Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Relating to ``Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Fuel System Integrity of Hydrogen Vehicles; Compressed Hydrogen Storage System Integrity; Incorporation By Reference''

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to align myself with the comments made by the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Illinois.

The Constitution is pretty straightforward on this. It is pretty basic:

[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

This $200 million plane that is going to--$400 million plane--the estimates go up and down, but it is an expensive plane--is a gift, and it is going to the personal use of the President of the United States. The Constitution says it is the job of Congress to say yes or no to a gift. It is our job. And if this Congress wants to vote to accept this $400 million plane, that is our job to do it. If this Congress is silent and doesn't demand that we enforce article I responsibility about this extraordinary gift from the Government of Qatar, that is on us. That is on us.

And what we are seeing time and again is the relinquishment of authority and power under article I, and it can't be shipped out of here fast enough to the Executive down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to satisfy anyone.

That is so profoundly threatening to the well-being of our democracy. The whole point of having three branches of government is the recognition that you cannot allow one person, or even one branch of government, to consolidate all power. There has to be checks and balances. It was based upon what was true then and is true now: Absolute power can corrupt absolutely. And the foundational principle that has served us well is that with the checks and balances, the ambition of one branch can compete with the ambition of the other branch. We have given away the authority that Congress has and the responsibility it has to have those checks and balances and defend democracy.

And by the way, why in the world would we want some other government to be providing transportation for our Chief Executive? It is embarrassing. We don't need no stinking Qatar plane. We need our own planes. We need our own planes. This is about us having respect for the men and women who work here. It is about us having respect for our own responsibility to take care of our own national security needs. We can't outsource this to another government. We shouldn't do it, just as a matter of pride.

But we also shouldn't do it because it does stink--it does stink--of corruption. And all the evidence here is that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump thought this would be a pretty cool plane to fly in. He started putting the pressure on, directly and indirectly, to get this offer of a gift, and now it is a $200 million, $400 million gift. That is what we have. And that is, by the way, without any of us having any opportunity to ask the hard questions: What is it going to cost to so- call retrofit? Can it be retrofitted? How much will taxpayers be asked to pay? Is this gift going to be something that actually costs us a lot more money?

So the Appropriations Committee has no capacity to look into this, to kick the tires, to assess what this means for the taxpayers of this country. So I find it astonishing that we would even be considering and that the President of the United States would be considering having the national security transportation, Air Force One, be a gift of a foreign government. I find it astonishing that we in Congress wouldn't, on a unanimous basis, demand that the emoluments clause be enforced by the Congress voting yes or no on acceptance of this gift.

The implications are pretty clear: Corruption is alive and well in the administration. The implications are pretty clear: Passivity is alive and well in the Congress of the United States, that we turn our back on exercising the profound responsibility that we have, an obligation we have to the people we represent.

Mr. President, I urge the passage of this resolution, and I yield the floor.

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