Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of Energy Relating to ``Energy Conservation Program for Appliance Standards: Certification Requirements, Labeling Requirements, and Enforcement Provisions for Certain Consumer Products and Commercial Equipment''

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I have a question for my colleague from Massachusetts, if she would yield for a question.

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Mr. MERKLEY. In your knowledge of American history, has there ever been a Presidential first 100 days that showed this level of corruption that we are witnessing with this administration?

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator's speech in laying this out.

I am going to address another aspect of the first 100 days, which is about the phenomenal strategy of President Trump to undermine our Constitution; to undermine the separation of powers, the checks and balances, for the purpose of creating a strong-man state, which is also just an extraordinary, extraordinary experience to be living through.

The first 100 days of the Trump administration have plunged our Nation into a constitutional crisis unparalleled since the Civil War. How bad is it, and how will we respond? How will this Chamber respond? How will the House respond?

Our democratic Republic, with its separation of powers and checks and balances, is sliding into an unaccountable strong-man state.

To the first question--how bad is the constitutional crisis?--I summarize: worse than we could possibly have imagined. It is an authoritarian takeover, emboldened by a subservient majority in Congress, a deferential Supreme Court, and an aggressive, authoritarian President.

We all know that strong republics can slide into corrupt strong-man states. Witness Venezuela. Witness Turkiye. Witness Hungary. It can happen gradually. It can happen suddenly that Congress becomes a rubberstamp, that the courts defer to an aggressive Executive, the press softens its criticisms, and other institutions tread ever so carefully.

However often we have witnessed this happening elsewhere, however, we always thought that it could never happen here, not in the United States of America. It could never happen here because our commitment to the separation of powers is too secure, our 250 years of dedication to a democratic republic too established for it to ever happen here.

But the last 100 days have shown us that we were robbed. So tonight, I am ringing the alarm bells. The danger is clear. The danger is present. This crisis calls upon every patriot, every individual who cherishes a deliberative republic, every institution--whether it is Congress or the court or the people or the press or the university or the law firm--to use their heart and mind and sinew, their clout and their connections, to resist this authoritarian takeover and save our Republic.

In only 100 days, Trump has aggressively pursued five strategies to advance his authoritarian powers. The first strategy has been to willfully violate a host of Federal laws.

One hundred days ago, on January 20, I sat in the Rotunda of the Capitol, just down this hallway, halfway between here and the House of Representatives, for Donald Trump's inaugural address. It was not a traditional address. A traditional address is when the President lays out a vision and says: Here in our democracy, I will be working with Congress to pass laws to provide a foundation to implement that vision.

That is the way it works when power is divided between a court and an Executive and Congress. But instead, the speech that President Trump gave just down this hallway in the Rotunda didn't talk about working with Congress. It didn't talk about passing laws. He spoke only of governing by Executive order, as if he was already a King.

Well, governing by Executive order is exactly what he has done, with 26 Executive orders on that first day and over 130 Executive orders and counting as of now. And many of those Executive orders directly violate laws on the books.

He fired 17 inspectors general, violating a law that allows a President to fire an inspector general only for cause and with 30 days' notice to Congress.

He fired members of the Boards that lead independent Agencies, violating the law that provides these members with established terms and says that they can only be fired for cause.

Trump's targets have included Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board, Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission, and quite a few others.

Trump violated the Antideficiency Act when Elon Musk and DOGE sent the ``fork in the road'' email to 2 million Federal employees, offering a buyout with pay through September 30, committing funds beyond the March 15 deadline that the law allowed.

Trump violated the Privacy Act of 1974 when Trump, Musk, and DOGE accessed sensitive personal information from the computers of the Social Security Administration.

Trump violated a 2018 law banning reductions in indirect costs covered by the National Institutes of Health research grants when he capped those rates at 15 percent.

The mastermind behind this strategy of deliberately, willfully breaking the law, time and time and time again, is one man. His name is Russ Vought.

Who is this man? He directed the Office of Management and Budget in the last year of Trump's first term. He is an architect of Project 2025, and he is leading the Office of Management and Budget for Trump's second term.

As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, I interviewed him in my office before his nomination hearing, and he was very clear, very direct about his viewpoint. He is a proponent of the fringe unitary executive theory that says the President has complete authority over every element of the executive branch. The President, he believes, can ignore any detail in law passed by Congress and perhaps ignore any order by the courts that constrains how the President manages the executive branch.

