Project 2025

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Back to the Affordable Care Act:

[T]he ACA subsidy schemes simply masks these impacts.

That is a funny one. The ACA subsidy scheme masks the impacts, which is really to say we have an inefficient healthcare system--I think everybody can agree with that--and what they mean by ``masking the impacts''--right?--is we have a terrible system; under normal circumstances, people's monthly payment would be 5, 6, 7, $900, and under the subsidy scheme, people will have to pay less, masking the impacts.

And so just to understand, there are a lot of euphemisms in here for coming after your healthcare.

CMS--

Center for Medicaid Services, Medicare/Medicaid services-- should develop a plan to separate the non-subsidized insurance market from the subsidized market, giving the non- subsidized market regulatory relief from costly ACA regulatory mandates.

Let's kind of explain what this means for a second. They want to separate the healthy from the not healthy, and the problem is, like, it is true that if an insurer wants to, let's say, only provide insurance for like 35-year-olds and under, that they are going to be able to provide really, really cheap rates. But the problem, before the Affordable Care Act, was that, that is exactly how it worked.

So if you were 23, your insurance was reasonably affordable; and if you are 48 and you have heart disease, or you have mental health challenges or you have asthma or you have 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 No. 1 cause of bankruptcy pre-ACA was medical debt. People were going bankrupt because they got sick. Imagine--now it has to be a big enough thing to be expensive, so it is almost definitionally ``you get sick and it is very serious.'' Your life might be in danger, you might have to manage a new disability, but it is stressful and hard to try to get well or whatever it is.

But on top of that, pre-ACA, you got absolutely screwed financially. And so imagine getting a terminal diagnosis and you don't have insurance, and then you are sitting there thinking: I got 3 years, but in the meantime, my family is 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 is not the case that sick people can't get insured and well people can. The reason insurance companies love to discount their rates and take young people on their plans is it is very unlikely they are 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 is not a surprise that the Republican Party wants to eliminate the Affordable Care Act; but we also need to understand, they are coming after Medicare and Medicaid, too.

And I want you to hear this part from our OMB Director nominee:

In its opening words, article II of the U.S. Constitution makes it abundantly clear that ``[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.''

So far, so good. That is true.

That enormous power is not vested in departments or agencies, in staff or administrative bodies, in nongovernmental or other equities and interests close to the government.

Now, that is where he is way off track. He is already way off track. We make laws. There is an executive branch that is a creature of Federal law, and this guy's theory is, 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 Centers 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, a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences--or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ``woke'' faction of the country.

What is interesting about this document, as I have started to read it, is it has got all this high-minded stuff, and then they just want to go after the left. That is what this is, right? They are just pissed. They are mad because they think certain Agencies are too leftwing. They think there is a bunch of people in the government that are too busy, like, caring too much about, I don't know, healthcare or women's equality or children's mental health. I don't know what is considered woke and not because I feel like with the tragic plane crash last week, that those words died. Like, those words are now devoid of meaning.

What in the hell does it mean to say DEI caused a plane crash? Now, it is just an epithet you throw when you don't know what else to say or what to be critical of or how to be a serious person.

He says:

This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like Congress's decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert ``independence'' that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny, the presumed inability to hold career civil servants accountable for their performance, and the increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to 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 is funny to me because a lot of Republicans will complain about the length of a law. We are supposed to make broad public policy. Let me give you a really good example.

The Telecommunications Act was passed and then reauthorized over the last couple of decades, and 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 are telling you what the principles are here, but we don't know how much--how many gigahertz of spectrum should be given to Department of Defense versus, like, open RAM this and that.

We don't know that kind of thing, and I will give you a good example from my first days in the Hawaii Legislature 100 years ago. When I got to the legislature, we had a committee. It was called Ocean and Marine Resources. We actually--``we'' the legislature--set the minimum catch size for individual fish. There was a pretty corrupt legislator who set the minimum catch size for an opakapaka, a kind of snapper, based on how big he wanted the snapper to be on his dinner plate. It happened to be 2 inches smaller than spawning size.

