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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Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Mr. President, I would like to use my time tonight to talk, as well, about the first 100 days under this administration's leadership.

You have heard my colleague already speak, and I concur with his remarks. Simply put, it has been chaotic; it has been disorganized; it has been an unmitigated disaster. Quite frankly--and I know that I am not alone in this--we are absolutely sick of it.

This President and this administration rode in with promises of reducing costs for American families--families like the family I grew up in, with a father who worked through the night and into the morning as a newspaper delivery person and with a mother who worked as a receptionist. This President promised. He said, on day one, that he was going to reduce the cost to American families and improve their quality of life. Only, 100 days later, Americans have only seen reductions in the stock market, in their 401(k)s, and a lowered respect for the Constitution. What we have seen continue to rise, instead, are grocery prices. We are seeing the cost of living grow out of control as families experience freezes in critical funding that supports their households. We are seeing housing costs continue to skyrocket as well.

Again, we were promised the exact opposite, which is that this President knew and understood what it was for the average American family to struggle to afford the cost of housing. He promised that he had the solution and that he was going to cause those costs to go down. Yet everyone from our children to our veterans has suffered under this administration and under this leadership. Not one promise that this administration made to everyday, hard-working, working-class families, made at the outset of this administration, has been met. In fact, they have not even come close.

And do you know what? What is worse is they don't seem to care. But do you know who does care? The American people care.

If you are a working-class American who had hopes that this administration would lower costs as they promised, I will bet you are feeling betrayed by now by the impact of the Trump tariffs.

If you spent your working life paying into Social Security, like so many of our seniors, in the hopes of having a reliable safety net in your later years, you are feeling helpless in listening to this administration's plans to raid Social Security.

If you get your healthcare through Medicaid and Medicare, you are feeling alarmed at this administration's intent to gut these essential programs.

If initiatives like SNAP and Head Start help keep your family's head above water during tough times, you are feeling frustrated that this administration is so out of touch that they would even consider eliminating this critical funding.

These emotions run deep nationally, and I have seen them felt locally. Somerset County, for example, is one of the poorest counties in my State, the State of Maryland. If that is not enough, its geography has contributed to awful flooding problems for decades. The city of Crisfield was depending on a Federal grant to finally help fix the problem. It was a funding plan that people had worked on for years and for such a long time, but this administration's rash decisions have now eliminated that plan.

These are the kinds of decisions that can leave you feeling hopeless, and when you see that your emotions and your struggles are being ignored by this President so that he can hand tax cuts to the billionaires around him who choose to grab for more money instead of holding on to some sense of morality, you feel angry. Resources may be in short supply for American families right now, but there is more than enough hurt and anger to go around. This administration is hurting Americans--the ones who voted for this President and Americans who didn't. They are hurting Americans who didn't vote and Americans who were too young to vote. They are hurting the business community, and they are hurting farmers. They are hurting cities, and they are hurting our rural areas. They are hurting law enforcement officers and factory workers. They are hurting teachers and students. They are hurting factory workers and union members. They are hurting doctors and medical professionals and researchers.

Across the political spectrum and across all demographics, the only thing we have to show for the first 100 days is losing, the kind of losing that will be felt in this Nation for years to come.

One hundred days in, look at how they have treated the very best of us--this Nation's civil servants, the Federal workers who serve with absolutely no political motivation. I have met them. I know them. Close to 160,000 of them live in the State of Maryland, and many of them have served for years under both Democratic administrations and Republican administrations, and they have one dedication, and that is to their fellow Americans. Our Federal workers keep our food safe. They explore the bounds of science to find cures to our most challenging diseases. They make sure that our veterans receive the benefits that they so richly deserve and that our seniors have access to resources that they set aside for the future.

Our civil servants do so much to boost our quality of life, and do you know what? This administration doesn't care. For the first 100 days, they have been subjected to spiteful, petty attacks. They have been caught in the crossfire of a political witch hunt. They have had their lives disrupted by these abrupt and improper firings.

My State has felt a significant impact from these firings. It is home to so many Federal workers--as I have mentioned, 160,000 of them-- people who I am incredibly proud to represent. I have heard the calls from panicked workers who don't know what the future holds. I have met with distraught workers who fear that they won't be able to provide for their families.

All of this is the result of an administration claiming to prioritize efficiency. The majority of Americans is OK with finding efficiency. What they are not OK with is the cruelty that we are seeing. How you treat people matters, and this administration is more interested in celebrating cruelty than being cost-effective.

There is no better example of this administration's chaos and cruelty than HHS Secretary Kennedy. His Department and its Agencies are indispensable in the fight of keeping Americans safe and healthy. From keeping our food safe today to finding cures for disease, the mission of these Agencies and their workers is critical to our well-being. Yet Secretary Kennedy doesn't care. He has pledged to make America healthy again, but in reality, he has fired safety inspectors, eliminated food safety labels and labs, and revealed plans to take the Federal Government out of the role of keeping our food safe.

Our Nation has enjoyed progress due in no small part to our commitment to sustained research. The groundbreaking discoveries that our Nation's researchers have made have done so much for our society. At Health and Human Services, that has meant eliminating diseases that used to ravage our communities and currently means working on solving health challenges that continue to puzzle us today.

The NIH is headquartered in my State, and I know firsthand the good work that they do. We know all too well the significant role that the NIH and other health and research Agencies play in developing and deploying vaccine treatments. Only recently emerging from a devastating public health crisis, we know firsthand how important their work is.

Secretary Kennedy either doesn't know or doesn't care what his Department's mission is. He is doing the administration's bidding to eliminate funding that goes toward finding cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, and rare diseases; and in the midst of outbreaks of measles--a disease that researchers had virtually eliminated--he has pressed forward with firing thousands of vital workers in our health Agencies. This is not efficient, and it is not a profile in competent leadership. What it is, instead, is absolutely dangerous, and it is putting sensitive information and decisions between life and death in the hands of grossly unqualified people.

Secretary Kennedy's pledge to make America healthy again is another promise that this administration is either unwilling or incapable of keeping. His idea to create a national registry for people with autism is an example of what happens when incompetent and incapable leadership is in place.

This administration is full of examples like this. The callous, heartless disregard for others comes right from the top, and it is mirrored in the people who have been nominated to run the government. So we can't join them in celebrating this milestone, because there is nothing that they can hold up as an accomplishment that they have achieved on behalf of everyday Americans.

One hundred days in, we have seen what this administration is. They are disinterested in the lives of working-class and middle-class Americans, uncaring about the futures of our veterans and our seniors, unmoved by the plight of the underprivileged, obsessed with attacking our civil servants and settling scores, unable to make good on the promises that they laid out when they took control, and they don't seem to care.

But Marylanders care; the American people care, and we are tired of seeing this administration tank our economy. We are tired of seeing out-of-touch leaders dismiss the sacrifices that families across the Nation make every single day, and we are already sick and tired of seeing billionaires win while the rest of us lose. We are sick of it, and we are fighting back.

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