Vought anticipates that when Trump's lawbreaking reaches the Supreme Court, a deferential Court will legitimize his unitary executive theory and hand vast power to President Trump.

Mr. Vought's deliberate desire to break the law and violate the separation of powers caused me to label him the most dangerous man in America. He is a direct threat to the entire vision of our Constitution.

I led a 30-hour debate here in this Chamber on his nomination to put a spotlight on him and on his ideas, but it was a party-line vote. Every one of my colleagues across the aisle looked to their loyalty to President Trump over their loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

The second Trump strategy to expand the power of the President--the authoritarian power of the President--is to usurp Congress's article I power of the purse by impounding the funds that Congress has dedicated in law and long passed in the Senate and passed the House and signed by the President, impounding funds in those laws for specific programs. This is illegal. It violates the law, and it is unconstitutional, and it violates the separation of powers.

You know, Nixon tried this. He impounded funds for the EPA for fiscal year 1973. The Supreme Court ruled, when this case finally reached it in Train v. City of New York, that impoundments violate article I of the Constitution, which so clearly--this Constitution so clearly gives the power of the purse to Congress.

And when Congress passed the law in 1996 that gave the President a line-item veto on program funding, the Supreme Court ruled again, in Clinton v. City of New York, that Congress could not give to the President the power the Constitution reserves to this Chamber, to Congress.

It is worth noting that Trump had a choice. Instead of illegally impounding funds, he could have sent a legal rescission request to Congress. And there is a good possibility, perhaps a probability, that the Republican-led House and Senate would have passed that rescission. A rescission formally undoes a law by Congress reconsidering it. But he deliberately--he, being Trump--deliberately chose the illegal path of impoundments, the unconstitutional path of impoundments in order to put a case before the Supreme Court so the Supreme Court could rule--Trump and Russ Vought hope--for the unitary executive theory of power, the vision of a strong-man rule in our Nation rather than government by the people.

Note the parallel. Trump fired thousands and thousands of employees across this country. He could have done it legally through reductions in force, RIFs, but he chose to do it illegally. Why? To put a case before the Supreme Court so the Court could enhance the power of the President of the United States of America. It is that hope that they have for that deferential Court.

Trump and his team have impounded funds for so much now. There are so many cases in the courts. Court ruling after court ruling are saying: This is illegal. You cannot do this. This is unconstitutional.

But he just keeps doing it.

Electric vehicle charging stations, impounded. Security systems to Ukraine, impounded. Program funds for sanctuary cities, impounded. Immigration lawyers for 26,000 unaccompanied children, impounded.

But the most tragic example of impoundment is Trump's attack on the U.S. Agency for International Development.

On February 3, Elon Musk posted that he and DOGE had ``spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.'' Musk was bragging that he and Trump had destroyed an Agency in a single weekend, in violation of the law. They fired almost all of USAID's employees and canceled more than 5,000 contracts, crippling America's delivery of lifesaving aid around the world and, I might add, crippling relationships that create soft power for the United States of America to accompany the hard power of our military.

In February, a senior USAID official Nicholas Enrich estimated that a yearlong pause in AID's programs could cause between 71,000 to 166,000 additional deaths just from malaria, with huge increases in deaths from tuberculosis and infectious diseases like Ebola. Shortly after making these estimates, Enrich was fired.

Speaking the truth in this administration is a cause to be fired because the truth scares Donald Trump. He doesn't want the truth. He just wants his power and everyone to be in line behind it.

Another study estimates that shutting down USAID over 15 years could result in 25 million additional deaths worldwide. That is a hard number to digest--2 million more deaths from tuberculosis, 8 million more deaths from malaria, from malnutrition and other causes, and 15 million more deaths from AIDS, with PEPFAR shut down. And those 15 million deaths from AIDS generate 14 million additional orphans.

Just let that sink in. One illegal decision in one weekend by Musk and Trump putting AID in the wood chipper could result in millions of deaths. Illegal defunding and dismantlement, done in one weekend, to an Agency that constituted only one-third of 1 percent of our national spending in 2024 could result in more deaths than World War I.

Now you may say: Is this some crazy theory on the internet?

It was a study put together by prestigious medical organizations, groups like the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the New York University Grossman School of Medicine--serious people, serious modeling, serious understanding of what USAID does around the world.

And do you know what else his decision did? It created an enormous opportunity for China to move in and say, ``You can't count on the United States of America, but you can count on China,'' hugely undermining our standing and influence in the world.

That is what was done illegally in one weekend.