Now, why do you care about spawning size? You want people to throw back a fish before it makes a bunch of eggs. And once it has had its spawn, then go ahead and eat it, right? That is how you keep a healthy fishery alive.

So what we realized is, shouldn't a bunch of aquatic biologists figure out the minimum catch size of an opakapaka? Shouldn't a bunch of actual experts determine how to manage our ocean and marine resources? Shouldn't the legislature make broad policy, but you don't want us idiots talking about the minimum catch size of an opakapaka. We don't know. We have preferences. People might whisper in our ear about that.

If you can imagine the sprawling Federal laws that exist about speed limits and civil penalties for contract violations and criminal law and everything else, and we are going to elucidate exactly how all of this works? It is totally preposterous, but it goes back to this idea of President as elected king, and that is where they want to go.

In Federalist [No.] 47, James Madison warned that ``[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'' Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes to a significant degree the modern executive branch, which-- whether controlled by the bureaucracy or by the President-- writes federal policy, enforces that policy, and often adjudicates--

None of this is true. --whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced. The overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably expensive, and in urgent need of repair. Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.

Like, they get really grandiose really quick in this document, and I think that is what is a little bone-chilling about it, is that they are not just going for conservative outcomes, they are going for a kind of revolution.

Look, everybody is prone to exaggeration in campaigns. Everybody hurls accusations, one side at the other. And so, like, you will forgive me for--when I heard about Project 2025, I was like, OK, 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 is not my plan. I don't know any of these people.

I, frankly, didn't talk about Project 2025 during the campaign because I couldn't quite nail down, were they going to do it? And now two-thirds of these nominees are authors or otherwise affiliated with this document, which is a 900-page game plan that they are in the middle of executing.

Just to take a step back on the tactical side, they really do understand that a lot of what they are doing is not within the four corners of the law. They really do understand that. That is why they are 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 even mention where he works to protect him, but he just texted me and said: What do I do, man?

I have known him since I was a kid.

What do I do?

He is just an unbelievably good human being. I don't know how he votes. I don't know if he votes. But he is terrified.

So when you get this email that says ``Fork in the Road'' and you are an air traffic controller--and there was a 30-percent vacancy rate of air traffic controllers last week--and you are encouraged to not show up for work and take a severance, that is what this is. This isn't some sort of minor policy dispute; this is arson.

They believe that the Federal Government is an impediment to freedom, and I think we should have that argument. Like, 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 to freedom, and what parts of it? Because it is easy enough to say, but is it the FAA you would like to cut? Is it Medicare you would like to cut? Would you like to cut the Affordable Care Act subsidies? Would you like to cut the Federal Highway Administration? Would you like to cut 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 road, right, is that it is very easy--I mean, look, I am sure plenty of Republicans could talk like me if they wanted to, and I could 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 are a big, powerful country, 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. Whether it is 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.

I mean, these people are actually more ideological than some Members of Congress, and I think it is pretty scary stuff because they are just going forward with it as if they have a mandate. Most of the people who got elected looked their voters square in the eye and said: I don't know anything about this. That is 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 plans, it is ``I, I, I, I, I'' and then maybe secretly whispering to a Democratic colleague ``You know, I have got some concerns, so keep it up.'' I have gotten a lot of ``I have 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 off at the Afghanistan withdrawal. Maybe they were pissed off at the price of eggs or the price of gasoline. Maybe they were angry and they felt that the 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 Affordable Care Act subsidies; the storming of Federal buildings and relieving all of the senior staffers of their duties; the defying of temporary restraining orders issued by Federal judges. I don't think that is 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.

Because Donald Trump--again, very cleverly--said ``I got nothing to do with that,'' people did not think this was what the campaign was about, but now that they are in the government, that is exactly what this was about. They are in the government, and they are acting as if the people ratified this plan.

People need to understand what was in this plan.

