Project 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. I am just going to ask the gentleman to yield for a question.

Well, we have seen just this shadow government sort of trying to change America inside out, run the show, and, as you said, put power in one man, not with the usual checks and balances that we have known for America and that have existed through Democratic and Republican administrations.

My first question is, Has the gentleman from Hawaii seen anything like what they did with USAID in terms of just totally eliminating it, being cruel to the people who work there, not understanding the security implications to the country, and just coming in and just shutting down the whole place? Has he ever seen anything like that in all the years we have had in American history, even?

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Mr. SCHUMER. Would the gentleman yield?

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Mr. SCHUMER. And it is similar. We see it repeated in place after place after place--when DOGE came into the Treasury Department and said they are going to control all of the funding and who is getting paid, what Social Security payments and Medicare payments and so much else that goes out--again, isn't this unparalleled, what we have seen?

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Mr. SCHUMER. They have gotten chosen without any checks or balances, without ever coming before the Senate, without anything else, and they have huge power. People's privacy is at risk. But, also, we don't even know if they have made protections, so that China or Russia or some other country could look at all this information and use it, and then the next step could well be even worse. They could just decide ``I will cut this. I will cut that. I will cut this. We are finding something wrong with it'' and come right in. I mean, this is just outrageous.

And to boot, we used to have some check called the IG, the inspector general, who would be in a Department and say: You are doing something wrong; you shouldn't do it. Isn't it true that they have eliminated this IG?

So this is virtually unchecked power by a small group of people, and no one knows who they are, what they believe in, what they are doing. It could have huge consequences and hurt average working people. This isn't something just, you know, up in government, two parties fighting; this could hurt average American families who get Social Security, who get Medicaid, who are veterans. In issue after issue after issue where the Federal Government is involved, you could find just decimation.

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Mr. SCHUMER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, if you remember, for instance, say a group that gets veterans' healthcare, and all of a sudden, they said: The money is not being spent right. We are cutting it off.

You almost have no recourse unless we get rid of this.

As I may have mentioned to my friend from Hawaii, the leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries and I will be introducing legislation to undo this, and we are going to fight like the devil to get this undone because this is just a crisis from one end of America to the other. It is this shadow government of people. We don't know who they are, what they believe in, and they have just come and stormed in. It is outrageous and dangerous.

Will the gentleman agree with those two assessments?

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Mr. SCHUMER. And we don't even know if these billionaires have any understanding of how a feeding program works, how Medicaid works, how a veterans program works, how we fund the police, how we help our firefighters--almost no understanding; just with the idea ``Oh, we want to slash''--which was in DOGE and, I think, in Project 2025--``$2 trillion. We don't care how, where, or when we get there, who it hurts. We just want to do it'' because very wealthy people don't want to pay taxes, and so they just want to cut spending. But the spending is not just wasteful spending; it is things that help American families day in and day out.

One of their other proposals--I love this one--is to get rid of-- privatize Fannie and Freddie. They are the people who give lower mortgages. Because there is a government guarantee, there is a lower mortgage rate. So many younger families really want to buy a home. They can't because it is expensive. This will make it even more expensive.

You go issue after issue after issue with Project 2025, and then you look at the power these five unknown people will have over the entire budget, many of them trying to implement 2025--and this is the way they do it--and it is frightening.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Yeah.

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Mr. SCHUMER. In New York, the Medicaid portal was shut down. People who desperately needed Medicaid, needed to get some information and get some help, were told to go home. Now they have put it back up, but who knows when they will shut it down again.

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Mr. SCHUMER. I would say he would use it as a bludgeon, as a consolidated bludgeon, when he can just cut, cut, cut, and hurt people in so many different ways, you can't even count them.

And I am so glad that we had--and the Democrats--every Democrat who was here tonight voted against Vought. But every Republican voted for him. And people have to realize that they are voting for the guy who said what he would do in Project 2025, hurt all of your constituents if you are in a red State, a blue State, a purple State. And they are going along with it--going along with it. It is amazing. So I really thank my colleague for all the good work and the talk he has given here. And I wanted to come out and lend some support and say ``right on,'' and we are going to keep fighting.

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