A third Trump strategy for amassing Executive power is to attack the constitutional power of the courts. The Founders gave the courts the power to address ``all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution,'' and that power includes the ability to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. It includes the ability to invalidate Executive actions that violate the laws or violate the Constitution. But for the court's check--this crucial check on Executive misuse of power--to be effective, the President must follow the decisions of the court, and that is why the oath of office is so important. You are taking an oath to the Constitution that lays out this structure of accountability.

But President Trump is stiff-arming the court. He is not honoring the Constitution. He is not honoring his oath to the Constitution.

He ignored Federal Judge James Boasberg's order not to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, refusing to keep the planes on the ground or turn them around. He ignored the judge's order to provide details regarding the flights to El Salvador. And in a stunning stiff- arm to the Supreme Court, he refused to facilitate, after a 9-to-0 Supreme Court decision saying he must do so, the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador despite the Court's order.

In yet another confrontation with the Supreme Court, Vice President Vance claimed in February that ``judges aren't allowed'' to check Executive power.

Then, in March, Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg, calling him a ``crooked'' judge, a ``troublemaker and agitator.''

What in Trump's mind is a ``crooked'' judge? One who is actually ruling on the law because the last thing Trump wants is a judge who honestly rules on the law. He wants subservience.

This call for impeachment of a judge provoked a rebuke--a rare rebuke--from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said:

Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.

Calm language to address a massive constitutional violation.

Over the last 100 days, Trump has brazenly signaled to the courts that they should not interfere with his management of the executive branch.

A fourth authoritarian strategy by Trump is to attack the free press and free speech. Benjamin Franklin wrote that ``whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.'' Apparently, President Trump was paying attention because he is seeking to overthrow the liberty of our Nation, and he is trying to subdue the freeness of speech.

One of his tactics is to intimidate the free press by suing them. He sued the Des Moines Register for an inaccurate poll predicting he would lose Iowa. He sued CBS News for $10 million because he disliked its editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris on ``60 Minutes.'' And he sued ABC News because George Stephanopoulos said on the air that Trump had been found liable for ``rape'' when, in fact, he had been found liable not for ``rape'' but for ``sexual assault,'' under the detail of the law, in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit.

Trump hasn't just launched suits; he is succeeding in compromising our free press. ABC bent the knee, agreeing after Trump won and fearing for how Trump might misuse Presidential power, to pay Trump that $16 million to settle the case involving Stephanopoulos, even though Trump had, in the view of experts, little chance of prevailing in court.

And last week, Bill Owens, the executive director of ``60 Minutes,'' resigned, citing encroachment of his journalistic independence in the face of mounting pressure from Paramount, CBS's parent company, again potentially for fear of the misuse of Executive power that would compromise the success of Paramount.

A reported possible source of that pressure is from Shari Redstone, Paramount's controlling shareholder, who is reportedly eager to settle this issue to secure the Trump administration's approval for the multibillion-dollar sale of Paramount to Skydance.

Trump further pressured the press by playing favorites with access to White House events, barring the Associated Press from the White House press pool for continuing to use the name Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America. It is a style manual question, and Trump doesn't like that a free press can choose its own style.

A judge ruled on April 8 that, under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalist, it cannot shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution, the court said, requires no less. But a week later, the White House was still excluding AP from the press pool.

In yet another action against the press, Trump has silenced the Voice of America. The Voice of America was created to counter propaganda from authoritarian governments in the Second World War. The Voice of America has grown to be a powerful check on disinformation from authoritarian governments. It broadcasted in 40 languages, bringing facts to bear against that propaganda from those strong-man states.

But now Trump has canceled that powerful counter to authoritarian governments around the world.

He is attacking free speech as well as the free press. Like many of us here, I was in the House Chamber last month for Trump's State of the Union Address when he claimed to have ``brought free speech back to America.'' That is completely wrong. The opposite is true. He has sought to end free speech in America, taking control of content at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian museums, canceling programs, firing employees, even scrubbing Federal websites simply because of words he doesn't like.

But most egregiously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is using a 1952 Red Scare law--a McCarthyist law--to strip students and others of their visas and deport them, students like Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University or Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University. Neither was accused of a crime. Both had simply exercised free speech. I think every Member here would have assumed that a student has the right to express their opinion on an issue because we are here in the United States of America.

You know, many of us grew up hearing the phrase: I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. That is the conviction behind free speech. I don't like what you say. What you say even makes me angry. But I defend your right to say it. I defend your right to have that opinion because we live here in the United States of America, where we honor free speech.