The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the 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 the presidential will--

Remember that email ``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 who is willing to lead will find in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) the levers necessary to reverse this trend and impose a sound direction for the nation on the federal bureaucracy. The effectiveness of those EOP levers depends on the fundamental premise that it is the President's agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies that operate under his constitutional authority and that, as a general matter, it is the President's chosen advisers who have the best sense of the President's aims and intentions, both with respect to the policies he intends to enact and with respect to the interests that must be secured to govern successfully on behalf of the American people.

What he is saying is that a President gets elected, and he gets to do whatever the hell he wants. That is what this is.

FEMA--``The Federal Emergency Management Agency'' should ``be moved to the Department of the Interior or, if combined with CISA, to the Department of Transportation.'' That one, I don't even have a smart comment on other than, like, why? It is not going to more efficient if you move it under DOT. And what the hell does the Federal Emergency Management Agency have to do with transportation? They are smart people, don't get me wrong--very sophisticated, smart people. They do have a plan. But some of this sounds like dorm room, like, rando brainstorming. ``Yeah, we should move this over here.'' What does that even mean? Do you have any idea what FEMA does? 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 have never heard somebody say ``Oh, dammit, FEMA is here.'' People are pleased that FEMA is there.

I have had my disagreements with FEMA as it relates to the Maui recovery, but, dammit, when Lahaina burned, they were there. They were making sure people had food. They were making sure people had medicine. They were making sure people had a roof over their head. I mean, there are some Agencies that actually work pretty well and do exactly what they are supposed to do.

So you see that 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, are 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--and this is similar to, like, what Rand Paul thinks, truly--that anytime there is any Federal authority, that means less freedom for an individual. But that is not a mainstream position. This is not a mainstream document.

(Mr. SCHMITT assumed the Chair.)

The reason I am spending so much time on this is that I don't think the media has actually read this damn thing, and I think they kind of like view this as yesterday's news, last year's fight. And there is a little bit of a sense of: Eh, Democrats--they try to make something stick. They can never make something stick, so they are talking about 2025 again. I am going to roll my eyes, and blah, blah, blah.

They are implementing this thing. They are actually in the process of implementing this thing. It is all right here.

FEMA manages all grants for DHS, and these grants have become pork for states, localities, and special-interest groups. Since 2002, DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56 billion in preparedness grants.

OK. 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. Do you know why? Because we just passed a $150 billion supplemental emergency appropriations bill because disasters are getting more severe and more frequent every year. Last year was the biggest disaster year on record. I think it is because the climate is changing because we are burning too much fossil energy. But even if you don't think that, even if you have some magical other explanation for it, it is certainly a fact that we have more severe and more frequent disasters everywhere.

And we have weird ones. There has never been a wildfire in the State of Hawaii anything like what happened in Lahaina. The whole town burned to the ground--2,200 structures--in not even a whole night, like 3 hours, basically.

Western North Carolina, parts of West Virginia, and Virginia have flooded. Towns that were literally considered--they call them ``climate havens.'' So all of the people who try to predict weather patterns say: This is one of the very few places that is probably safe from a climate-driven natural disaster. Suddenly, Western North Carolina is absolutely flattened.

And I feel really bad. And Thom Tillis has been working so hard with Senator Budd trying to get resources for people in Western North Carolina. And I feel badly because, frankly, a lot of people have been to Lahaina, and it was one discreet beautiful town that holds a lot of--a lot people have a special place in their heart for the town of Lahaina, and they should. But all these towns--most people have not been to Western North Carolina. All these towns are small--500 here, 700 there, 75. It is small. Add it all up. It is lots and lots and lots of people, and lots and lots and lots of damage.

So preparedness grants are what they sound like. They help a county or a State or a community to--when a disaster hits--not get wrecked. Just as an example--this is not in the preparedness grant--but in 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, which is obviously bad for your house but also bad for other houses. That is money that the State government provides to individuals to just say: Be prepared.

