Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on Articles Imported From Canada
Floor Speech
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Mr. WELCH. Res. 77.
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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to speak on two topics, one after the other, healthcare and then tariffs. Healthcare
Mr. President, open enrollment will begin across the country on Saturday. Many have already received notice of new sky-high premiums, including, by the way, notices that went out to my fellow Vermonters. Many across the country will log on to the Marketplace on Saturday. It is a scary day for them because they will be checking to see what it will cost them next year to purchase the same healthcare that they have this year. Twenty-four million Americans are going to be doing that this Saturday.
Folks across the country are going to get some bad news; that without the tax credits that are in place now and are set to expire by the end of the year, their healthcare premiums are going to double, triple, and, in some cases, quadruple and even worse.
What Vermonters are finding--our website went up on October 15--is truly a shocking increase in premiums, and it is not affordable. By the way, these are folks, some of whom voted for Trump, some of whom didn't, but all of whom deeply care about their families and their small businesses and their farmers. I will give you an example.
A family of four making $130,000 a year--a very good income in Vermont--would have paid $1,200 a month in 2025. Next year, they are going to have to pay $3,035. That is a $22,000 increase. A family of four making about $64,000 a year is going to pay 920 percent more for healthcare premiums. Obviously, that is going to mean they have to decide whether they are going to go without or somehow, some way, try to find a way to pay that, which they really won't be able to do.
Let me give some starters to make it very concrete about Vermonters. A woman named Sarah is going to see her premium go from $217 a month to $1,200 a month. This is a person who is 63, self-employed, and might have to go without healthcare for the first time in her life.
Cara, also self-employed, has had the same income for 20 years, really scraping by. She pays about $100 a month for healthcare through the Marketplace. Her premium goes up to $1,200.
Erica is paying $1,166 for her family. The deductible for her family of three is $15,000. This is barely insurance. Erica and her family make this premium work somehow, but I am sure it is not easy. Without the tax credits, her monthly premium goes to $2,650.
Maria and her husband run a small food business in Vermont. He spends half the year fishing in Alaska. They pay just under $240 a month, but they are looking at $1,740 per month unless the Senate acts. That is for bronze plan, which you know is the lowest level plan. They will be paying about $21,000 per year with a deductible of $7,700 per person.
The examples I gave of Vermonters are going to be true in Indiana; they are going to be true in Louisiana; they are going to be true all across the country. We have been having this debate about a shutdown, but what we haven't been having is a negotiation about how to protect families from a rate shot that they can't afford that means they are really going to lose healthcare.
I do urge us and I urge the President to act aggressively to resolve this. It will help folks. Whether they are in a red State or a blue State, whether they identify as a Republican or Democrat or Independent, it just doesn't matter. We have a healthcare system that is too, too expensive--beyond reach--and it is crippling to our small businesses, our farmers, and our families. Tariffs
Mr. President, I want to address another topic, and that is the topic of tariffs. They are doing incredible harm to our economy in Vermont. In my view, they are doing long-term damage to our economy here in the United States.
I want to commend my colleagues Senator Paul, Senator Kaine, and others, Senator Shaheen, Ranking Member Wyden, and Leader Schumer for sponsoring the bipartisan legislation we voted on yesterday suspending the emergency authority on which the President was acting to impose a tariff on Brazil, a country, by the way, with whom we have a trade surplus.
We are 9 months into this trade war with tariffs at the forefront. It is a war with Canada. It sort of started with them. That is a big deal for Vermont. We are a border State. But it is a big deal for all of our States because Vermont is 1 of 34 States whose major trading partner is Canada.
For Vermont, Canada has been our largest export market and the largest source of imports. Trade with Canada accounted for 35 percent of our State exports and 67 percent of Vermont's imports and 56 percent of its total trade.
We have small businesses now that are really struggling to keep their lights on. We have farmers across the country but also farmers in Vermont who are incredibly worried about whether they are going to be able to make it into the next harvest. We had a drought. We had early floods. And now we have these tariffs that are increasing the input costs. I know, Mr. President, as a Senator from Indiana, you are very sensitive to the challenges that our agriculture economy and our farmers face.
Things were bumping along, and then President Trump just recently announced an additional 10-percent tariff on Canada, which already had a 35-percent effective rate. We don't even know what that applies to. Is that 10 percent on top of 35 percent or on specific products? Of course, all of that was done because the President was irritated about an ad that was run, apparently, by the Province of Ontario that was quoting a speech that President Reagan made some years ago about how destructive tariffs are. Maybe that does irritate the President. But the constant changing of what a tariff is from day to day creates havoc for our businesses that are trying to plan and control their expenses and deal with all the other uncertainties that they face.
These tariffs are hurting our farmers. Just think about this. Fertilizers--those costs are up 16 percent and in some cases, 39 percent. The effective rate on tractors and other farming machinery is 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
We have also had, as a result of the tariffs that are seen by our trading partner in Canada that was the participant in the U.S.-Mexico- Canada Trade Agreement--negotiated, by the way, by President Trump, an agreement he bragged about as being really effective and the best trade agreement--that is getting ripped up in many ways. And then when you add to it the insults that were hurled at Canada--the ``51st State,'' the ``Governor of Canada''--it has had a catastrophic impact on the tourism Vermont has depended on from our Canadian neighbors with whom we have enormous respect.
That is not just true for Vermont. New Hampshire, Maine, Montana are seeing an incredible drop in tourism that is related to this tariff battle and the rhetoric associated with it.
Also, in Vermont, just as in Indiana, our small businesses are really a big deal. I have been hearing from them. I am hearing from bed and breakfasts, hotels, brewers, distillers--any industry. I will give a few stories, a few quotes.
Simon Perkins at Orvis in Manchester:
The reality is that, in a rapidly changing tariff environment, one that's forced on companies too quickly, it's really hard for a business to respond quick enough to make it work.
Orvis, which was founded in 1856, announced the closure of 31 stores and five outlet locations by 2026. Orvis had to lay off 50 employees, citing tariffs.
Another business, Peter Case of Burrows Sports in Brattleboro:
We love what we do and it's under attack! For 90 years, Burrows Sports has proudly served Brattleboro, growing with our community through good times and hard ones. Today's economic pressures, rising costs, and shrinking margins are testing small local businesses like never before.
Jim Hall from Vermont Country Store:
This is the lull before the storm. . . . Do they realize this is a tax on Christmas?
These tariffs are a tax. They are paid for by our businesses. They disrupt our businesses. They are passed on to consumers, and there is nothing but a downside, especially when you add the fact that these tariffs are a tax. They are imposed and implemented in a totally arbitrary way, wherein a person who is running a business has to contend with all the uncertainties of a volatile marketplace and has to deal with the constant uncertainties that are the result of an ever-changing tariff policy.
I urge all of us in the Senate to reassert our own authority under article I, which gives to the Congress the power to tax, the power to impose tariffs or not, and to not have us continue to relinquish the authority and responsibility to the Executive that we have as the U.S. Senate.
This is our responsibility, and part of the reason is that we are close to people who are affected by these policies. It is a shirking of our responsibility for the U.S. Senate to essentially cede that authority to a President, particularly when we are seeing in every single State the harmful impacts on folks in our States--on the businesses in our States, on the farmers and ranchers in our States-- who are working hard to try to pull things together and keep their businesses going, our economy going, and contributing to the well-being of our country.
I call on the President to reconsider what these tariffs are doing.
I call on our U.S. Senate to reassert its authority and be the decider of what the tariff policy shall be in this country.
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