommittee, of which I am ranking member. That is a place where we are going to kind of do battle with each other between the branches of government and among the parties and between the two Chambers. That is all fine, and that is how the Constitution is set up.

But let's be clear. The Constitution is not at all unclear about the power of the purse. The power to appropriate money, the obligation to appropriate money is squarely in the hands of the legislative branch.

So it is not like a State government. It is not even like a county government, where you can go: Hey, I know you want that swimming pool in your district. Can we talk about how I need your vote on X, Y, Z?

That is how counties work sometimes, unfortunately. That is how even State governments sometimes work, unfortunately. But in the Federal system, once the law is enacted, the executive branch has discretion within that law, but they can't just ignore it, and when it is spending, they can't ignore it. That is what a Federal judge confirmed yesterday, and they will continue to confirm it.

Look, I worry about a lot of things, and I think we should all be vigilant, but I also don't think we should act as though we are powerless. We are out of power, but we are not powerless, because this President, just like any other President--it is not personal--is constrained by the law, is constrained by the Constitution, and is constrained by politics, which is to say, doing unpopular things is going to make him unpopular.

Shutting down VA home loans is unpopular. Telling people who are showing up to work on a highway maintenance project, with all their equipment staged, ``Sorry, there has been a freeze on grant funding, and you have to go home'' is unpopular.

Taking Medicaid--by the way, Medicaid comes to State government and then to hospitals and to clinics and to elder care facilities as a grant. So when you think ``grant,'' I don't want you to think about a $1.2 million grant to a nonprofit, although that is very important too. Most of the money that flows to State and county government, most of the money that flows to the private sector, they are grants.

So everybody needs to understand this lesson this week, which is, we did not elect a monarch. What I mean by that is, for my fellow travelers on the left, everybody has to understand that things are scary. We should be vigilant. This is going to be rough. I understand all that. But we don't catastrophize to the point where we think that this man is above the law. He is not above the law, and yesterday was a good reminder that nobody in this country is above the law.

So I am reminded of what the former speaker of the Hawaii State House used to say--Calvin Say, who I was friends with, but then I tried to topple him, and so he relegated me to the back bench, but now we are friends again--he said: Be like the Bamboo--bend, but don't break.

So I do think democracy is going to be tested. I do think this institution is going to be tested. I think we are going to bend in ways that are super uncomfortable, and I am going to hate it. But we have to bend but not break. We have to bend but not break.

That goes for both political parties because, I promise you, it is not worth it. This person is not going to be President forever. A lot of people have safe seats, and a lot of people are in 6-year terms, and a lot of people are about to retire. I do think that oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America has to continue to count for something.

So there was a lot of good, frankly, bipartisan pushback on what was clearly an unlawful Executive order and an implementing memo.

Look, it has been a rough couple of weeks if you are on my side of the aisle. I get that. Elections have consequences, and it has been really, really painful and scary, and really bad consequences happen. But we also have to understand that we won one yesterday and that Federal funds appear to be flowing again for State and county governments and that a couple of judges basically said: You can't do that. You can't do that.

So whether it was the birthright citizenship loss in court that the Trump administration experienced or this about the power of the purse, we just need to remember that we are still a democratic system with three coequal branches of government.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source