Why? Because it is super cheap compared to the alternative. It is super cheap compared to tens of thousands of roofs being ripped off when a category 4 storm or hurricane hits.

So preparedness grants--I don't know--that is not pork, unless you have no sense of what people actually need. And that is what this is. This is a bunch of people on K Street, primarily, in downtown Washington, DC, in their cubicles, typing up ideas on how wasteful all this stuff is. This stuff very much matters to communities.

DHS/FEMA have provided more than $56 billion in preparedness grants . . . President Biden requested more than $3.5 billion for federal assistance grants.

Again, I don't see the problem.

More than any objective needs, political interests appear to direct the flow of nondisaster funds.

That is ridiculous. In fact, if that had been the case, I would have gotten more from the Biden administration.

The principles of federalism should be upheld; these indicate that states better understand--

That is true. States do better understand their needs in preparing for a natural disaster. That is actually not the question, because the way disaster preparedness response and recovery work is that actually the States and the counties are in charge of their preparedness, response, and recovery. It is 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 is when the Federal Government steps in, not to dictate the recovery but to be a backstop. I mean, this is what a Federal Government is for. I am lingering on this one because I think it shows how disconnected these folks are.

Like I said, this thing is 900 pages, and I really did intend to 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 really are trying to do all these things and, B, that they are totally, totally disconnected from the needs of the people.

You could pick on a few Federal Agencies, and I might shrug my shoulders and go: You know, they are right. But FEMA? And the idea that a little county should be in charge of its own disaster response--that is actually preposterous. What you are saying, then, is that you are on your own.

That is freedom, to be on your own, to not have the inefficiencies of the healthcare system masked by a subsidy. You are 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 are on your own. Congratulations with your freedom--the freedom to get kicked off your health insurance; the freedom to not have that damned 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, it is not our problem.

Sure, it is an international world. Sure, the Marburg virus is also now spreading in Eastern Africa, in Tanzania. And, sure, it has a 90- percent morality rate. But you will be so satisfied with all your freedom.

The modern conservative President's task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people. This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like Congress's decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies.

That is not true. We are 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? You want experts to determine some of this. And not that we don't have a bunch of smart people, but we are supposed to make general policy.

In Federalist [No.] 47, James Madison warned that ``[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.'' Regrettably, that wise and cautionary note describes to a significant degree the modern executive branch, which-- whether controlled by the bureaucracy or by the President-- writes federal policy.

The Director must view his job--

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 of the White House policy process and lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing . . . ensuring that the policy- formulation procedures developed by the White House to serve the President include OMB is one of any OMB Director's major responsibilities. 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 like: OMB is everything; everything goes through OMB--right? That is what this is. It is a fancy way of saying: No, no, fiscal, nonfiscal, budgetary, nonbudgetary--everything goes through OMB.

This would be pretty boring stuff if it weren't for the fact that we are 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 White House Press Secretary said: Go talk to Russ Vought.

Here is the problem--two things. At the time, Russ Vought was not even in the government. He is not a government employee. Imagine that you have to appeal to him like a friend of the King for mercy: Now, I know you passed a law, but go talk to Russ Vought. I know that the Federal law establishes that USAID exists, and it gets roughly $29 billion to distribute across the world--foreign military financing, economic assistance, development assistance, humanitarian aid. I know there is a law that says that, but go talk to Russ Vought.

This document tells us what they were up to.

I understand that we lost the argument last year; we did. We lost the argument. People 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 am confident in that vote count. I don't want to say ``happy,'' but I was determined to ratify the electoral college count.

We lost the argument about Project 2025. It kind of broke through, but people obviously 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 very close-- not like adjacent to Project 2025 but authors of it. They wrote whole sections of it, right?

The White House Press Secretary did training videos for Project 2025.

I don't dislike these people personally. I have never met any of these people personally.

I want everybody to understand what this project is. This isn't some random PDF that got uploaded to the internet and everybody ignored it. This is literally the playbook that they are following.