It is the freedom of the individual, and it is an important check on power that people can express it, can express it without having their documents canceled, without being arrested as they leave a classroom, not being swept off to some prison halfway across the country because you say something the government doesn't like. But all that has changed here in the United States of America because students who are saying things the government doesn't like are being swept off the street and transported halfway across the country and held in prisons in preparation to deport them.

This particular 1952 Red Scare McCarthyist law being used by the Secretary of State says an alien can be excluded if ``the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise a compelling [U.S.] foreign policy interest.''

``[A] compelling [U.S.] foreign policy interest.''

How does a student expressing an opinion on a campus somewhere compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest? Does it compromise our foreign policy interests when I say I disagree with some foreign policy venture? I have said it about Democratic Presidents, that I disagree with them. I have said it about Republican Presidents, that I disagree with them. So has virtually every single Member of this Chamber. That is freedom of speech. And we don't expect or believe that compromises the United States; we think it makes it stronger to have an actual debate of ideas, opinions expressed and hopefully considered.

It is an extraordinary law that came from another era where free speech was under attack. It is an extraordinary power to have vested in one person--the Secretary of State--that power to punish free speech. It is a chilling attempt to silence free speech that presents viewpoints out of favor with this administration, and it is wrong. It is wrong under our Constitution.

I would hope that every single Member of this Chamber would share the view that when they hear someone speaking with whom they disagree, they would still stand and defend that person's right to say it.

Note that there was no due process for students Rubio disfavored, just as there was no due process for the Venezuelan immigrants Trump sent to El Salvador.

``Due process''--those two words. What does it mean? And maybe it sounds like legal mumbo-jumbo. Due process is the guardian of our freedom. It means you cannot be grabbed by the government at their will, tossed into a van, and thrown into a prison because they cannot do so, they cannot take away our liberty or our rights without a fair, public process. That defends our freedom.

It is about freedom, but this administration isn't about freedom. They are about power, authoritarian power, about creating a strongman state. If we want to preserve freedom, we damn well better defend due process vigorously.

The fifth authoritarian strategy by Trump is to target other power centers in our communities, including law firms and universities.

Trump has attacked a host of major law firms, in some cases hamstringing the firms by suspending their national security clearances and therefore making them unable to represent their clients in key cases. He has done this to punish their past association with individuals or cases that threatened his power or to sway them from using their skills, their legal skills, in new efforts that might threaten that power.

The attacks that Trump has launched on law firms have generated some results. Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss have capitulated, agreeing, among other concessions, to end diversity policies and contribute millions of dollars of pro bono work to conservative clients. It is extortion. That is what this administration is involved in. They are using the power of the Presidency to take away the ability of law firms to operate in order to extort them to contribute free services to causes the President favors.

Well, these law firms--Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss--are not alone. As of a month ago, nine firms had surrendered, nine firms had bent the knee, agreeing to provide $1 billion in pro bono legal work for causes preferred by this administration. Again, it is extortion, and it is misuse of the President's power.

But some of the law firms actually believe in an America where a President cannot exercise this sort of extortion. Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale have fought back. They are challenging Trump's authority to do this. Impressively, more than 500 other firms have stood with them, signing briefs denouncing Trump's extortion.

Trump and his team have also pressed to reshape policies at universities by launching investigations of their practices and freezing millions or billions in their Federal grants--$510 million in Federal grants frozen at Brown University; $175 million in grants frozen at the University of Pennsylvania; $210 million frozen at Princeton; $2.2 billion in Federal grants frozen at Harvard University.

Some universities, like Columbia University, have capitulated. Others, like Harvard and Princeton, are fighting back.

A sincere compliment to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber, who published an op-ed in The Atlantic when the first attack occurred on Columbia University. He called on presidents to ``speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.'' He said: This won't be the last university that is attacked. Not soon after, his own university was attacked. He noted that this attack on universities is ``the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.''

Looking back on these 100 days and these five strategies to convert a robust Republic, our robust Republic, with its checks and balances, into a strongman state, it raises a number of questions--questions that I hope folks will ponder.

First, Trump nominated a man, Pete Hegseth, to be Secretary of Defense who is fabulously unqualified for the position. He fired several highly capable, top-tier military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, CQ Brown, and the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Lisa Franchetti. These firings make plain that Trump doesn't value these professionals' management--nonpartisan management of our Armed Forces.

Is Trump seeking to fill these top tiers of our military with loyalists? If that is what he is up to--replacing these highly professional, impartial managers of our military enterprise with loyalists--what additional authoritarian risks does this pose for our Republic?