So I just would encourage staff, the public, Members, the media to 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 are 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--

It is the King's hand, right? --the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President's mind--

That seems like a cool job. --as it pertains to policy agenda, while always being ready with actual options to effect that agenda with existing legal authorities and resources.

Well, maybe.

This role cannot be performed adequately if the Director acts instead as the ambassador of the institutional interests of OMB and wider bureaucracy. . . . Once its reputation as the keeper of the ``commander's intent'' is established, then and only then does OMB have the ability to shape the most efficient way to pursue its objective.

Externally, the Director must ensure that OMB has sufficient visibility into deep caverns of agency decision- making.

I am sure. That is great.

One indispensable statutory tool to that end is to ensure that policy officials--the Program Associate Directors (PADs) managing the vast Resource Management Offices (RMOs)-- personally sign what are known as apportionments. In 1870, Congress passed the Anti-Deficiency Act to prevent the common agency practice of spending down all appropriated funding, creating 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 appropriated funding, is essential to the 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 and ensure consistency with the President's agenda and applicable laws.

The vast majority of these apportionments were signed by career officials--

Oh, my God. --the Deputy Associate Directors (DADs)--until the Trump Administration placed this responsibility in the hands of the PADs and thereby opened wide vistas of oversight that had escaped the attention of policy officials. The Biden administration subsequently 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 in wielding the tool on behalf of the President's agenda, or who is unable to defend the power against attacks from Congress.

It should be noted that each of OMB's primary functions, along with other executive and statutory roles, is carried out with the help of many essential OMB support offices. The two most important offices for moving OMB at the will of a Director are the Budget Review Division and the Office of the General Counsel. The Director should have a direct and effective relationship with the head of the BRD and transmit most instructions through that office because the rest of the agency is institutionally inclined toward its direction and responds accordingly. The BRD inevitably will translate the directions from policy officials to the career staff, and at every stage, it is obviously vital that the Director ensure that this translation is an accurate one.

In addition, many key considerations involved in enacting a President's agenda hinge on existing legal authorities. The Director must ensure the appointment of a General Counsel who is respected yet creative and fearless in his or her ability to challenge legal precedents that serve to protect the status quo. This is vital within OMB not only with respect to the adequate development of policy options for the President's review, but also with respect to 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 that, conversely, attempt to disregard 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 (OIRA) to work diligently to break down barriers within OMB and not allow turf disputes or a lack of visibility to undermine the agency's principal budget, management, and regulatory functions. OMB should work toward a ``One OMB'' position on behalf of the President and represent that view during the various policymaking processes.

Now to budget:

The United States . . . faces an untenable fiscal situation and owes $31 trillion on a debt that is steadily increasing. The OMB Director should present a fiscal goal to the President early in the budget development process to address the federal government's fiscal irresponsibility. This goal would help to align the months-long process of developing the actual proposals for inclusion in the budget. Though some mistakenly regard it as a mere paper-pushing exercise, the President's budget is in fact a powerful mechanism for setting and enforcing budget policy at federal agencies. The budget team includes six Resource Management Offices--

And so on. Let me just stop here on the question of debt and deficits.

So there is a big fight that is about to happen, and it is sort of playing out in the U.S. House of Representatives, among Republicans only. The Republicans want to pass a big tax cut, and they want do it like they did the last tax cut, which is to shovel a bunch of money to the wealthiest corporations on the planet.

I still remember that, I think, the Chamber of Commerce wanted--I might be getting the numbers wrong, but I think they were pushing for like a 24-percent top tax rate, and this Congress gave one that was even lower than the Chamber of Commerce wanted. Like, they are just going for it. They are going to shovel money to the wealthiest corporations to ever walk the planet.