Second, what has the Supreme Court unleashed through its Trump v. United States decision? Last summer, less than a year ago, at the beginning of July 2024, the Supreme Court found some invisible ink in the Constitution. Grab your Constitution. Take a read of it. Where does it say in here that the President is above the law?

Our Founders were terrified that a President would try to become a King. They had just escaped one King; they didn't want another. Instead, they had a theory of the world: Equal justice under law-- equal. For the powerful and the nonpowerful, for the rich and the nonrich, equal justice under law.

It is carved into the stone above the pillars of the Supreme Court, which, if you go out the doors I am pointing out to my right and you continue down the hallway, there is another set of doors, another set of stairs, and you can see the Supreme Court straight across from here, and you can read ``equal justice under law.'' That is the principle. But I will tell you what--that Supreme Court last year decided no equal justice under the law. In fact, the President has complete immunity from committing a crime as long as he calls it a government act.

It is invisible ink in here somewhere, but I will tell you, the Founders are rolling over in their graves at this betrayal of the Constitution by this majority in the Supreme Court. Think about what they have done. You take this immunity from being accountable under the law and you pair it with pardon power, and you now have an entire executive branch that considers itself immune from the law, which helps explain some of the items I went over before--how there are deliberate and willful violations of law by this administration.

Quite a challenge for the future of our democracy has been created by the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court will have a chance to redeem itself. It never really considered how the combination of the new power they found in invisible ink that a President is above the law combined with pardon power has completely destroyed the foundation of law in our Nation--an executive that considers itself not accountable.

A third issue is the stretching of laws that really don't even begin to convey the power that Trump has claimed.

We are all aware of the tariffs that he is setting and tearing down day after day. Tariffs are up. Tariffs are down. Tariffs over here. Exceptions over there. Oh, iPhones? Too important. Let's create an exception. Oh, cars are too expensive. Let's create an exception. Who knows? It is certainly not a foundation for companies to invest in America because it is chaos.

He is using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act as a legal basis to set tariffs. But read the act. It says nothing about powers of tariffs, nothing that gives the President the ability to raise and lower tariffs on one fiat after another. It provides power for sanctions and seizures, not tariffs. It has never been used by any other President to set tariffs.

There is no precedent for it, and there is no language in the law that serves it.

Or let's see him reaching further back into history, using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. That act was passed when our early Members of Congress were afraid that France would invade the United States, and they wanted to be able to deport French citizens who might help the French invasion, should it occur.

But Trump is using that as the legal basis for deporting Venezuelans, saying: There is an invasion of Venezuelans.

Well, clearly there is no invasion by the Venezuelan Government. This act was used, shamefully, in World War II, in particular, to lock up Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, and it is being used shamefully and inappropriately now.

It raises the question: What other ancient law is the President and Russell Vought going to dust off and use in a way that was never intended?

Whatever emergency power law--and there are 25, several dozen laws that provide emergency power--is the President going to dust off and say this gives me some additional ability? How might those laws be used in ways to reinforce the strongman state and erode our Nation?

And might the President invoke the power in article II, section 3, a power that is in the Constitution that says that the President can adjourn Congress? Of course, it was never intended to undermine the ability of laws to be crafted here or Congress to serve as a check on Executive power. It has never been used, in fact, by a President ever, but what is this President going to do with that power? Might he--given how he is stretching other laws, misapplying them in situations for which they were never intended--deliberately adjourn Congress to advance his goal of the strongman state?

And let's ponder a few questions that are specific to our Congress. Will Trump's impoundments and rescissions destroy the congressional process for drafting bipartisan spending bills? For fiscal year 2025, the year that started last October 1, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed 11 of the 12 spending bills out of committee in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion. In fact, most of them were passed unanimously out of committee.

That was possible because compromises were struck. Compromises were the priorities of both parties, compromises for priorities of different regions of the Nation with different concerns.

Just think about the difference in types of natural disasters that strike different parts of our country. Some States endure hurricanes, others grapple with earthquakes. The Pacific Northwest, where I come from, battles wildfires. Different parts of the country have different needs. Different parts of the country have desires to have those needs met, resulting in compromises in these spending bills.

But if Trump is allowed to impound the funds for programs for the priorities of his political opponents of either party, then that destroys the foundation for these compromises since no Senator can be assured that the deal they are striking--you get what you need, but you agree to help me get what I need for my part of the country--no one can be assured that that compromise will be honored.