When we got power, we instituted, essentially, a minimum tax so that billion-dollar corporations would pay at least 15 percent. It generated a bunch of money, and we were able to use that for beneficial things. So the problem now is that you have got some legit deficit hawks--you have got some legit fiscal conservatives--who like tax cuts. But understand that tax cuts, like, reduce the amount of money coming into the government. Don't engage in this magical thinking where tax cuts somehow weirdly generate more money for the government. But you have got a bunch of people who just want to deliver a tax cut and, like, paper over the fact that they are blowing up the deficit.

But the last--I forgot what it was called. The TCJA? It was the tax cut, the Trump tax cuts. And there were multitrillion-dollar increases in the deficit. And what they are about to do is one of two things. They might do, like, just goofy accounting and say that continuing these tax cuts is basically free. Now, there are a bunch of Republicans in the House who, basically, are saying: No way, no how. We are not doing that.

The problem is, if you are not doing that and you are not raising revenue, then you have got to cut, and you have got to cut, and you have got to cut. And let me tell you something: The USAID budget is not going to do it because it ain't $29 billion they need to find; it is $1.5 trillion that they need to find.

If you read the document that Jodey Arrington in the House was distributing, it was Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, clean energy tax credits, like--and by the way, you need to do, like, most of those things in order to find $1.5 trillion in savings.

So you will forgive me if I am somewhat skeptical of these people's commitments to fiscal discipline, because every time they are in charge, they blow up the deficits, and they blow them up--look, we did some spending. I am not going to deny that, right? The Inflation Reduction Act was basically budget neutral; and I am very proud of that bill. But during COVID, we, obviously, spent money on a deficit basis. My own view is that whatever one thinks about debt and deficits, like when it is a global pandemic and you are trying to prevent people from not being able to feed their families or pay their rent or pay their mortgage or buy their groceries or buy their medicine, that it was very reasonable for us to do deficit spending because we have that ability to keep people afloat, so we did it.

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 can say we overshot it. I don't actually think that, but some people who are smart think we overshot it. But we just decided we are not going to err on the side of austerity when it is a global pandemic. And then I think it has borne fruit. We have had a very strong economy for quite a while. It is also fair to say that prices were and remain incredibly high.

But when these guys get in charge, they are suddenly very concerned with a tiny, little sliver--0.6 percent, something like that, six- tenths of 1 percent--of the entire Federal budget, which is USAID, and they are going to pass massive tax cuts that are going to either blow up the budget or they are going to find a pay-for.

Now, what does a ``pay-for'' mean? It is just basically--OK, I am taking away money on this side, and I am going to bring in money on the other side, right?

There are only two ways to find a pay-for. One is you cut something you are spending money on. The other is you raise revenue, right? You raise taxes somewhere else. They are not going to raise taxes, so they are only looking at cuts. The problem is there is actually not enough on the domestic discretionary side to find $1.5 trillion worth of savings. They couldn't pass it themselves, and this is why it can never pass in appropriations bills, because they don't even--like, they can talk about it, but then when it comes to, like, cutting transportation, they don't want to do it, right?

But what is--the cataclysm that is coming is either a massive, budget-busting tax cut for people who never needed it in the first place, or they are really going to cut Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act. Like, that is the plan.

And I quote:

Though some mistakenly regard it as a . . . paper-pushing exercise, the President's budget is . . . a powerful mechanism.

Because the RMOs are institutionally ingrained in nearly all policymaking and implementation across the executive branch, they play a critical role in helping the Director to implement the President's . . . policy agenda. However, because each RMO is responsible for formulating and supervising such a wide range of policy details, many granular but critical decisions are [often] effectively left to the career professionals.

Like, I want you to understand. Many decisions are left to the career professionals, and this is like--it is not the whole thing, but this is a big part of what we are arguing about, right?

Are you OK with career professionals making decisions? I am. That sounds good to me. I will give you a choice. Forget political party. Do you want political appointees or career professionals making decisions? Like, I want the career professionals. It is not to say that a new President doesn't get to drive policy, but, like, if you have Region 9 of the Federal Highway Administration and they are trying to figure out, like--I don't know--the stability of the Hanalei Bridge, I don't want political appointees determining that kind of stuff. I want experts. I want career professionals.

And that is, like, a really foundational difference between the parties right now. It is that they believe expertise is being weaponized against them. They believe that, by virtue of being elected, you should have monarchical power. They believe that these people in the Federal Government are--I don't know--woke or something. But I have met thousands and thousands and thousands of Federal employees at the shipyard, at Yokota 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 have ever met. I am not kidding. Like, this is not, like, some political statement. They are 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 email saying: Fork in the road.

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 a hostile takeover of the Federal Government.

And I say those words advisedly. 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 is a lameduck. He survived a shooting. He won the popular vote and the electoral college. Sometimes people age out of their worst behavior. I am not being sarcastic here. I had a little sliver in my head that said: I want to at least see that every, like, ``hashtag 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 Director and his political staff, not the careerists, drive these offices in pursuit of the President's actual priorities and not let them set their . . . agenda based on the wishes of the sprawling ``good government'' management community in and outside of government--

That is great. Good government people, damn them--

Many Directors do not properly prioritize the management portfolio, leaving it to the Deputy for Management, but such neglect creates purposeless bureaucracy that impedes a President's agenda--an ``M Train to Nowhere.''

OFPP: This office plays a critical role in leading the development of new policies and regulations concerning federal contracting and procurement. Through the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, which is generally chaired by the OFPP Administrator, the OFPP helps the Director to set a wide range of policies for all of those who contract with the executive branch. In the past, those governmentwide contracting rules have played a key role in helping to implement the President's policy agenda. This office should be engaged early and often in OMB's effort to drive policy, including by obtaining transparency about entities that are awarded federal contracts and grants and by using government contracts to push back against woke policies in corporate America.

You can see how it, like, sort of sounds fine, and then, suddenly, they are, like--whoa--and push back against woke policies in corporate America. Like, what the hell has that got to do with anything? And I don't even know how the Office of Management and Budget is supposed to--like, what do you care if Coca-Cola is, like--I don't know--pro queer or something or, like--or, like--Pepsi or--I don't know--like some--whatever? Like, who cares? NBCUniversal is--like, 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 this--remember that this guy has this theory that he is the King's hand. He represents what the President thinks in all matters, right?

And I remember--I have 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 would be in a meeting, and he would say: He has all my authority on this.

It was very generous of him. He delegated that specific authority to the Lieutenant Governor, and then I could represent him.

What this guy is saying is that the OMB Director represents the President of the United States in all matters and is going to use that to push back against woke policies in corporate America. Like, that is not a proper use of Presidential power. It is not a proper view of Presidential power, right?

First of all, the OMB Director does not represent the President in all things. That is preposterous. That is the guy who is writing this who is going ``I am going to be OMB Director. I might as well represent to all the world that I am all-powerful,'' right? But, also, what the hell has that got to do with anything?

So you see these guys have a very specific view of the world, and it is not just like ``I think the government should work this way or that way''; they view this as a real war. That is 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 of them just think I have bad ideas, like I think they have bad ideas. But these people have a very different view of the American system of government and what is happening societally.

It is dressed up with a lot of, like, overeducated, white-shoe law firm language, but they really view the left as, like, an enemy--not as fellow Americans with bad ideas but the enemy--and they are going to utilize the power of the Federal Government to go after whatever they think is woke, right? And we saw 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 are a public leader and something tragic happens. The 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 is kind of hard. It is also the easiest thing to do because all you have to do is be gracious; all you have to do is care about people.

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, 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. 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 is going on here. They dress it up a bit, but they think that is the problem. They think that is the problem. They think there are a bunch of people walking around like me or whatever 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 that China is engaging in the Belt and Road Initiative--and everybody in the U.S. Senate talks about: ``Wow, China is so smart. They have this Belt and Road Initiative, they are doing all these economic partnerships, and they are winning friends all over the world. We should do something like that.''