Second, what is the most effective way for Congress to confront Trump's authoritarian exercise of power? In the second week of March, just a month ago, with the authority for government spending set to run out on March 15, the Senate Democrats had the ability to reject the spending bill written by the House Republicans that created a massive slush fund for Trump to use as he pleases to reward or punish specific States or specific congressional districts.

Some on the Democratic side of the aisle here in the Senate argued Democrats should not block this bill because it posed a potential shutdown, and that shutdown had political and policy risks, given that Trump might love the opportunity to operate a shoestring government with the President deciding what constitutes essential services.

Others on the Democratic side of the aisle here in the Senate argued differently, believing that the risk to our Nation was much greater if we let Trump's authoritarian ambitions go unopposed and that history teaches us that the best time to confront an authoritarian is right away, before he amasses even more power.

Both of these arguments had some merit. We will face this decision again soon when the existing continuing resolution runs out on September 30. That will be a critical moment for Congress to confront the President and not hand him more power. We should be preparing for that moment now.

A third question specific to the operation of Congress: Over the next several months, the national policy debates are likely to be dominated by Republican pursuit of a reconciliation bill, a fancy term for a bill that has a special fast-track, simple majority, no filibuster path through the Senate. This bill is designed to cut $2 trillion from programs families use to thrive--healthcare, housing, education, good- paying jobs--gifts $2 trillion in tax breaks to the richest Americans. So families lose and billionaires, they win. That is the philosophy of this bill.

It also abandons the use of nonpartisan calculations of how much a specific policy will cost and instead decides to engage in smoke and mirrors so the American public won't realize what is being done. And it will explode the national debt, adding 7 trillion of additional debt over 10 years and 52 trillion of additional debt over 30 years. Families lose; millionaires win. And America's future is deeply damaged, perhaps drowned in an ocean of red ink created by this bill.

You know, it was stunning at the inauguration, the one that happened just down this hallway in the Rotunda, to see President Trump with a lineup of billionaires standing behind him. Some countries would call this oligarchs--oligarchs standing behind him.

Will Congress really pass a bill that takes away 2 trillion from families to give 2 trillion in tax breaks to the very richest Americans to buy the support of oligarchs? Is that what we are headed to--a strongman state in which Congress acquiesces in buying the support of the oligarchs?

We saw this happen just yesterday and today. Amazon was going to put up honest impacts on its website saying how much Trump's tariffs would add to the cost of products so people could see why they were being charged so much for things that were much cheaper a little while ago, but Trump in this relationship with the oligarchs called up Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, and said: That is bad for me. Don't do it.

Here is what is going on. Trump is doing what is good for the oligarchs, 2 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans, and then he is asking them to do his bidding, and that includes not being honest with the American people about the impact of his tariffs.

The first hundred days of Trump's administration has made clear that his quest for authoritarian power is a threat to the framework of our Constitution, to the separation of powers, to the checks and balances that must be fiercely resisted, fiercely resisted by Congress.

And I call my colleagues across the aisle: Remember your oath is to the Constitution. You did not take an oath to the President of the United States, not to one individual. That is what people do when they kneel to a King, and we are not a kingdom. We are a Republic, fiercely resisted by the courts, fiercely resisted by the people through mass action. The press needs to channel AP, not CBS. The universities need to channel Harvard, which is resisting, not Columbia that bent the knee. The law firms need to channel Perkins Coie, not Paul, Weiss, which capitulated.

And to the American people across the country who are angry and disturbed by what is happening, who want to stop this authoritarian takeover, I have three suggestions:

Get off the couch. You can't help change the world curled up in a fetal position on your couch.

Second, fiercely hold your elected representatives accountable with your phone calls, with your mail, with your demonstrations outside their office. Hold your representatives accountable. That is what you get to do in a free nation.

And, third, join affinity groups. Being angry and frustrated alone is depressing. Being angry and organized with others is energizing and effective.

Next year, the United States of America will celebrate its 250th anniversary. Let it be a celebration of our determination and our effectiveness in confronting and turning back Trump's authoritarian assault, a celebration of the reenergization of our constitutional framework and the vision of government by the people, not by the powerful.

We are participants in a 250-year relay of democracy, where the responsibility to govern ourselves has been handed from one generation to the next. We inherited it from our parents and our grandparents. Let's pass it on to your children and our grandchildren.

When Ben Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention, he was asked: What type of government do we have?

He responded:

A republic, if you can keep it.

Let's keep it.

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