We are doing something like that. It is called the U.S. Agency for International Development. It is USAID. We have it. Maybe you think it is not working well. Fine. Let's work on it. But we are marveling 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 is not. This is either what we are doing or it is not.

We have a vote coming up on Wednesday and probably Thursday on Mr. Russ Vought. I have never met him. I don't think I have ever met him. I knew his deputy. I actually got along with his deputy. He is clearly smart. He clearly has a point of view. But, I mean, he is the Project 2025 guy. That is 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 are doing Project 2025. They are doing it. They are doing it. They are implementing it. They have the playbook. Everything you have seen in the last 2 weeks is what they told us they were going to do.

This is not just to establish an ``I told you so.'' It is 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 going to get a disrupter. Maybe you just wanted to poke, you know, the Democratic Party in the eye because you were pissed off about I don't know what--the price of something or Gaza or whatever.

Look, people vote for you or against you for their own reasons, not yours. So I respect the voters for electing this man. I just don't think the voters--even the ones who elected this man--had any idea that this thing was going to be implemented and implemented so aggressively and so unlawfully.

You have places all around the country that codified a woman's right to choose and voted for Donald Trump. You have places in this country that legalized medical cannabis or cannabis generally and then voted for Donald Trump. You have 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--I mean, look, in the first Trump round, I didn't have very many buddies who voted for Trump. In 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 our text strings and all the rest of it, but I could tell. And it is because they didn't think he was going to do any of these things.

I just want everybody to understand he is doing them all, and he is doing them rapidly, and he is doing at least some of them illegally.

We are going to have more to say about this over the next couple of days, but I just want everybody to understand that this is a marker. This is what they are doing. They are implementing Project 2025, and Mr. Russ Vought is the head of this thing. 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 knows who the OMB Director is. Nobody even knows what OMB is. But that is why this thing is so important, is that this guy has decided that 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 that everything goes through OMB. It is the consolidating place for Presidential power. He represents the President in all things.

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 are doing with USAID is even worse than the document. They actually call for reform of USAID in this document; what they are doing is actually eliminating the Department.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. No. And I thank the Democratic leader for his leadership on this.

I will just say, I think the idea of getting rid of USAID is a radical one and a wrong one, but that is actually not what we are arguing about. They stormed into the offices and purged the staff and took over the servers and, we do think, entered the SCIFs. I mean, this is the kind of thing that, if you read about it in the newspaper, it would sound like it was in a country that was falling apart.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Yes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. It truly is. I thank the leader. It is absolutely unparalleled. The idea that someone from DOGE--we don't even really know who it is--basically barged their way 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 who have this kind of access, and somebody was just granted it--

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. It is true. And the firing of the IGs was not just a random, like, ``I don't like those guys'' kind of a firing; it is a precursor to corruption. They literally got rid of the watchdogs, and then they stormed the building. I just want everybody to understand that.

The leader is exactly right. It is OMB, and it is IG. So a lot of people out there in the public are like ``I can't sort this all out.'' Think of this it way: They got rid of the watchdogs, and then they stormed the building and took control of the servers and the data.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Yes, absolutely. And I think that is one of the things that everyone has to wrap their mind around, is that you might have voted for Donald Trump for whatever set of reasons, but I don't think you signed up for a bunch--it is not just that billionaires are influencing the government--that would be one thing, but it wouldn't be that unusual--but billionaires are in charge of the mechanics of the government. That is different. That is very scary stuff.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. It is really frightening. And I think about last week before the Federal funding freeze was deemed unlawful and suspended. People couldn't get their VA home loans.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. We have all had that moment where you are like: OK. It is closing day. And the VA home loan office was not available for you to execute on your loan.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Yeah. Look, I think our job over the next couple of days--and the leader has been very strong on this--is to point out that, look, I have never seen a floor fight over the OMB Director. And there is a reason for that. It is because that is usually some nonpartisan job. And they might have--they are important. You want them to be good at it.

But this guy views OMB as a consolidated locus of power on behalf of the President to fight woke or whatever.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source